Turkey’s Internal Balancing Act
By Amberin Zaman
ANKARA — Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s prime minister, announced his long-awaited new cabinet on May 1 ushering in nine new ministers and letting go of eight others. It is too early to predict what impact the new configuration will have on domestic and foreign policy. Is the party going more conservative, or does the reshuffle point toward a return to its early reformist zeal.
The most likely answer is neither. The reshuffle, though dramatic in its scope, reflects Erdoğan’s hallmark strategy of balancing different and often competing constituencies within his party. The biggest surprise was the elevation of Bulent Arinc, the fiery former speaker of the Parliament, who leads the conservative/religious wing of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) as first deputy prime minister. His return from the back benches is a sure sign that Erdoğan is worried by the gains made by the pro-Islamic Saadet (Felicity) Party in the March 29 local polls. Overtly pious, Arinc has long railed against corruption within and around the AKP. A gifted orator, Arinc enjoys greater moral authority than any other AKP leader, Erdoğan included. Co-opting Arinc through a cabinet job may help curb his influence among Islamist malcontents within the AKP.
In a sop to the nationalists, Cemil Çiçek retained his twin hats as deputy prime minister and state minister. His verbal salvos against non-Muslim minorities bodes ill for rapprochement with Armenia or any overtures on the Cyprus dispute, as they do for EU reforms as a whole. Çiçek will undoubtedly continue to mobilize fellow nationalists within the AKP against concessions on both.
To appease the liberals, Erdoğan shifted Nimet Çubukçu from Women’s Affairs to the highly sensitive Ministry of Education. Her predecessor, Hüseyin Çelik, had become the target of pro-secularists over his repeated attempts to legitimize Islamic education. Çubukçu, a lawyer by training, is a vocal advocate of girls’ education. Prior to joining the AKP, she was actively involved in defending children's rights. Among her chief mentors is Ayşe Böhürler, an influential founding member of the AKP and member of its executive board. She is among a handful of AKP members who dare to publicly criticize Erdoğan. Böhürler wears the Islamic-style headscarf that excludes her from running for the Parliament; for the uninitiated it belies a sharp feminist streak.
The good news for the financial community is the return of Ali Babacan, Turkey’s foreign minister, to his previous job as the country’s minister of the economy, a portfolio he is obviously more comfortable with. This time, Babacan has been given overall coordinating authority for the economy. Bright, young, and affable, Babacan has excellent relations with Western bankers. His immediate task will be to persuade Erdoğan of the need for a fresh International Monetary Fund deal that is a crucial anchor for foreign investor confidence.
For the outside world, the most closely watched cabinet post is that of foreign minister, filled by Erdoğan’s top foreign policy advisor, Ahmet Davutoğlu. He is the sole newcomer without a Parliamentary seat. Nor is he formally a member of the AKP. Rumors that the former academic would be replacing Babacan had been swirling around for some time. Since Abdullah Gül left his job as foreign minister in 2007 to become the president, it has been the self-effacing Davutoğlu who has been guiding Turkish foreign policy, albeit from behind the scenes.
Turkey’s Western friends, and the former Bush administration in particular, viewed him at first with great suspicion not least because of his overtures to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. Davutoğlu is believed to have helped orchestrate Meshaal’s visit to Ankara soon after Hamas’ election victory in January 2006. Davutoğlu, many believed, wanted to steer Turkey away from the West.
Today, Davutoğlu is credited with bolstering Turkey’s regional clout through a blizzard of overtures not only to Turkey’s long-neglected Arab neighbors and to Iran, but to far flung spots in Africa and Asia as well. Davutoğlu’s multi-pronged, proactive diplomacy (some label it “neo-Ottomanism”) sees Turkey rising to its rightful place as a global power. The first step is to have “zero problems” with its neighbors, and to help its neighbors have “zero problems” among themselves. Turkey’s mediation between Syria and Israel (with talks collapsing when Israel launched its February offensive against Gaza) is the best example of Davutoğlu’s approach. The second step means brokering peace between Israel and its other regional foes: Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq. The “zero problem” phase would be followed by “maximum cooperation,” leading to a web of economic, political, and cultural ties with Turkey at its center.
It’s no coincidence that the radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr chose to meet with his Shiite peers in Istanbul after staying out of public view the past two years. Turkey prides itself on its connections to the different ethnic and religious factions in Iraq, much of these forged by Davutoğlu. The new foreign minister has earned the respect of Washington and speaks enthusiastically of “a golden age in Turkish-U.S. ties,” where the regional interests of both countries converge. Davutoğlu believes that between American muscle and Turkish mediation most of the region’s problems can be solved.
There is little doubt that the Obama administration wants to trade-in on Turkey’s regional role. That is why the U.S. president chose Turkey for his first bilateral visit (not counting Canada) to a foreign country. But there are several worries. One is that Davutoğlu’s vision of Turkey as a global player does not fit naturally with that of an EU country, which makes decisions based on consensus among its members.
Davutoğlu insists that EU membership remains among Turkey’s primary goals, with the understanding that it’s precisely thanks to Turkey’s EU candidate status and its close links to Israel and the United States that Ankara is taken so seriously by the rest of the world. The other more pertinent worry is that Davutoğlu is so used to freelancing that he may have trouble adjusting to the constraints of being a minister who needs to take account of his subordinates’ views. As an advisor, Davutoğlu was able to navigate successfully between the sometimes clashing policies of Gül and Erdoğan. The most recent example of this was when Gül supported the for¬mer Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s bid to become NATO’s new secretary general. Erdoğan was vocally opposed. As foreign minister, Davutoğlu will continue to liase with Gül, but it is the prime minister who will have the final say.
This in turn raises the question of where Erdoğan wants to lead Turkey. The composition of the new cabinet suggests that he will pursue his balancing act, seeking to appease nationalists and liberals alike and ploughing ahead with EU membership while bolstering ties with the United States, the Arab world, and beyond.
