ANKARA // Turkey’s ambitions to become a regional leader with a zero-problems foreign policy have been left in tatters by the Syrian civil war, rising sectarian tensions and a diplomatic fallout with Egypt.
The predominantly Sunni Nato member state is now seeking to mend fences with Shiite powers Iraq and Iran to restore its waning clout in the Middle East following the Arab Spring uprisings.
The Syrian conflict has upset the balance of power in Turkey’s backyard and dealt a blow to the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s lofty regional goals, his stature on the international stage also tarnished by the wave of anti-government protests that gripped the country in June.
Disputes with Israel, Cyprus and Armenia also linger on, while the spat with Cairo came to a head on Saturday when Egypt’s military rulers expelled Turkey’s ambassador over Mr Erdogan’s support for the deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.
“Today Turkey is a country which is drifting alone in a vacuum,” said Faruk Logoglu, the deputy head of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) and a former ambassador to Washington.
Turkey now has no ambassadors in three important regional countries: Egypt, Israel and Syria.
“In fact there is no zero-problem policy left to talk about,” said Sinan Ulgen, the chairman of the Istanbul Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies.
“Turkey failed to respond through realistic diplomatic moves to the changes in the region in the aftermath of the Arab spring.”
Mr Erdogan, accused by critics of becoming increasingly authoritarian after 11 years at the head of a government with its roots in conservative political Islam, defiantly defended his actions as ensuring that Turkey was on the side of the righteous.
“We have supported the struggle for democracy in the world. We never respect those who do not respect the people’s sovereign rights,” he said.
But Mr Ulgen said the crisis with Egypt would also have wider repercussions, including an effect on Ankara’s partnership with GCC countries. Turkey, he said, was now on a “quest for a new balance” in its foreign policy, hence the overtures to Iraq and Iran.
Ankara’s relations with the two Shiite-led powers have been strained since the Syrian uprising erupted in 2011, leaving them on opposite sides of the war.
Faysal Itani from the Atlantic Council, a US think tank, said Turkey’s “early aggressive stance” against the Syrian president Bashar A Assad and its fervent support for the rebels had alienated Iraq and Iran.
“Turkey probably saw this as a price worth paying. But I imagine they did not expect the regime to hold out against the rebels for so long,” Mr Itani said.
“Erdogan is re-evaluating Turkey’s regional posture in light of the disappointments of its Syria policy.”
Turkey felt sidelined when the United States, its close ally, decided against military strikes on Syria after an August chemical weapons attack.
Ankara in turn has faced accusations from some quarters in the US that it is turning a blind eye to Al Qaeda fighters crossing its long border to fight against Mr Al Assad’s forces.
Mr Erdogan’s government is now looking to Iran and Iraq to help contain the conflict as it grapples with the influx of an estimated 600,000 refugees from across the border, warning that Syria could become a Mediterranean Afghanistan or Somalia if world powers fail to act.
Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, is heading to Tehran today, barely three weeks since his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, paid a visit to Ankara, where both men said they were ready to work together against ethnic and sectarian strife in the Middle East.
“We have more agreements than disagreements on regional issues,” Mr Zarif said.
Both sides have been pushing for a thaw after the June election of Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s president.
This month, Mr Davutoglu also visited Iraq to seek a “fresh start” after two years of tensions.
The two governments had locked horns on issues ranging from Syria to the Kurds of Iraq.
Turkey is also alarmed by the growing influence of Kurdish militants in northern Syria and fears a de facto Kurdish state there, similar to one already established in Iraq, could provide a rear base of operations for Turkish Kurd fighters.
A Kurdish militia dominated by a party close to Turkey’s main Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) this month declared provisional self-rule in Syrian areas under their control.
Ankara said it cannot accept a fait accompli.
“Turkey may be feeling it needs to balance its hostility towards the Syrian regime with developing options to contain the Syrian Kurds, and could be shoring up relations with Iraq and Iran to that end,” said Mr Itani.
The scrambling diplomacy prompted the Turkish opposition MP Muslim Sari to call Mr Davutoglu “the least successful foreign minister in the history of the Turkish republic”.
* Agence France-Presse
