Turkey's new foreign policy in the new world.

• Author: Muzalevsky, Roman

Like in the 16th century, which saw the rise of the Ottoman Balkans as the center of world politics, we will make the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East, together with Turkey, the center of world politics in the future. This is the objective of Turkish foreign policy, and we will achieve this. We will reintegrate the Balkan region, the Middle East and the Caucasus, based on the principle of regional and global peace, for the future, not only for all of us but for all of humanity.

- Foreign Minster Ahmet Davutoglu

A New World Order and Turkey's Multi-Level Repositioning

When Marxism and Leninism were left "on the ash heap of history" with the collapse of the Soviet Union, few doubted the emergence of a new world order. Yet far fewer were able to define it, let alone chart its evolution. By the same token, not all could foretell the transformation of Turkey after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, or discern its remarkable rise on the global stage in the early part of the 21st century. The evolution of the new world order and the emergence of Turkey as a regional power with global ambitions are closely intertwined developments worth exploring to understand not only the changing world but also the challenges and opportunities of Turkey's newly discovered foreign policy.

The end of the Cold War is a good starting point to explore this connection. According to Francis Fukuyama, the defeat of Communism as a revolutionary ideology then raised prospects for "the end of history" - "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution" and "the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." But other conceptions of the new reality also emerged, most notably offered by Samuel Huntington, whose Clash of Civilizations envisaged that the "fundamental source of conflict in this new world" would be cultural and that "the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future." Globalization has merged elements of these two perspectives, producing a mutation of the international system, where integration within the EU, for instance, could proceed in parallel to disintegration of Yugoslavia. But the events on 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the global financial crisis in 2008 have further exposed the complexities of the global environment. A new world (dis)order - more multi-centric in structure and less predictable in nature - gained pace to account for the rise of emerging powers and relative decline of the West in global politics.

The Westphalian order, conceived four centuries ago to serve states as its primary units, today is in "systematic crisis," while "an agreed alternative is yet to emerge." [i) Originating in the West, the global financial crisis underscored this reality. Not only did it demonstrate the role reversal whereby some emerging economies came to the rescue of the developed world, but it also exposed the discrepancies of the global order, resting on policies of the traditional powers yet increasingly redefined by the rapidly emerging economies as diverse as China, Brazil, India, and Turkey. (ii) A significant shift in global politics has become only more pronounced, marked by the gradual replacement of the Columbian epoch based on Western dominance for the last 500 years to the post-Columbian epoch propelled by the rapidly emerging powers. (iii) Driven by the US, the globalization wave has ensured that emerging countries have become real winners.

Indeed, the G-20 club, which includes the G-7 group of the 7 most industrialized economies plus the 13 largest emerging economies, generated 85% of global production in 2010, while the G-7's share of global GDP is expected to fall considerably to less than 50% by 2012. The total GDP of the 12 emerging frontrunners - the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Turkey, Russia, China, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, India, South Africa and Brazil - is projected to reach a 38% share of global GDP by 2015, which is 2% more than the GDP likely to be attained by the G-7. These economies are expected to have an average GDP growth of 7.2% in 2015. The G-7 economies - 2.1%.

While the US supremacy is unlikely to end any time soon, a historic distribution of global power is underway, pressuring actors to adjust to new realities. Today's world - call it "multi-centric" (iv) or "non-polar" (v) - is now home to a multitude of diverse actors, with non-state actors in particular exercising enormous influence and even challenging states in some of their traditional roles. Power has become more dispersed, spurring new modes of actor interaction. (vi) It is also more fluid and varied today. Hence, maintaining solid associations with traditional partners is becoming increasingly difficult and at times even detrimental. Actors are instead often forced to pursue ad hoc relations to maximize their interests while remaining flexible to navigate the intricate interconnections of influence in the rapidly changing world. Pursuing policies of domination also becomes more impractical in the age of growing interdependence. (vii)

As a rapidly emerging power, Turkey has positioned itself as a country capable of not only adjusting its modus operandi in the new world but also actively reshaping its own surroundings in the effort to become a truly global actor. Central to Turkey's ongoing transformation has been a process of concurrent repositioning on the national, regional, and global levels in the first decade of the 21st century, facilitating its rise as a key regional power with global ambitions.

