Turkey's foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu has famously pursued an ambitious zero-problems-with-the-neighbors policy. But Davutoglu, Turkey’s would-be Kissinger, has been trying to demonstrate that he can just as easily turn his back on the West.
Though the European Union, led by France and Germany, continues to give the cold shoulder to Turkey's membership application, a more diplomatically assertive and economically advanced Turkey has another option in terms of a grand strategy: playing a leading role in the formation of an economic and political union of Middle Eastern states, one that would include neighboring Syria and other Levantine entities that once upon a time were part of the Ottoman Empire.
Arab Dreams and Realities
In the aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring, support for this geo strategic concept has been gaining some momentum. Pro democracy activists in Tunisia and Egypt—joined by Wilsonian daydreamers in Washington and other Western capitals—propose that Turkey could provide a model for the region: a successful Muslim democracy and a thriving free-market economy under which political Islam and liberalism could coexist and flourish. Hence, Davutoglu’s realpolitik regional project could be sustained by the force of idealism—or Turkey’s “soft power.”
But as the political crisis in Syria, in Turkey’s strategic backyard, threatens to degenerate into a bloody civil war, Davutoglu and his colleagues in the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) are recognizing that establishing a version of the EU in the neighboring Middle East involves more than just sending trade missions to the Arab world, producing captivating television soap operas or pledging a commitment to promote the Palestinian cause.
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