The impact of AKP geopolitical visions on Turkey’s foreign relations and role as a regional power.

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The impact of AKP geopolitical visions on Turkey’s

foreign relations and role as a regional power.

______________________________________________

MA Thesis

June 2015

European Studies: Identity & Integration

Faculty of Humanities

Ross McQueen

10848355

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. L. A. Bialasiewicz

Second Reader: Dr. M. E. Spiering

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List of Figures

Figure Page

0.1 Atatürk teaches villagers the new alphabet in Kayseri, 1928. 4

0.2 Turkish general election results by province, 2015. 5

0.3 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, current President of Turkey 6

0.4 Ahmet Davutoğlu, current Prime Minister of Turkey 6

0.5 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first President of Turkey 6 0.6 Davutoğlu rouses AKP supporters after the election results on 7th June 2015 8

1.1 The Geographical Pivot of History 11

1.2 Map of the Sykes-Picot agreement, drawn up in 1916. 13

1.3 Map of the Ottoman Empire. 15

2.1 Strategic Depth: the untranslated academic bestseller. 23 2.2 Atatürk marks Central Asia on a map in a geography lesson at Samsun, 1930. 33 3.1 Map showing Davutoğlu’s vision of Turkey’s ‘Near Land Basin’ in orange

and ‘Near Continental Basin’ in green. 41

3.2 Erdoğan on Facebook: ‘The death sentence given to Morsi today is a death

sentence for democracy.’ 46

4.1 A vision for the future: Erdoğan’s target years. 57

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Notes on Turkish Spelling

Turkish Letter Pronunciation

C c ‘j’ as in ‘jam’

Ç ç ‘ch’ as in ‘cheese’

Ğ ğ silent; lengthens the preceding vowel

I ı a schwa sound; like the ‘u’ in ‘supply’ or the ‘e’ in ‘taken’

J j French ‘j’ as in ‘Jacques’

Ö ö French ‘eu’ as in ‘seul’, or German ‘ö’ as in ‘öffnen’

Ş ş ‘sh’ as in ‘shoe’

Ü ü French ‘u’ as in ‘tu’, or German ‘ü’ as in ‘über’

Fig. 0.1 Atatürk teaches villagers the new alphabet in Kayseri, 1928.

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Abbreviations of Turkish Political Parties

Abbreviation Turkish Meaning English Meaning

AKP Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi Justice and Development Party

CHP Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Republican People’s Party

HDP Halkların Demokratik Partisi People’s Democratic Party

MHP Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi Nationalist Movement Party

Fig. 0.2 Turkish general election results by province, 2015.

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Profiles

Profile: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Erdoğan is the current President of the Republic of Turkey. Though

controversial, he has been described as ‘Turkey’s most effective leader, public speaker and political operator since the death of Atatürk’ (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.322). He previously served as Mayor of Istanbul, and then Prime Minister of Turkey from March 2003 to August 2014. Critics have accused him of

becoming increasingly authoritarian throughout his time in power (Çandar, 2014; The Guardian, 2015b; The Independent, 2014).

Profile: Ahmet Davutoğlu

Formerly a professor of international relations, Ahmet Davutoğlu became chief foreign policy advisor to the AKP government following its election victory in 2002 (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181). He is widely regarded as the architect of AKP foreign policy (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.323; Laçiner, 2009, p.154). He became Foreign Minister in 2009, and has been Prime Minister since August 2014.

Profile: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

The founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey, Atatürk

singlehandedly dictated Turkish foreign policy until his death in 1938 (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.174). His distinct ideology and world view, known as ‘Kemalism’, called for an isolationist-Westernist foreign policy, a secular state and a strictly Turkish nationalism, and is an important yet problematic legacy of the Republic’s early years which still deeply influences Turkish politics today (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4).

Fig. 0.3 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, current President of Turkey

Source: Gobierno de Chile (2012).

Fig. 0.4 Ahmet Davutoğlu, current Prime Minister of Turkey

Source: Foreign and Commonwealth Office (2010).

Fig. 0.5 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first President of Turkey

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Introduction

Turkey in the 21

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century

The era of single-party government

The 21st century so far has been a significant era in the history of Turkish politics. Between November 2002 and June 2015 it has been a period of single-party government by the Justice and Development Party – Turkish: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, (AKP). This is a departure from the unstable coalition governments which characterised the immediate post-Cold War period, and which led some observers to refer to the 1990s as Turkey’s ‘lost decade’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.11).

As such, the AKP has remained relatively unimpeded by domestic opposition in its efforts to enact its distinct ideological vision. The AKP has had unrivalled scope to dictate the direction of Turkish foreign policy, largely because Turkey’s other political parties have not succeeded in providing viable policy alternatives (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). Indeed, the Republican People’s Party – Turkish:

Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, (CHP) – which constitutes Turkey’s main opposition party, has been

accused of being ‘ineffectual’, and of doing little more than contributing to the polarisation of Turkish politics, with secularists on one side and AKP supporters on the other (Yardımcı-Geyikçi, 2014, pp.446-7).

The AKP brought with it a distinct new foreign policy outlook. Whereas previously Turkish foreign policy had been isolationist while nominally pro-Western (Murinson, 2006, p.945; Erşen, 2013, p.27; Stein, 2014, p.3), the AKP initially brought a new vigour to Turkey’s EU membership aspirations, and also showed an interest in deepening Turkey’s diplomatic influence in the Middle East (Larrabee, 2010, p.157; Stein, 2014, p.1). Since much of the Middle East was once a part of the Ottoman Empire, some observers have described the AKP’s renewed interest in these countries as ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ (Taşpınar, 2008; Murinson, 2006; Kınıklıoğlu, 2007b; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014).

The politician widely acknowledged as the architect of the AKP’s foreign policy is current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181; Pope & Pope, 2011, p.323; Laçiner, 2009, p.154). Davutoğlu’s views on foreign policy are based on his understanding of Turkey’s geopolitics, as outlined in his 2001 book Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position. Despite selling a reported 100,000 copies prior to 2014, this book has never been translated into English (Özkan, 2014, p.120). Thus a unique insight into the geopolitical theory that underlies many of the AKP’s foreign policy initiatives of the past thirteen years is denied to those observers who do not possess a

knowledge of Turkish. This thesis will therefore seek to analyse the geopolitical motivations behind Turkish foreign policy under the AKP from a Turkish geopolitical perspective, which is not always

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considered by non-Turkish analysts of Turkey’s external relations. The aim will be to investigate the impacts of AKP geopolitics on Turkey’s foreign relations and role as an aspiring regional power.

