Despite its proximity to Middle East and North Africa (Mena) countries, Turkey has until recently remained distant from the region to which it was tied via the Ottoman empire for hundreds of years. When that power bloc crumbled a century ago, it signalled the formal end of Turkish influence in the Arab world.

But Turkey is now emerging as an increasingly self-confident economy, wielding a distinctive brand of prosperous piety that is broadly in line with its secular and democratic post-Ottoman traditions. Over the past 10 years, it has become a decisive actor in the region, dictating political and economic trends and articulating a model of democratic change that many Arab states view as a credible template for their own reform endeavours. 

Turkey: A political powerhouse

Under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in power since 2002, the Mena region has become central to Ankara’s foreign policy. Erdogan has reconfigured Turkey as a Middle Eastern political powerhouse by building closer diplomatic and commercial ties with its neighbours as a counterweight to its traditional Western orientation.

Syria was the test bed for the ‘zero problems with neighbours’ foreign policy, which did well until the unrest started

Gonul Tol, Middle East Institute

Turkey sits at the crossroads of three major power blocs: the European Union (EU), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Arab League. With dexterous diplomacy, it has sought a balance between the three. For example, it has maintained relations with enemies Iran and Israel, bolstered trade and investment relationships across the region and used its good offices to mediate between feuding parties in Iraq.

It has also cultivated close ties with the Gulf countries through high-level state visits. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud made the first visit to Turkey by a Saudi monarch in more than 40 years in 2006, and followed this with another trip in 2007. Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul visited Saudi Arabia in 2009 and 2011.

Unlike any Turkish political leader since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Erdogan has been unabashed about tying Ankara’s fortunes to those of the Arab world. When he won his third successive general election on 12 June 2011, Erdogan said the Middle East stood to benefit as much as Turkey, “Beirut has won as much as Izmir,” he said. “The West Bank, Gaza, Ramallah and Jerusalem have won as much as Diyarbakir.”

This is not a crude attempt to reinvigorate the Ottoman empire with Turkey again at its helm. Rather, the AKP has determined that the country should be the leading ‘foreign’ player in the Mena region, buttressed by its expanding trade relationships with Arab states.

Turkey’s political outreach goes hand-in-hand with its expanded trade role. The Mena region has accounted for about a fifth of Ankara’s external trade since 2003. Fadi Hakura, a specialist on Turkey at UK-based think-tank Chatham House, says a fundamental element of this diplomatic activism, soft power, is encouraging free trade with Iran and the Arab countries to create opportunities for Turkey’s exporters and business community.

Against a backdrop of increasing economic interdependence, a growing cultural affinity has drawn Ankara closer to the region socially. Arabs now enjoy Turkish television soap operas and take city breaks in Istanbul. Turkish brands have won strong appeal in the region, mixing Western sophistication and Middle Eastern Islamism.

This acclimatisation has laid the groundwork for Erdogan, supported by his influential Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, to articulate a two-pronged foreign policy. It rests on strategic depth, through taking advantage of Turkey’s strategic position between Europe and Asia, and a ‘zero problems with neighbours’ approach.

Turkey’s soft power approach

The soft power process began well before the Arab Uprisings of 2011. The first real application was in Syria in the early 2000s, although relations with President Bashar al-Assad have soured dramatically over the past year, reaching a low in late June when Syrian forces shot down a Turkish warplane. In the decade following the AKP’s election victory in 2002, the two countries have seen a massive spike in trade volumes and bilateral contacts.

Ankara will seek to operate as an honest broker in the region, a role only Qatar has achieved with success

Syrian cooperation in battling the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas was particularly valued in Ankara, and in return, Turkey helped to mediate Israel-Syria negotiations over the disputed Golan Heights area, though these were ultimately unsuccessful. Now the Turkish leadership has cut its ties with Damascus and lent support to the Free Syrian Army, Ankara is deepening its engagement with the mainstream Arab world, which has reacted strongly against the Al-Assad regime. The uprisings have thus afforded a new medium for Turkey’s participation in the region, albeit not without its issues.

“The Arab uprisings have posed a big challenge for Turkish foreign policy,” says Gonul Tol, director of Turkish studies at the US’ Middle East Institute. “Syria was the test bed for Davutoglu’s ‘zero problems with neighbours’ foreign policy and it did well until the uprising started in Syria in March 2011. Syrian cooperation against the PKK was important to Turkey. It didn’t want to lose that, so the decision to cut ties with Damascus has been costly.”  

