In between of dreams and reality: foreign policy
CÜNEYT ÜLSEVER
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
The news of our neighbor Greece building a wall on its border has made me wonder about Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s “zero problems with neighbors” target.
I think the wall beautifully symbolizes the purgatory between dream and reality.
The disagreement between me and Davutoğlu, whom I admire for his deep knowledge of history and the richness of his imagination – of which many novelists might be jealous – rose from his claims to be building a “multi-dimensional foreign policy” against my introduction of a “result-oriented” foreign policy concept.
Since my education has engendered in me a deep concern about solid results, I have been waiting for Davutoğlu to list the successes his policy vision has attained so far. But he insists on general objectives (which in the current schema can be seen as dreams).
At times, I have the feeling that his mind confuses dream and reality.
For example, following the release of WikiLeaks cables Davutoğlu said United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologized to him. To those who claimed that “she didn’t apologize but commiserated,” he responded “I am the foreign minister.”
But in the end, a U.S. State Department spokesman clarified that she did not apologize but commiserated. The spokesman praised the former ambassadors to Ankara who caused blunders to cause the apology crisis.
We are also swinging back and forth between dream and reality with the expression “neo-Ottomanism.”
According to Mehmet Ali Birand’s Dec. 28, 2010 column, he and Davutoğlu had the following conversation:
“He stressed that this [4th restoration period in foreign policy] was not another attempt to revive the Ottoman heritage. To tell the truth, I could not quite understand the minister being sensitive about this subject and reacting so strongly. “Why are you so sensitive?” I asked.”
“By spreading such rumors they try and scare Middle East and Balkan countries that have bad memories of the Ottoman period, but which we try to approach. They try to make them believe the Ottomans are back. That is why I am so sensitive about it,” he said.”
However, Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post wrote an article on Dec. 5, 2010 based on an interview with Davutoğlu.
“Turkey could become a union of nations just like Britain’s union with its former colonies,” he reported the foreign minister as saying. “Britain has a commonwealth with its former colonies, he reminded me. Why shouldn’t Turkey rebuild its leadership in former Ottoman lands in the Balkans, Middle East and Central Asia?””
For God’s sake, if this is not an aspiration to build a neo-Ottoman commonwealth on former colonies, based on Turkey’s leadership, what is?
Let’s say that Diehl read Davutoğlu incorrectly, or even that he lied. But then, why did Davutoğlu not ask the prestigious Washington Post to publish a disclaimer between Dec. 5 and Dec. 28 regarding the interview?
Since we have all our ambassadors together, let me ask them the following question: in the “result-oriented” foreign policy, what were the solid gains and losses in 2010?
As if the (brit) commonwealth games are not crappy enough!
