The Limits of Turkish Power in the Middle East - Sabahat Khan - INEGMA

The resurgence of Turkey on the international level over the past few years has been tied closely to the growth of its interest and attention in the Middle East. Various reasons explain the renewed Turkish interest in the Middle East – the PKK, instability in Iraq, and growing gas dependence on Iran. There is an important economic dimension too: As Turkey aims to bolster its exports and become one the world's ten biggest economies within the decade, the Middle East is important for Ankara to carve out hitherto unexploited export/consumer markets to power its growth. Ankara also hopes to become an energy transport hub, supplying Middle Eastern oil and gas (as well as from Russia and Central Asian states) to Europe. Undeniably, renewed Turkish interest in the Middle East is tied to material, economic gains. Those potential benefits however rest on regional stability: If a serious conflict erupted in the region, Ankara could well emerge at the end of it as one of the biggest losers – even if its involvement in such a scenario was only that of a 'third party' player.

Thus Turkish foreign policy has focused on expanding its regional role by, firstly, reducing its own tensions with states in the region and, secondly, by asserting itself as a moderating influence to diffuse tensions and disagreements between other states. Ankara has been able to act out such a role with a level of success that is encouraging for those stakeholders that have welcomed this sort of Turkish influence. Turkish diplomacy has buttressed its 'moderating' efforts by altering its public diplomacy strategy to cater strongly (or even centrally) for the Middle East/Islamic audience. In the context of building a trade and business footing in the Middle East, it has also helped that the ruling party in Ankara is moderately pro-Islam. Overall, in recent years Turkish diplomacy has benefitted from the ability of a charismatic leadership engage and build regional relationships at the leadership level with statesmanship and foresight. The Turkish leadership has also fairly successfully reached out to civil society actors with its public diplomacy efforts, often having rallied behind apparently Muslim causes to construct a positive, likable image that emphasizes cultural and historical similarities as well as echoing undercurrents of Muslim unity. But as Turkey moves ahead, inherent limitations to its soft power will become apparent.

Though it has much culture and history to draw upon from its Islamic past to support its regional public diplomacy activities, there are however inherent limitations to this. Over expressing its Islamic past could end up inadvertently feeding misplaced perceptions of "Neo-Ottomanism." While the Middle East is happy to welcome Turkey back into its fold as a constructive partner, the region may not see Turkey as highly as Turkey perhaps sees itself. Today, many Middle Eastern nations are rapidly expanding economies – they have growth targets for the next fifteen years that can make Turkey's own goals look comparatively ordinary. The economic weight of rising Arab powers in the Gulf is giving them international significance, and the sort of military power they can afford to invest in reinforces both of these positions.

Moreover, while the regional security environment offers opportunities to Turkish foreign policy, it also eventually acts to constrain it. The reason for this is that Turkey is filling empty spaces – spaces that others have been unable or unwilling to fill. This gives Ankara a limited, peripheral role rather than a pivotal one – it is, in other words, sitting some distance off the center of gravity in the region. Arguably, the political importance of Turkey in the region is less by design and more by the ability of a charismatic leadership with strong political will to skillfully assert its wider relevance to developments. And that may be unlikely to change because beyond its immediate borders Turkey appears to lack the personal relationships, cultural ambassadors and more widely the sort of robust intelligence network (in a non-hostile sense) on the ground that is the characteristic of any truly regional power. Though it generally enjoys positive perceptions at the grassroots level, Turks have relatively limited cultural or professional interaction with much of the Arab and Islamic world – crudely put, Turkey remains more 'imagined' than 'experienced' in vast parts of the Middle East.

An underlying reason for the deeper political disconnect is the lack of a common language between Turks and most of the Muslim world – and their inability or unwillingness to address this. Though some Central Asian states speak Turkic languages, most of the Islamic world speaks languages that bear very little or no resemblance to Turkish. The closest common language for Muslims on a global level today is perhaps English. Though large parts of North Africa and some other Mediterranean areas of the Arab world speak French as a second language, English is probably the medium of communication most widely spoken as a second or third language overall in the Middle East and more broadly in the Islamic world. While the Turks certainly do not speak French, they also do not appear very fond of speaking English. Part of this may be explained by Turkish nationalism – their pride of having no history of economic and cultural domination by West European imperialists.

Turks see themselves, as long parts of their history testify, no less a power than former colonialists like the United Kingdom or France. Yet, those sentiments defy the reality of the world we now live in, and the growth of Turkish soft power is self-inhibiting by, perhaps, its sense of national self-identity. The absence of a common language with the rest of the Islamic world that does not require stand-by interpretation is a major obstacle to the growth of Turkish public diplomacy beyond symbolic and image-building gestures. And Turks seemingly detract from the need to adopt English more widely into their public diplomacy toolkit. As it stands, strong shared language abilities enable American, British, French and even Iranian diplomats to much more vastly discuss, share and understand the thoughts of their counterparts and publics in the Arab and Islamic world than Turkish diplomats and cultural ambassadors could. The same limitations would presumably act on Turkish businesses as a barrier to growth, with northern Iraq – where there is a large Kurdish population – and some Central Asian states being the only exceptions.

As the EU-centrism of Turkish foreign policy was seemingly displaced by a new interest in the Middle East, this may well be short-lived. If the Turkish people expect tangible gains from the foreign policy of their government in the short- to mid-term, Turkish foreign policy direction may need to change yet again – to Central Asia (or even back to the EU), where its relatively open but inward-looking culture will give it more room for maneuver, diplomatically speaking. Some of these 'limitations' will lessen as (or if) more Turkish businesses expand out of Turkey and set up offices or joint ventures in cities like Damascus, Beirut, Irbil and so on, and a new generation of Turks that speak English more widely take up positions in the public and private sectors – much like the rest of the Middle East. These socio-cultural transformations will however take some years more – even if their foundations have been firmly set in place now. On its current trajectory, however, Turkish foreign policy may find it is unable to expand in the Middle East as much as it has the longer term potential to do so. Unless, of course, the strategic objective for Ankara has been only to construct Turkey as a power in the minds of Middle Easterners.