Political change and the end of an era?

The writing of this thesis has coincided with what may prove to be the end of the period of single-party rule. On 7th June 2015 Turkey held a general election in which no one party achieved an absolute majority. Despite polling just over 40%, the AKP was denied a majority by the People’s Democratic Party – Turkish: Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) – which exceeded the 10% poll threshold to enter Turkey’s Grand National Assembly (Öktem, 2015; Letsch, 2015; Radikal, 2015b). The vote was largely seen as a popular rejection of President Erdoğan’s plans to grant himself greater executive powers by rewriting the constitution, something he is unable to do without an AKP majority (Letsch, 2015; Lowen, 2015; Öktem, 2015). The BBC’s Mark Lowen described the result as ‘a new political era in Turkey’ (Lowen, 2015), while the Turkish daily Radikal suggested that ‘a new paradigm has appeared’ in Turkish politics (Turkish: yeni bir paradigma oluştu) (Radikal, 2015b).

While the AKP was first elected in 2002 mostly on the basis of its domestic agenda (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177), foreign policy subsequently proceeded to become the ‘linchpin’ of the AKP’s domestic legitimacy (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.91). It appears, however, that domestic politics – that is to say, Erdoğan’s designs for a new Presidential system – ultimately brought it down (Öktem, 2015). At the same time, the AKP’s loss of majority coincides with a calamitous period in Turkish foreign relations.

Fig. 0.6 Davutoğlu rouses AKP supporters after the election results on 7th June 2015

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Prime Minister Davutoğlu’s once-vaunted foreign policy initiatives have been blamed for ruining Turkey’s relations with its neighbours, with the result that Turkey currently has no ambassador in several formerly-friendly capitals (Al-Monitor, 2014a; Lowen, 2014). Erdoğan’s domestic ambitions might have found more support if Turkey’s external relations had not been in such a poor state. The June 2015 election will require either a coalition government, minority rule by the AKP, or fresh elections (Lowen, 2015). At the present time, it looks unlikely that the AKP will be able to exercise the same monopoly over the country’s foreign policy that it previously enjoyed. It may be unable to continue in its efforts to implement Davutoğlu’s geopolitical doctrine of Strategic Depth in the region. As such, the election arguably marks the endpoint of a singular era in Turkish politics and therefore allows this thesis to offer a retrospective analysis of a Turkish geopolitical scene which might well be about to disappear, or at least decline. The anticipated conclusion of this thesis was that the AKP’s foreign policy initiatives have largely failed, and that the geopolitical theories underlying this foreign policy were ultimately the reason for the AKP’s failure; the events of this month are perhaps an indication that the Turkish public is in agreement.

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Chapter 1

Historical Overview

The origins of geopolitics

Geopolitics emerged as a branch of the academic discipline of political geography in the last years of the 19th century, when a loose group of European intellectuals began developing theories to aid in the understanding and exploitation of geography as a tool for political gain (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.21). Of these intellectuals, the earliest and most significant was perhaps the British geographer Halford Mackinder. Mackinder’s geopolitical theories were concerned with preserving the dominance of the British Empire through the development of a new mode of geographical observation (Heffernan, 2000, p.32; Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.86). Later theorists such as Ratzel and Haushofer in Germany, and Spykman and Mahan in the United States, were also concerned primarily with strengthening or safeguarding the international influence of their respective nations based on geographical analysis (Özkan, 2014, p.122). Though largely discredited, many of the theories developed by these early geopoliticians are still used by policymakers in Europe and North America today, as well as

elsewhere. In Turkey the theories of Mackinder, Haushofer, Spykman and others can be seen as newly influential, having been imported by current Prime Minister – and self-styled geopolitical theorist – Ahmet Davutoğlu, as a basis for his own strategic foreign policy programmes (Stein, 2014, p.6; Özkan, 2014, p.122).

Geopolitical theories are often employed to support the formulation of foreign policy, as they claim to identify the underlying narratives that dictate the course of international politics (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.30; Agnew, 1998, p.2). By 1904, Mackinder believed he had identified the key geographical factors that governed world history, making it possible to suggest ‘a correlation between the larger

geographical and the larger historical generalizations’ (Mackinder, 1904, p.34). He identified a number of essentialised zones which he deemed crucial to the course of historical developments: these consisted of the ‘Pivot Area’ or ‘Heartland’ encompassing much of Russia and Central Asia, encircled by an ‘Inner or Marginal Crescent’ that covered Europe, the Arabian peninsula, and Southeast Asia, and finally an ‘Outer or Insular Crescent’ covering everything else, including the Americas, Great Britain and Ireland (ibid., p.38). He believed that whichever power controlled the Russian ‘Heartland’ could make a viable attempt at world domination, and that whoever controlled Eastern Europe

therefore had access to, and was able to exert control over, the Heartland (Mackinder, 1919, p.106). Based on this ‘Heartland Theory’, Mackinder warned against permitting an alliance between Germany and Russia, who together, he believed, would be able to launch an attempt to control the entire world (Mackinder, 1904, p.37).

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The Heartland Theory therefore constituted an attempt to dictate foreign policy based on a subjective and strategic reading of geography. Mackinder applied his faculties of geopolitical reasoning to the world map, and extracted what he perceived to be its underlying meanings: a method which he likened to reading a musical score (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.105). However, rather than strengthening the British Empire, Mackinder’s geopolitical theories ultimately made the calamity of WWI possible by providing an intellectual justification for the apparatus of muscular imperialism (ibid., p.110). Despite the devastating repercussions of Mackinder’s geopolitics, however, both his system of ‘reading’ geography for strategic gain, and indeed the ‘Heartland Theory’ that he invented for this purpose, are, in various forms, still in use today. In the case of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoğlu’s geopolitical theories have been concerned primarily with enhancing Turkey’s international position based on a reading of Turkish history and geography: in his own words, this involves exploiting Turkey’s ‘geographical depth’ (Turkish: coğrafî derinlik) and ‘historical depth’ (Turkish: tarihî derinlik), and transforming it into ‘strategic depth’ (Turkish: stratejik derinlik) (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.260). Such claims could be seen as merely another theory in the academic realm; however, Davutoğlu’s position as what Ó Tuathail refers to as an ‘intellectual of statecraft’ and key figure in the Justice and Development Party have allowed his geopolitical theories to become the primary force behind Turkey’s foreign policy (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, pp.91-2). Elsewhere, the Heartland Theory finds resonance today among Russian Eurasianists such as Aleksandr Dugin (Bassin & Aksenov, 2006, p.101), who have in turn influenced Turkey’s own modern-day cadre of Eurasianist thinkers (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.558).

