EUROPEUS

How quickly we have surrendered to the logic of war while talking diplomacy, dialogue and moderation. The responsibility lies with the political elite that keeps murmuring about the same old clichés of a non-existing world. There are foreign policy positions of Turkey reminiscent of military fortifications. These are at the very foundations of the Republic and were thought as definite answers to the problems inherited from the Ottoman era: The Armenian, Greek and Kurdish questions. Nothing has changed in Turkey's position regarding these three issues, except a parenthesis on Cyprus, which opened and quickly closed in 2004 after the rejection of the Annan Plan by the Greek Cypriots.

On the other hand, different and new approaches unrelated to these three issues have recently emerged in foreign relations. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments have started to seek new balances in foreign policy through openings toward the Eastern, Ottoman and Islamic worlds. Turkey, for now, has not received anything in return for these openings. To the quite contrary, alliances the country formed with the West and Israel are seriously harmed by the new positions. That is to say, in an attempt to change something once in a blue moon, we ended up with negative results due to miscalculation and bad timing.

Our public diplomacy on the other side starts and ends with to the slogans of “ multicultural/ multi-religious tolerance” and “asylum granted to Sephardic Jews 500 years ago.” However, the acute anti-Semitism, widespread animosity against minorities and racist tantrums everyday prove how far we moved away from these values in compliance with nation-state's rigid rules.

As a consequence, Turkey today is no more a decision-maker but a country reacting to the decisions of others. The reactionary state of mind, obsolete yet inflexible, lays the ground for loneliness and does not help anything but to deepen the victim psychology. A deep sense of not being understood and aloofness emerges: “Turk has no friend but another Turk.” The next stage is the transformation of the victim psychology into legitimate defense syndrome and thereby setting the stage for conflict. 

“No more words nor law,” or “let's finish the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)” slogans we are hearing louder every day are in fact the language of lack of policy. Diplomacy continues even during wartime. International law pertaining to the war exists since 1864 (Geneva Conventions); “no law” means the jungle law. As for finishing the PKK, to listen what the Chief of Land Forces Gen. İlker Başbuğ said recently is sufficient. The situation we are in now makes us forget that fighting violence only with violence, as it has been the case for decades, brings no solution. Moreover, even experts have reservations about the military feasibility of the projected operation. Unless brand new proactive policies are designed for Iraqi as well as Turkish Kurds, effects of military action, even if battles are won, won't last.  Just recall the “29th Kurdish revolt” formula used by the former President Süleyman Demirel on the PKK and 20 plus hot pursuits realized until today into northern Iraq.

On top of that, Turkey was involved since the beginning with the shaping of the de facto Kurdish state. Following the first Gulf War, the security zone declared beyond the 37th parallel in order to protect Kurds from the wrath of Saddam Hussein was the brainchild of President Turgut Özal. Today Turkish companies are building the Kurdish region's economic infrastructure. Turkey transfers electricity, buys and sells oil to northern Iraq. This economic dependency may lead to a healthy and permanent solution. However, current foreign and security policies have not sustained these economic initiatives.

Last but not least in the aftermath of the U.S. occupation, Kurds becoming the only U.S. ally in the Iraq quagmire was evident from the beginning. Thus adapting to this eventuality was essential.

In the country, political reforms of 2002-2004 for the benefit of Kurds couldn't be backed by economic structuring but precipitated a return to the same old military customs to fight PKK violence, which awakened in July 2004. The AKP's failure to generate a comprehensive Kurdish policy passed the ball once more to the court of the military. In this regard, the AKP did not manage to design policies different from classical foreign and internal policy options of its rivals. Hence it has lost the bet of being different, for doing politics cornered in between the main street and the nationalist CHP-MHP opposition as well as the military. At the end of the day, since everyone acknowledges a positive military outcome is almost impossible, the operation would be held to appease the opposition and the man-in-the-street.