Crossroads Or Maze?

Turkey and Iran Are The Two Centres Of Gravity Emerging To Shape Increasingly Complex Regional Power Struggles.

By Mustafa El-Labbad*
9 - 15 April 2009
Issue No. 942
Courtesy Of Al-Ahram Weekly Online

The chief draw of the "Turkey in Motion" conference at Princeton University 20-21 March was the participation of professor Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan's chief foreign affairs adviser, who delivered the keynote address. The timing of the conference underscored its importance, taking place as it did against the backdrop of United States President Barack Obama's visit to Turkey and his first visit to an Islamic country. Interestingly, Princeton is First Lady Michelle Obama's alma mater.

Davutoglu spoke about Turkey's strategic importance to Washington, arguing the overlapping interests between the two countries, which cover a huge arch extending from Central Asia through the Caucasus and the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean. He argued that in promoting its own interests in its geographical environs, Turkey was simultaneously helping to promote US interests there.

He defended his country's support for Azerbaijan in the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict in the face of the million-and-a-half strong Armenian lobby in the US. His defence was substantiated by solid strategic rationales: "If Azerbaijan is lost, NATO will lose the equilibrium in the whole of the Caucasus and Central Asia to Moscow and its alliances there," he said. Resource-poor and geographically land-bound Armenia is far less advantageous geopolitically for US interests than geographically strategic, energy-rich Azerbaijan. What Davutoglu left unsaid was that this truly poor and landlocked country happens to block Turkey's land communications with the Caucasus and Central Asia and, hence, obstructs Turkey in that region.

"Peace is important to Turkey because it permits it to demonstrate and expand its economic successes," said Davutoglu, which was why Turkey was keen to broker various peace processes in the region.

Davutoglu's most important work is Strategic Depth published in 2001. In it, he expounds on a vision for bringing Turkey out of its historic isolation in the region through a balanced diplomatic drive that aims at keeping at an equal distance from all regional parties so as to be able to contribute actively and dynamically to forging a new policy for the region. Indeed, the very choice of the title of this work was intended to signal a break from the commonly held view of Turkey as the "bridge between civilisations". In his opinion, Turkey should be a maker of policies, not a corridor between them, as has long been the case. His second most influential work is Ottoman Civilisation: Politics, Economy and the Arts, which appeared in 2005.

Davutoglu did not forgo the chance to offer his largely American audience an apology for his country's refusal to take part in the war against Iraq in 2003. It was cleverly and diplomatically couched: "Washington had confirmed that Saddam [Hussein] possessed chemical weapons. If we had allowed American forces to pass through our country in order to hit Iraq, Saddam could have hit Turkey with chemical weapons within five minutes. Who could have borne the responsibility for this in the face of history?"

As propitious as the regional circumstances are for Turkey's involvement in shaping regional relations, Ankara's major cards still reside outside this region, in the Western hemisphere and in the US, in particular. By contrast, Tehran, whose political order has little marketability in the region and the world, nevertheless does possess some significant pressure cards in the region.

This reality gives Iran a significant edge in staking out a regional role. Its economy and military are not nearly as strong as Turkey's and its relations outside the region are feeble at best, but it has regional alliances that it has spent the last three decades expanding and solidifying. Moreover, even with all its economic and military capacities and its international alliances, Turkey is not fully qualified to play the major power in all its assorted backyards -- in the Balkans, the Caucasus or the Middle East. A self-evident truth of international relations today is that only the superpower can perform that role.

What became clear through Davutoglu's lens is that the contrasting weights of Iran's internal leverage and Turkey's external leverage are the underlying components of the dialect of the current regional power struggles.

* The writer is director of Al-Sharq Centre for Regional and Strategic Studies.

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