Fig. 1.1 The Geographical Pivot of History

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The fallacy at the heart of geopolitical discourse is the refusal to recognise its own subjective nature, and what geopolitical theorists fail to reflect on is their own agency in ‘reading’ the underlying narratives that they seek to exploit in the interests of foreign policy. Mackinder saw his methods as scientific and objective, but, as with a musical score, any reading is inevitably subject to the reader’s own interpretations, and what this leads to is therefore an active ‘writing’ of the geography that the observer believes him or herself to be objectively reading (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.52). Despite aiming explicitly to expand Turkey’s influence as a regional power, Davutoğlu claims to be nothing other than ‘an ordinary and morally disinterested observer’ (Turkish: ahlâkî kayıtsızlık içindeki sıradan bir

gözlemci) (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.vi). As such, Davutoğlu has been criticised by analysts before for his

refusal to recognise his own agency in his ‘readings’ of Turkey’s geographical and historical position (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.182). Thus, despite clearly being used by policymakers in the interests of their own individual nations, geopolitical theories are consistently defended by their proponents as ‘objective’ (Agnew, 1998, p.125). This misconception must therefore be highlighted and challenged in any reading of Davutoğlu’s – or indeed anyone else’s – use of ‘geopolitical reasoning’.

Geopolitical tropes and critical geopolitics

The essence of geopolitical discourse goes beyond a mere reliance on Mackinder’s specific theories or methods of observation, however. His form of ‘classical geopolitics’, as it has come to be known, is arguably in force whenever a geographer or politician draws a line or marks a name on a map based upon his or her own interpretation of geographic or strategic ‘realities’, and then attempts to reify these interpretations on the ground. The Sykes-Picot line and the linear borders of some African nations, which are partial legacies of the collapsed Ottoman Empire, are perhaps the most visible scars of 19th and 20th-century geopolitical meddling on the political map of the world today (Osman, 2013). Indeed, some Turkish scholars have identified such meddling as the primary cause of ‘decreased democracy, tolerance, co-operation, stability and economic development’ in the Middle East region today (Laçiner, 2009, p.153). Certainly the ease with which the fighters of so-called Islamic State have erased the borders of the Sykes-Picot agreement goes some way towards highlighting the artificial nature of these borders.

Geopolitics is also in play whenever politicians bracket whole regions of the world together with ‘trite earth-labelling metaphors’ (Ó Tuathail, 2008, p.672). These include such tropes as the ‘Heartland’ and ‘Rimland’, but also more modern examples such as the ‘axis of evil’, the ‘arc of prosperity’, or merely concepts such as a nation’s ‘spheres of influence’. Geopolitical discourse is in force whenever local crises are explained through recourse to global power-struggles such as ‘the Great Game’, or whenever countries or regions are essentialised, exoticised, ‘othered’ and demonised by politicians and strategists (ibid.). Edward Said has pointed out the concerted effort by the Bush administration to

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make Saddam Hussein’s Iraq a geopolitical ‘other’ in the lead-up to the invasion of 2003, for instance, by demonising Saddam and dehumanising Iraq (Said, 2003, p.xx). Crude labelling and otherising tactics ignore the intricacies and local motivations that are so often discounted in classical geopolitical discourse (Ó Tuathail, 2008, p.672). What is lost, as Said puts it, ‘is a sense of the density and

interdependence of human life, which can neither be reduced to a formula nor be brushed aside as irrelevant’ (Said, 2003, p.xx).

In approaching the geopolitical discourse of modern-day policymakers, it is thus necessary to make recourse to the field of ‘critical geopolitics’. Critical geopolitics, as described by the geographer Gearóid Ó Tuathail, aims to deconstruct and expose the fallacies and dangers of unchecked geopolitical discourse. Critical geopolitics approaches geography as a complex and ‘messy’ affair which is not bound by the often arbitrary lines of human-made borders and divisions (Ó Tuathail, 2008, p.672). Critical geopolitics places importance on localised context at the expense of Great Power narratives, and avoids crude labelling practices (ibid.). And these practices are unfortunately still rife: Davutoğlu for example has been known to use the heavily loaded geopolitical term ‘Lebensraum’, coined by Friedrich Ratzel and later appropriated by the Nazis, with regards to Turkey’s own geographical context (Al-Monitor, 2014). Any attempt to reify such theories of

Lebensraum, ‘hinterland’, or ‘spheres of influence’ on the ground should therefore be approached

with caution. The aim of critical geopolitics is thus primarily to serve as a tool for resisting ‘the exercise of geo-power by those centres of modern authority who wish only to make the world in the image of their maps’ (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.20). The ensuing chapters of this thesis will therefore utilise the theoretical and conceptual framework provided by the critical geopolitics literature to examine and

Fig. 1.2 Map of the Sykes-Picot agreement, drawn up in 1916.

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challenge the narratives and labels envisioned by Davutoğlu and the AKP, and to evaluate the effects of these on modern Turkish foreign policy.

A brief history of geopolitics in Turkey: the Ottoman era

Ahmet Davutoğlu is by no means the first intellectual to examine Turkey’s international position from a geopolitical perspective. Questions over Turkey’s place in the geopolitical ‘theatre of politics’ have existed both within Turkey and without since the declining decades of the Ottoman Empire. Many of the geopolitical problems faced by Turkey today, such as hostile neighbours, meddling foreign powers, and the differences in domestic world views between religious conservatives and Western-inspired reformers, can all find their counterparts in the latter days of the Ottoman Empire (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.29).

