Making sense of Turkey's growing influence

Making sense of Turkey's growing influence

In recent years Turkey has emerged an increasingly assertive player on the international stage.

Long considered as a meeting point for East and West, the country’s recent foreign policy has reflected this, balancing the interests of Western powers with the interests of the weaker countries their policies affect.

Fresh examples of Turkey’s willingness to act outside the Western international consensus are not hard to find; this week the country is hosting an aid flotilla bound for Gaza; last week, it was brokering a deal with Iran on the removal of enriched nuclear fuel to diffuse tensions between Tehran and the US.

“We try to engage all actors in the region,” Ibrahim Kalin, an advisor to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, told a special panel on Turkey at the Al Jazeera Forum on Sunday.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is an approach that is being welcomed by the Arab world, which feels it has suffered disproportionately as a result of policies devised in Western capitals.

Abdul Khaliq Abdullah, a professor of political science at Emirates University in Dubai, says the new role that Turkey is playing is positive development for the region.

The Arab world feels that its Turkish neighbour has become an asset. It’s no longer a burden for the region. We see a neighbour that represents a stabilising factor in the Arab region. We deem this very important.

He says that Turkey is “moving closer” to the Arab world. But in doing so, is it moving away from Europe? Turkey has been negotiating to join EU for years; what does Turkey’s new role mean for its hopes of gaining membership?

Robert Cooper, Director-General of the general secretariat of the Council of the European Union, says that there is no reason to see Turkey’s more assertive foreign policy as a problem.

I see no contradiction between Turkey’s current foreign policy and what I hope will be Turkey’s European future. What Turkey has been doing seems to me to be basically positive.

The question of Turkey’s membership, it seems, has more to do with the attitude of current EU members than it does with the messages coming out of Ankara. Some European countries see the Turkey as too "foreign" for membership. 

Kalin believes that the main problem with Turkey’s membership lie in Brussels.

“The problem is with Europe. Europe doesn’t know what to do with Turkey,” he says.

As far as Turkey’s EU membership is concerned, we can say there are two perspectives within Europe. One is the UK and Scandinavian countries, who look at EU as political and economic alliance. In the Franco-German understanding of the EU, they see a longer, cultural perspective. They attach an identity to it, and it’s usually from those corners that you see opposition to Turkey’s membership.

The ongoing debate within the EU on whether Turkey should be welcomed as member shows no signs of resolution, and its outcome seems to largely to be beyond Turkish control.

But as it carves out a new role for itself in international relations, one thing is clear; Turkey is not waiting for anyone’s permission to take its place as a major international player. 

Andrew Wander is blogging from the Fifth Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Qatar.