The change in political climate has forced Turkey to reassess its policy imperatives. Whereas Turkey was maintaining good relations with Iran, Syria and Iraq in 2009, the increased sectarian slant to the Arab uprisings has put it more firmly in opposition, forcing Ankara to align itself with the Sunni camp against regional Shia powers, says Tol.

Turkey has to be careful not to overstretch its public diplomacy. At the outset of the unrest in Syria, Ankara took a high profile, calling on the president to leave power, hosting the anti-Al-Assad Free Syrian Army and undertaking efforts to unify the country’s fragmented opposition. That generated high expectations that were difficult to fulfil. 

Role model for reform

Syria’s descent into armed conflict does not negate Ankara’s soft power strategy. Turkey’s model of inspiring reform and transformation in the Arab world is still actively touted by its leadership, and has found clear resonance in other Mena countries that have undergone or are going through revolutionary change.

Turkey’s experience as a Muslim country building a strong trading economy on the foundations of democratic institutions provides clear lessons for others to learn. “Ankara is not only willing but is also actively trying to present itself as a model for the region,” says Hakura. “It will seek to take the lead in the region, whatever others might say.”

There is little doubt that Turkey would like to be a role model, but the question is whether the Arab states will follow. “Arab countries will have to discover their own model on the basis of their own circumstances and regional conditions,” says Hakura. Even if they choose not to emulate the precise template laid down in Ankara, there are clear areas of common ground.

Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda Party leader Rached Ghannouchi has already highlighted Turkey as an inspiration for his country’s transformation. The moderate Islamists that make up the mainstream of the region’s Muslim Brotherhoods all tend to view the AKP as a source of inspiration. It is no accident that in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood-backed party chose to call itself the Freedom and Justice Party, an obvious echo of the AKP’s name. Erdogan’s vocal championing of the Palestinian cause has also proved attractive to movements that abhor their own regimes’ political accommodation of Israel.

Erdogan’s enviable electoral success rate on the back of a record of delivering higher living standards makes the Turkish model an easy sell. This has been achieved on the basis of a conservative social agenda that emphasises a ‘clean hands’ approach to governance.

Ankara will also seek to operate as an honest broker in the region, a role only Qatar has achieved with any success. According to Erdogan himself, there is only one country that has channels open to all and that has good relations with every country. “It is Turkey, and we will keep this position,” he has said.

Until the outbreak of the Arab uprisings, Erdogan and Davutoglu were successfully building coalitions and navigating regional divides with sensitivity. However, the series of regional upheavals that broke out in late 2010 have made it much harder for Turkey to play a power broker role.

In Iraq, for example, Turkey’s mediation between the country’s fractious camps – the Kurds and the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki – have foundered. Al-Maliki’s regime became suspicious of the close contacts Ankara developed with both the Kurdistan Regional Government and the mainly Sunni Arab political base as represented by Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc.

Iraq’s neighbour Iran presents another policy challenge. “The relationship between Turkey and Iran is governed by power politics,” says Hakura. “These are two powerful countries with populations in excess of 70 million people and imperial legacies, so both have a strong sense of nationhood. Both want to play a dominant role in the Mena region.”

Predominantly Sunni, Turkey was destined to remain distanced from largely Shia Iran because of the sectarian divide. Tehran’s robust opposition to Turkey’s hosting of Nato radar equipment is one bone of contention.

Turkey: Avoiding conflict

However, the strong pragmatism of Turkish policy means it will continue to build on existing commercial ties. “Where it can operate it will try to avoid conflict-based relations,” says Timothy Ash, head of emerging markets research at the UK’s Royal Bank of Scotland. “Turkey wants a normal relationship with Iran based primarily on business and trade.”

The uprisings in Syria, and tensions in Iraq and Iran show the widening geostrategic divide Ankara will have to handle as it develops a new dimension to its Mena foreign policy. If the country is to play a prominent role in shaping the region, it may be forced to sacrifice a part of its honest broker role in favour of a more partisan approach, deploying its diplomatic and commercial strengths to ensure that its interests in the region are better served. 

None of this negates the utility of Turkey’s model for change. Its emergence as a regional power cannot be set back by recent upsets in Baghdad or Damascus. It has already created the formal infrastructure for closer relations with the Gulf states, North Africa and Egypt. Arab populations have shown that they want a chance to try out the Turkish model for themselves, and Erdogan is more than willing to oblige.