At its greatest extent the Ottoman Empire covered territories across three continents, spanning Europe, Asia and North Africa. The Empire had seen its greatest period of expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries (Finkel, 2005). However, in the 19th century, during what Mackinder termed the ‘Columbian epoch’ of European colonial expansion (Mackinder, 1904, p.34), the Ottoman Empire was in a state of decline. This in itself fuelled European justification for the expansion of their own empires: the German geopolitician Friedrich Ratzel cited the Ottoman Empire as proof that a state which does not keep expanding will ultimately become vulnerable, regardless of the territory in its possession (Heffernan, 2000, p.48). In order to avoid the fate of the Ottoman Empire, it was thus deemed necessary for European states to keep expanding their colonies. In contrast to Ratzel’s ‘organic’ need for a state to expand, the Ottomans supposedly considered their Empire to be a ‘self-sufficient universe’ (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.38); encircled by the colonial European Powers, the Empire had in any case few options for expansion. Unable to keep pace with Europe’s expanding Christian powers, the most urgent geopolitical aim for the Ottomans at the time was to defend the Empire’s internal integrity and prevent the loss of any more territory (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.52). This geopolitical strategy was to be achieved by exploiting the ‘balance of power’ in Europe, by playing the European Powers against each other in order to deflect attention away from the crumbling Empire for as long as possible (Murinson, 2006, p.945).

For as long as the Ottoman Empire remained in place, the European states of the 19th century

competed for influence within its territories, in a state of affairs that became known in Europe as ‘the Eastern Question’ (Said, 1978, p.76; Pope & Pope, 2011, p.32). As the geopolitical scholar John Agnew has argued, this expansionist interest in the Empire’s territories was partially due to the concept of ‘civilizational geopolitics’ (Agnew, 1998, p.94). The civilizational discourse at the time asserted that the states of Europe existed in a finely-tuned geopolitical balance, outside of which there

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existed only ‘primitive’ and ‘decadent’ political entities which were ‘candidates for conquest rather than recognition’ (ibid.). Historically, the Ottomans had indeed served as the barbaric external ‘other’ against which Christian states established their own sense of European identity (Burke, 1980, p.24; Larrabee, 2010, p.173). Key to justifying European interest in the Empire’s territories, however, were the substantial Christian minorities that existed within the Empire, and which were used as a pretext for intervening in the Empire’s internal affairs (Finkel, 2005, p.323). As Putin’s annexation of Crimea demonstrates, ‘defending’ minorities in a foreign state as a pretext for geo-strategic meddling is a practice that survives to the present day (Easton, 2014).

As if proof of the Crimean Peninsula’s supposed geopolitical importance, indeed, Davutoğlu cites the Crimean War of 1853-56 as a prime example of the Ottoman Empire’s ‘balance of power’ tactics. He argues that the Empire’s astute tactical manoeuvring throughout the conflict, from which it emerged on the victorious side, enabled it to become an internal element in the European system by operating in a way which balanced out the strategic interests of the Great Powers (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.67). Following the War, the Empire was admitted to the Concert of Europe in 1856 (Agnew, 1998, p.94), bringing de facto recognition as a European state; however, other scholars have argued that this ‘Europeanisation’ of the Empire was nothing more than ‘brief and superficial’ (Pope & Pope, 2011,

Fig. 1.3 Map of the Ottoman Empire.

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p.32) and did nothing to combat European conceptions of the fundamental ‘otherness’ of the Turks (Agnew, 1998, p.94). For their part, the Ottomans typically glossed Europeans of all nations together as ‘Franks’, who inhabited the hostile un-Islamic world of ‘Frangistan’ (Lewis, 1961, p.43).

The sick man of Europe

The question of the Ottoman Empire’s European credentials was continuously wrangled over throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. The ambiguity of the Empire’s geopolitical ‘role’ is epitomised by debate over a remark made by Tsar Nicholas I in 1844 that the Empire was the ‘sick man of Europe’ (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.32; Economist, 2005). The use of the term arguably served to write the Ottoman Empire as simultaneously European and ‘other’: the Empire was of Europe, but at the same time it was not a healthy or functioning part of Europe, signifying a conundrum which continues to attract both Turkish and international media attention up to this day. Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan used it to emphasise Turkey’s European credentials when he addressed EU leaders in 2004 with the words ‘Already in Ottoman times you called us the sick man of Europe, not Asia’ (Gülten, 2004). Inside Turkey, the ‘sick man of Europe’ epithet is also used for comparative purposes, to demonstrate how successful Turkey has become in the 21st century in contrast to the declining days of the Ottoman Empire. In 2009, the journalist Cengiz Çandar wrote in the Turkish daily liberal

Radikal that Turkey had gone from being the 19th century’s sick man of Europe to become a rising

power (Çandar, 2009). Similarly, when Erdoğan wrote an article for Newsweek in 2011 titled ‘The healthy man of Europe’ (Turkish: Avrupa’nın gürbüz adamı), he was declaring that Turkey was now not only European but ‘viably’ and ‘powerfully’ European, and that the days of sickness were now finally consigned to the past (Radikal, 2011).

Since the 2008 economic crisis, however, some commentators in Turkey have seemed keen to apply the term ‘sick man of Europe’ to other European countries as well. Writing in the Turkish daily

Milliyet, Kıvanç Özvardar identified Greece as Europe’s new sick man in 2010, along with Portugal

and Spain, next to whom Turkey was shown to be in much better condition (Özvardar, 2010). Similarly, columnist Mahfi Eğilmez wrote in Radikal that ‘On entering the 20th

century, the Ottoman Empire was the sick man of Europe. In the 21st century the sick man of Europe is Greece’ (Eğilmez, 2010). There might indeed be a sense of gleeful retribution in shifting the ‘sick man’ epithet onto Greece, Turkey’s perennial geopolitical foe. However, at the same time, reusing the same epithet necessarily implies a certain ‘equal footing’ between Turkey and the new ‘sick men’. If Greece can be the ‘sick man of Europe’ and still be an EU member,1

then, by extension, so can Turkey. The Tsar’s trite remark about the Ottoman Empire has thus spurred a vibrant debate on Turkey’s geopolitical

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situatedness that continues to inform the media discourse both inside and outside Turkey even today. What this also demonstrates is that the geopolitical ambiguity which burdened the Ottoman Empire has been inherited by the modern Turkish state.