Nationally, Turkey's economic capabilities grew considerably under the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in the first decade of the 21st century, free of previous eras of crises and coups. However, secularists and military have accused the party of pursing an Islamist agenda. AKP proponents, in turn, have supported more checks and balances on the role of the military in the country's political life and robust development of multi-faceted relations with countries in all directions and in a more autonomous fashion. They argue that, relying on the country's multiple identities - historical, geographical, social, religious, and political - Turkey can position itself as a pivot state, capable of serving itself and the world in the rapidly changing realities of the international system.

Regionally, Turkey's new policy toward North Africa, the Middle East, Eurasia, and the Balkans has been pursued to do just that, proactively responding to power shifts in the first decade of the 21st century as well. This policy has sought a "strategic depth. Central to this task has been normalization of Turkey's relations with countries in its environs under the banner of "zero problems with neighbors" policy and mediation efforts to resolve regional security issues impeding Turkey's ambitions. Turkey has relied on "soft power" tools of trade, economic integration, conflict mediation, and appeal of its development model to achieve this.

Globally, power transitions away from the West to the "Rest," accelerated in the first decade of the 21st century, have too spurred Turkey's new policy toward North Africa, the Middle East, Eurasia, and the Balkans, where shifting dynamics have been both the driving and resulting force of the changing paradigm of global affairs. The slow EU accession process, the decline of the West's influence in global politics, and the regional crises have pushed Ankara to pursue active ties with neighbors and emerging powers. The fluidity of the international system has enabled Ankara to form new partnerships with its former adversaries to advance its interests. But it has also underscored the difficulty and questioned the utility of maintaining such ties. Turkey's unsteady relations with Israel, Iran, and Syria, among other issues, attest to this reality.

Turkey: An Emerging Regional Power with Global Ambitions

Turkey boasts the world's fifteenth largest economy, a population of 75 million, and the second largest military in NATO, making it a major rising regional power with global aspirations. But it has only recently emerged as a pro-active player on the world stage. Wars and conflicts around Turkey have long impeded its ambitions. The disintegration of Yugoslavia unleashed chaos in the Balkans. The conflicts in Chechnya and Nagorno-Karabakh ravaged the Caucasus in the 1990s. The war in Iraq in 2003, the Russian-Georgian War in 2008, and the Cyprus issues have also constrained Turkey, encouraging it to resolve crises in the country's own neighborhoods to unleash its potential as a rising power. The demands of Kurdish minorities for their own state have further dictated Turkey's new regional policy, especially vis-a-vis the post-invasion Iraq.

Turkey's "zero problems with neighbors" policy thus set on a course to promote trade and investment in the Middle East, friendly ties with Iraq, Syria, and Iran, and mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict, helping Ankara secure the non-permanent UN Security Council seat for 2009-2010. Its growing relations with emerging powers have ensured that neither the US, nor the EU alone hold a central place in its foreign policy today. As Davutoglu stated, "NATO is Turkey's strongest alliance, and integration with Europe is the main objective of Turkish foreign policy," but Turkey cannot ignore the Middle East, Asia, Central Asia, North Africa, or Africa. Advancing economic interdependence has become a way to prevent conflicts in its surrounding regions.

The "de-securitization" of its foreign policy, in part through emphasis on expanding business ties, has facilitated Turkey's engagement with the Middle East, Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America. (viii) In the past decade, Turkey's GDP has grown from U.S. $192 billion to $640 billion in 2009, with per capita incomes tripling from $3,000 to $9,000. The country's exports grew from $28 billion in 2000 to $132 billion in 2008, while its FDI rose from $800 million in 1999 to...