Go Easy on Davutoglu

From Wikileaks cables we understand that some US diplomats dislike the (new) Turkish foreign policy set forth by current Secretary of State Ahmet Davutoglu. They refer to this policy negatively as neo-Ottomanist pointing to certain speeches / examples for its existence.

They are both right and wrong. People watching Turkey from the outside are receiving conflicted signals from Turkey but current TR foreign policy has nothing to do with the so-called Ottoman past, it has everything to do with economy, geopolitics, globalization. Brazil, who follows a similar track, has a completely different history, but both Turkey and Brazil said “no” to punishing Iran on the nuclear issue.

Sure, Davutoglu in his book Strategic Depth keeps harping about Ottomans, but his psyche is “torn” on this issue. On one hand, intellectually, there is stuff that needs to be done for rational reasons, on the other hand, conservatism requires one to say “all was OK in the past”.

This is not a blanket slam against convervatism, as it can be right on occassion; US conservatives have a right to boast about their Constitution which was a major intellectual accomplishment. Sadly the same is not true for Ottomans and the early Turkish Republic. For the West, Rome collapsed hundreds of years before people of Turkey could enjoy a similar event (Ottomans are nothing but Muslim Romans). There was no science under Ottomans, there was no freedom under Ottomans, certainly there was no pluralism under Ottomans. Therefore, there was no Renaissance.

On top of this, early Turkish Republic shoved modernity down people’s throats using excessive methods. Mostly pious public bore the brunt of this, then developed a coping mechanism to glorify the past even further. They developed a narrative that “if things were left untouched, we would develop, do the right things” which was hardly true. In order for this narrative to work, anything that disturbed this flow was also labeled as “deviations”; Ironically (maybe normally for convervatives) early Turkish Republic was later added to this narrative, and labeled as “good”. Horrific events taking place in this period were simply swept under the carpet or blamed on second level underlings who were simply following orders from the top.

To the extent Davutoglu says the new policy is based on Ottomans, he is deluded.

If you read his book carefully, he takes an issue with Huntington who says his country is torn. Then goes ahead and talks about Jewish psyche being torn because of conflicts between their feeling of superiority (stemming from Torah) and having lived such horrific events in their own past. This has some truth in it, but he is also projecting. A Turkish conservative has no choice but be torn, except for Islam, there is nothing worth to conserve in his/her near past.

That is how to read the new Turkish foreign policy, and its creator, Davutoglu.

I would advise to just let it be.

It is doing something optimal for itself, and for the region. And frankly, all other avenues have been tried already.