‘Three types of politics’

Alongside the geopolitical ambiguity of being both ‘European’ and ‘non-European’, modern Turkey has also inherited a number of factional and ideological fault-lines from the Ottoman Empire’s final decades, which continue to shape the Republic’s modern-day geopolitical outlook. These can be found articulated in the 1904 work ‘Three Types of Politics’ (Ottoman Turkish: Üç tarz-ı Siyaset) by the Tatar émigré scholar Yusuf Akçura (1876-1935), who was influential in setting out what he saw as the three options for providing stability to the Ottoman state. These also correspond closely to later articulations of Turkey’s geopolitical positioning vis-à-vis its neighbouring region. These three types of politics were: Ottomanism, Pan-Islamism, and Turkism (Lewis, 1961, p.326). Davutoğlu also adds Westernism to the list of world views current in the late Ottoman decades (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.84). The idea of Pan-Islamism was raised by European orientalist thinkers in the 1870s, who saw it as a potential threat to Europe’s hold on its Muslim colonies; in the Ottoman Empire, however, it was never deemed to be a viable geopolitical option by the governing elite, who rather saw Pan-Islamism in terms of strengthening the unity of the Empire itself, rather than integrating it with Muslim communities in India and elsewhere (Özkan, 2014, pp.125-6). Likewise Yusuf Akçura saw Pan-Islamism as a romantic but unrealizable ideal (Lewis, 1961, p.326). Ottomanism, on the other hand, meant loyalty to the Ottoman state, which Yusuf Akçura argued was meaningless without the

existence of a genuine Ottoman ‘nation’ of people; neither Ottomanism or Pan-Islamism were deemed to be viable geopolitical aims (ibid.). Akçura deduced therefore that the only course left was to adopt a policy of Turkism, basing loyalty to the state upon the Turkish race (ibid., p.327).

In varying forms, these three geopolitical outlooks – a preoccupation either with the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, the unity of Islam, or the Turkish race and Turkic peoples – each have ideological proponents in modern Turkey today. The foreign relations of the AKP have been characterised by some scholars as a form of ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ due to their focus on the former territories of the Ottoman Empire (Taşpınar, 2008; Murinson, 2006). Others see a Pan-Islamist agenda behind the AKP’s foreign policy initiatives, based on uniting the Muslim peoples of the Middle East under Turkish hegemony (Özkan, 2014; Stein, 2014). Others have noted that Turkism, or Pan-Turkism, survives among ultra-nationalist groups, and has influenced the development of a ‘Eurasianist’ geopolitical discourse among some Nationalist and Kemalist factions in Turkey today (Erşen, 2013). However, neither Ottomanism, Pan Islamism or Pan-Turkism were to become the official policy of

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the new Turkish Republic, and when the Republic was founded in 1923 a radical new ideological world view known as ‘Kemalism’ was instead to become the new state ideology (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4).

The early Republican era

Turkey was founded by Mustafa Kemal, later known as ‘Atatürk’, following a War of Liberation against the European Powers who occupied the remnants of the Ottoman Empire following its defeat in WWI (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.553). Atatürk believed that the new Republic needed to be viewed as an equal to the Western Powers as a deterrent to Western intervention, and as such aimed to portray Turkey as having ‘joined the ranks of the civilised’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, pp.181-3). The early Kemalists took on a ‘civilising mission’, based on the principles of the French Revolution, and aimed to cut ties with the decrepit Ottoman past in order to bring Turkish society to the level of European society (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4). As such, Atatürk framed his policies within the discourse of ‘civilizational geopolitics’, rather than on the emerging discourse of ‘naturalised geopolitics’, which saw international relations as dependent on the natural ‘character’ of individual states (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.183; Agnew, 1998, p.95). The aim, then, of Atatürk’s reformist agenda was to abandon the unprofitable legacy of empire, escape the ‘tyranny’ of recalcitrant clericalism, and ‘embrace the modern world’ (Finkel, 2005, p.1). To this end, Atatürk abolished the Sultanate in 1922, and abolished the Caliphate in 1924. For him, the Sultan was too much a symbol of the traditionalist past, while the Caliphate left Turkey open to pressure from Muslim nations outside its borders (Lewis, 1961, p.263). Atatürk also rejected all forms of irredentism in the Caucasus and Middle East, and thus ties with those Turkic peoples living outside the Republic were also effectively cut (Erşen, 2013, p.25). From its foundation until the 1990s, Turkey was thus to become a secularist and Western-oriented Republic, suppressing all links with the Ottoman Empire and neglecting relations with the newly-independent states of the Empire’s former territories in the Middle East (Murinson, 2006, p.950). This Westernist orientation and rejection of all things Islamic and Middle Eastern was to become the official state ideology known as ‘Kemalism’, and remains one of the most controversial aspects of Atatürk’s legacy in Turkey today (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4).

The early days of the Turkish Republic saw the beginnings of a geopolitical policy of Westernisation and isolationism (Murinson, 2006, p.946). This was followed consistently due to the single-handed governing of foreign policy by President Kemal Atatürk (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.174). The

appearance of Kurdish-Islamic rebellions in the Republic’s early years also served to confirm Atatürk and his followers in their view that the new Turkish Republic remained vulnerable to breakup at the hands of ethnic and religious factionalism; consequently Kemalism adopted a policy of assimilationist nationalism which was hostile towards minority ethnic demands (Taşpınar, 2008, p.6). Turkey’s new inward-looking geopolitical agenda was best expressed in Atatürk’s famous mantra of ‘peace at home,

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peace abroad’, which articulated a prioritisation of internal reform over foreign policy adventurism (Stein, 2014, p.3; Murinson, 2006, p.946).

WWII and the Cold War period

It was during WWII that a clearly-defined concept of ‘geopolitics’ as a foreign policy tool first began to gain traction in Turkey, where it was initially understood to be ‘the science of explaining the effects of nature on international behaviour’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.179). Though Turkey managed to remain neutral throughout the Second World War, the ensuing polarisation of world politics during the Cold War era made the Republic’s policy of isolationism untenable, and Turkey joined the US-led Western bloc, largely due to security concerns about Stalin’s aggressive policies and the

encroachment of the Soviet Union (Stein, 2014, p.3; Larrabee, 2010, p.167). In this new era of

‘ideological geopolitics’, Turkey’s policymakers continued to represent their policy choices within the framework of civilizational politics (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.184). The staunchly Kemalist Turkish military, which saw itself as the ‘custodian’ of Atatürk’s secular Kemalist ideology (Taşpınar, 2008, p.6), viewed geopolitics as a means of justifying the central role it aimed to play in the shaping of both Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.184). The military coups of 1960, 1971 and 1980, and the ‘postmodern coup’ of 1997, were arguably carried out in defence of the ‘civilizational’ tenets of Kemalist ideology, in the face of the growing threat from Marxist or non-secular civilizational models (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.555). Generally speaking, since the beginning of the Cold War, both Kemalists and Islamists in Turkey have found geopolitics a useful tool for presenting their particular foreign policy preferences as geographical faits accomplis rather than based along ideological lines (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.180).

During the Cold War Turkey became indispensable to the West as its ‘southern bastion’ against the Soviet Union (Taşpınar, 2008, p.7). As such, the former civilizational divide that separated the Islamic empire of the Ottomans from the Christian empires of Europe largely ceased to matter, as Cold War

realpolitik dictated Turkey’s status as a Western country (ibid.). Turkish foreign policy during the

Cold War therefore focused on promoting Turkey’s strategic location as a NATO member on the borders of the Soviet Union (Erşen, 2013, p.26), while at the same time aiming to prevent the expansion of Soviet military power into the Mediterranean and the Middle East (Larrabee, 2010, p.157). Indeed, during the 1950s Turkey exerted efforts to limit the spread of Egyptian-inspired Pan-Arabism into Syria and Iraq (Stein, 2014, p.3). However, aside from this ‘buffering’ role, Turkey largely kept itself aloof from the politics of its Middle Eastern neighbours, and shaped its foreign policy largely in line with NATO preferences well into the 1980s (Sözen, 2010, p.116; Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.556; Stein, 2014, p.4; Falk, 2004).

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The 1990s

After the Cold War ended in 1989 there were initial signs that Turkey might break free from its Westernist-isolationist foreign policy stance due to the opening of new areas of opportunity in former Soviet zones (Taşpınar, 2008, p.2). President Turgut Özal, who served as Prime Minister from 1983-1989, and then as President from 1989-1993, was one of the first policymakers to promote the idea of ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ as an answer to these new horizons: to him this meant increased contacts with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia (Larrabee, 2010, p.158), combined with a policy of domestic

modernisation and European integration, and the adoption of a ‘supranational identity’ that went beyond ‘ethnic allegiance’ (Özkan, 2014, p.128). Under Özal, Turkey aimed to become the ‘unofficial leader of the Turkic states in Central Asia and the Caucasus’, though this did not prove universally popular among the newly independent states (Sözen, 2010, p.113). Ahmet Davutoğlu, whose foreign policies have also been characterised as ‘Neo-Ottoman’, is however critical of Özal, whose efforts he likens to the failed attempts of 19th-century Ottoman politicians who aimed unsuccessfully to stall the decline of the Ottoman Empire (Özkan, 2014, pp.128-9). Generally, though, Özal is credited with opening Turkey up once more to the Middle East region which it had for so long neglected, and reaping substantial economic rewards as a result (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.184).

The progress Özal initially made in broadening Turkey’s foreign policy outlook until his death in 1993, was taken further by İsmail Cem, who served as Foreign Minister between 1997 and 2002, just prior to the election of the AKP. Turkey notably gained full EU candidate status during his time in office, which it gained at the Helsinki summit in December 1999 (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.318). Turkey also pursued improved relations with Russia, and showed symbolic signs of a willingness towards reconciliation with the Republic of Armenia (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, pp.186-7). The 1990s were however an era marred by unstable coalition governments and tarnished by an image of corruption, and the foreign policy of this decade has been characterised as little more than ‘muddling through’ without a coherent foreign policy orientation (Sözen, 2010, p.112). Instability and economic hardship ultimately prevented Özal’s Neo-Ottoman designs from reaching fruition (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.92). Nonetheless, it is possible to detect the seeds of the AKP’s future foreign policy strategy, and its favoured geopolitical models, in the era of Özal and Cem during the 1980s and 1990s (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.187). When the government which Cem served was voted out in November 2002 and the AKP gained power, Turkey was set to continue its independent new foreign policy orientation, albeit with a more religiously conservative flavour, into the 21st century. This was to be the era of AKP foreign policy under Erdoğan and Davutoğlu.

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Chapter 2

Geopolitics in 21

st

century Turkey

Introduction: The AKP and the 2002 election victory

In November 2002 the Justice and Development Party – Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, (AKP) – won Turkey’s general election and came to power with over 34% of the vote. The only other party to pass the 10% threshold for representation in the Turkish parliament was the Republican People’s Party –

Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, (CHP) – with 19% of the vote. This provided the AKP with a parliamentary

majority and allowed the AKP to form a government. The AKP maintained a parliamentary majority until the general election of June 2015 (Lowen, 2015).

The AKP has its roots in the Islamist conservative Refah Partisi, or Welfare Party, which ruled Turkey as part of a two-party coalition from 1996-1997, before being removed in the so-called ‘postmodern coup’ of 1997 (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.176). The Refah Partisi, in turn, had its roots in the various successors of the National Order Party – Milli Nizam Partisi, (MNP) – of Necmettin Erbakan, which was founded in 1970 as Republican Turkey’s first ever Islamist political party (Özkan, 2014, p.119). The closure of the Refah Partisi prompted a split between the leadership of the party and some of its younger elements, who realigned themselves away from the strict Islamist traditions of the party and positioned themselves towards the centre-right of the Turkish political spectrum (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.174; Sözen, 2010, pp.110-1). This group was to become the AKP (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). Maintaining its religious identity, this new movement styled itself as a ‘Muslim democrat’ movement on the model of Europe’s Christian Democrat parties, and campaigned on a platform of increased individual liberties, welfare, a market economy, and enhanced democracy (Sözen, 2010, p.111). Unlike the avowedly anti-European Refah Partisi, the AKP was actively pro-EU, and believed that increased EU-integration would enable greater religious freedoms in Turkey (Larrabee, 2010, p.174; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). As such, this constituted a significant departure from the traditional religious-conservative attitudes towards Europe as espoused by the earlier Refah Partisi (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.175).

The renewed focus on EU accession signifies one of the new dimensions that the AKP brought to Turkish foreign policy. However, the AKP’s foreign agenda encompassed a much broader range of local and regional goals than merely EU integration, and included renewed involvement both in the Middle East (Taşpınar, 2008, p.2) and in the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.97; Larrabee, 2010, p.158). Some scholars have termed the AKP’s foreign policy agenda a ‘paradigm shift’ (Sözen, 2010; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014), while others have rightly pointed out that many

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supposedly innovative changes in the AKP’s foreign policy were in fact set in motion by Özal and Cem in previous regimes (Larrabee, 2010, p.158; Murinson, 2006, p.945; Pope & Pope, 2011, p.344). Sedat Laçiner, a pro-AKP academic, has acknowledged a ‘continuation’ in the formulation and implementation of Turkish foreign policy, which he argues has nonetheless evolved to keep pace with a changing world (Laçiner, 2009, p.154). Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey’s current Prime Minister, himself wrote of the need to develop an ‘alternative viewpoint’ on Turkey’s future, which he has aimed to provide in his 2001 book Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.v). It is largely agreed, however, that ‘alternative viewpoints’ on foreign policy were most likely not the pivotal factor in the AKP’s 2002 election success, and indeed foreign policy did not play a large part in the AKP’s election manifesto (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.91; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). While the AKP’s pro-European stance capitalised on many voters’ EU aspirations, a principle factor in the AKP’s victory was a general disillusionment with the country’s existing political parties (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). Ahmet Sözen identifies three important reasons for voters’ disillusionment, these being political instability, financial mismanagement, and a lack of progress on the Kurdish issue (Sözen, 2010, p.112). Pope and Pope have argued that the religious credentials of the party also had less to do with the AKP’s success than party leader Erdoğan’s personal charisma (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.322). In any case, after 2002 the AKP was in a position to attempt putting its new foreign policy visions into practice; Göktürk Tüysüzoğlu has argued that while foreign policy was a relatively marginal factor in the 2002 election victory, it later developed to become ‘the linchpin of [the] AKP’s social and political legitimacy’ (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.91). As such, the ‘alternative’ geopolitical imaginings outlined in Ahmet Davutoğlu’s book were to come under intense domestic and international scrutiny as he swiftly gained more influence over Turkey’s foreign policy agenda.

Ahmet Davutoğlu and the doctrine of Strategic Depth

When Professor Ahmet Davutoğlu, Chairman of the International Relations Faculty at Istanbul’s Beykent University, published his book Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position (Turkish:

Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu) in 2001, it was viewed as ‘little more than the

musings of an obscure Turkish academic with a pro-Islamic background’ (Larrabee, 2010, p.159). However, following the AKP’s 2002 general election victory and Davutoğlu’s promotion to chief foreign policy advisor to the government, the book became an academic bestseller (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181). Davutoğlu subsequently became Foreign Minister in 2009, and Prime Minister in 2014, after former Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vacated the position to assume the office of Presidency. As such, Davutoğlu’s books and articles on geopolitics and foreign policy have generated a lot of attention in the media and in academia. He is rare among geopolitical theorists in that he has had the opportunity to make a direct attempt at implementing his theories, as is reflected in the title of

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his most recent book, From Theory to Practice (Turkish: Teoriden Pratiğe). By 2014, Strategic Depth had reportedly sold 100,000 copies, but has so far never been translated into English (Özkan, 2014, p.120).

A reading of both the scholarly literature and media commentary on Strategic Depth, both Turkish and international, reveals that the book’s analysts generally fall into two camps: either (1) those aiming to reassure Western policymakers and secular Turks that Turkey is not undergoing Islamisation or abandoning the West (e.g. Taşpınar, 2008; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014; Larrabee, 2010; Laçiner, 2009; Falk, 2004); or conversely (2) those wishing to highlight and warn against the radical Islamist leanings that purportedly underlie Davutoğlu and the AKP’s foreign policy agenda (e.g. Stein, 2014; Murinson, 2006; Özkan, 2014). Those in the first camp tend to concentrate on what the AKP has done in reality since coming to power, while those in the second camp pay more attention to the theoretical background that lies behind AKP foreign policy. It is true that many of the theoretical arguments made by Davutoğlu in Strategic Depth and elsewhere are of dubious validity. Behlül Özkan, a former – and now disillusioned – student of Davutoğlu, is indeed highly critical of the current Turkish Prime Minister’s understanding of geopolitics, based on his reading of Strategic

Depth and Davutoğlu’s other 300-odd articles on

foreign policy and geopolitical thought. However, it is best to provide an initial overview of what the concept of Strategic Depth entails before deconstructing the rationale behind it.

An understanding of the concept of Strategic Depth is important, since it arguably forms the entire

theoretical basis for the AKP’s foreign policy agenda (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, pp.91-2; Taşpınar, 2008, p.14). Davutoğlu in particular is widely seen as the AKP’s principal foreign policy architect (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181; Pope & Pope, 2011, p.323; Laçiner, 2009, p.154). The far-reaching scope of Davutoğlu’s book makes it hard to pinpoint with exactitude what Strategic Depth precisely means, however, and indeed a number of the sources used in this thesis cite each other rather than the book itself when trying to define what Strategic Depth actually entails. When

Davutoğlu was asked by the journalist Taha Akyol in 2005 what Strategic Depth actually meant, he replied

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that it was concerned with ‘transforming the geographical and historical depth which Turkey has within its near surroundings into strategic depth’ (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.206; author’s translation). That is to say, Strategic Depth involves formulating a foreign policy that is based primarily on an

understanding of Turkey’s history and geography.

In a 2004 article for the Turkish daily Radikal, Davutoğlu explained how the aims of Strategic Depth were to be implemented. Strategic Depth was to be realised through the application of five principles. These were: (1) a balance of security and freedom; (2) a policy of ‘zero problems with neighbours’; (3) multi-dimensional and multi-lane diplomacy; (4) a new form of diplomacy aimed at making Turkey into a ‘centre’ rather than a ‘bridge’; and (5) a principle of ‘rhythmic diplomacy’, or diplomacy which is constantly moving and adapting (Davutoğlu, 2004). As of June 2015, it is arguably the policy of ‘zero problems with neighbours’ (Turkish: komşularla sıfır sorun) that has failed most visibly. Turkey, indeed, no longer has ambassadors in many formerly friendly capitals (Lowen, 2014). Yet while the ‘zero problems’ policy may now be largely defunct, it was much praised at the time (Al-Monitor, 2014a), and was hailed as ‘a big improvement on previous governments’ (Economist, 2011). However, while many scholars characterise ‘zero problems’ as political pragmatism (e.g. Tüysüzoğlu, 2014; Taşpınar, 2008; Laçiner, 2009), Özkan argues that it is in fact based on a policy of pan-Islamism – a view which he supports with reference to Davutoğlu’s many early writings which were published in print-only Islamist journals (Özkan, 2014, p.119; Al-Monitor, 2014a). Stein (2014) comes to a similar conclusion. There is, consequently, disagreement over the AKP’s precise motivations behind the foreign policy that it has pursued.

A key aspect of the Strategic Depth doctrine is Davutoğlu’s understanding of Turkey’s geography. Due to the historical ‘depth’ that Turkey has inherited from Ottoman times, Turkey is supposedly able to expand its influence into neighbouring geographical zones, with which it shares a historical and cultural legacy (Stein, 2014, p.7). In this regard, Özkan has noted the jarring use of terms such as ‘Lebensraum’ (Turkish: hayat alanı) and ‘hinterland’ which Davutoğlu uses to refer to Turkey’s Middle Eastern neighbours (Özkan, 2014, p.123). Davutoğlu believes that a shared history will allow Turkey to ‘penetrate’ the former territories of the Ottoman Empire, which he sees as forming

Turkey’s ‘natural hinterland’, and in which he believes Turkey has its ‘natural Lebensraum’ (Stein, 2014, p.7). Similar to Ratzel’s concept of a state’s ‘organic’ requirements, Davutoğlu states that ‘central countries’ will either ‘shrink’ or they will ‘gain penetration’ (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.342). It is of course Davutoğlu’s stated goal to transform Turkey into a so-called ‘central country’ (Davutoğlu, 2004). However, he stresses that he does not use these geopolitically-loaded terms in an expansionist sense (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.342); nonetheless, they are problematic.

This Lebensraum mentality consequently has an impact on Davutoğlu’s understanding of borders. He appears to see borders as temporary constructs which can be overcome by transforming foreign

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countries into ‘hinterland’ via political ‘penetration’ – Laçiner rather bluntly describes this process as ‘taming’ one’s neighbours and ‘changing their nature’ in order to make them cooperate (Laçiner, 2009, pp.159-60). Seemingly in Davutoğlu’s view the unity of an Islamic heritage makes borders between Muslim states irrelevant, and it is perhaps for this reason that Davutoğlu was keen to reify his borderless geopolitical vision by introducing visa-free travel between Turkey and several Muslim neighbours in the Middle East (Özkan, 2014, p.132). Davutoğlu likewise told Turkey’s national airline, Türk Hava Yolları, that ‘there will be no place in Turkey’s hinterland to which you do not fly’ (Turkish: Türkiye’nin hinterlandında uçmayacağınız nokta kalmayacak) (Davutoğlu, 2011, pp.279-80). AKP policymakers have in fact likened this project to the early days of the European Union (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.345). However, unlike the EU, the desired borderless supranational zone which Davutoğlu envisages appears to be one in which neighbours are brought under Turkish cultural and political hegemony.

As Özkan points out, Davutoğlu’s imagined sphere of Turkish influence thus extends far beyond Turkey’s current political borders (Özkan, 2014, p.124). He cites Davutoğlu’s claim that ‘the defence of Eastern Thrace and Istanbul now begins at the Adriatic and Sarajevo, and the defence of Eastern Anatolia and Erzurum begins in the North Caucasus and Grozny’ (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.56). Not content with the former Ottoman territories, Davutoğlu has also been keen to point out the potential influence that Turkey has in the world’s important waterways or ‘chokepoints’ due to its Islamic ‘historical depth’. He notes that ‘eight of the world’s nine most important naval passageways’ are all under the control of Muslim states (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.255). Drawing upon the geopolitical theories of Mahan and Spykman, Davutoğlu goes on to emphasise the potentially powerful role held by Muslim nations that occupy these trade junctions in the ‘Rimland’ (Murinson, 2006, p.949). He appears to believe that Turkey’s religious affinity with these states therefore gives Turkey an increased influence in these supposedly vital geopolitical sites (Stein, 2014, p.6).

The influence of ‘classical’ geopolitical discourse on Davutoğlu’s justification of AKP foreign policy is thus clear (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.180). Davutoğlu has written passionately about how geopolitics is becoming ‘more important’ in the post-Cold War era (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.115). However, as discussed in the previous chapter, there are a number of innate problems regarding perspective, agency and objectivity that emerge when using geopolitics to dictate foreign policy, and many of these problems are present in Davutoğlu’s concept of Strategic Depth. One particularly problematic theoretical issue, which is also raised in Özkan’s article, is Davutoğlu’s sense of geopolitical

perspective. Just as Mackinder used the metaphor of the geographical ‘musical score’ to describe his methods of observation, Davutoğlu has in turn used the metaphor of a ‘fast-flowing river’ to describe his supposedly unique view of the world, which he outlines in the preface to Strategic Depth:

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As an individual in a society which is experiencing a dynamic process, formulating strategic analyses regarding that society is akin to being in fast river with a high flow rate, while giving an opinion about the riverbed, the speed of flow, the river’s direction, and its relationship with other rivers. You are both in the river that you are analysing, and you carry the responsibility for understanding the particulars of this flow, for formulating a description of these particulars, for devising a framework for explanation, interpretation and guidance. When you look, upon going outside the river, you become estranged to the spirit and fate of the grains which were flowing along with you and you become an ordinary and morally disinterested observer; when you submit yourself to the river’s current and are washed away, however, you can understand neither the present reality correctly, nor place emphasis on the history that formulated your own will towards this reality. (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.vi; author’s translation).

The first problem in the above passage is the idea of ‘going outside the river’ (Turkish: nehrin dışına

çıkmak). This recalls Mackinder’s supposedly ‘disembodied’ geopolitical gaze: ‘going outside the

river’ in order to analyse the river amounts to what Ó Tuathail has described as the attempted

‘detached’ understanding of ‘the drama of the world’ – something which Mackinder aimed to achieve through his cultivation of the geopolitical faculty of ‘sight’ (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.87). This is the misconception that the observer can somehow ‘remove’ him or herself from the world of which he or she is undeniably a part, simply by dint of the observer’s more finely-honed powers of perspective. Davutoğlu, like Mackinder, Haushofer and Spykman before him, however, is not impartial. As Bilgin and Bilgiç have noted, the AKP in general has failed to reflect on ‘the constitutive role played by the individual analyst when interpreting the world’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.182). And this lack of critical reflection has led supporters of Davutoğlu to become convinced of his infallibility as a strategic analyst, despite events which point to the contrary (Özkan, 2014, p.137). The result is an inflexible foreign policy position which believes in the invincibility of its own objective reasoning, and which does not react to the changing dynamics of the local region, despite Davutoğlu’s vague claims about ‘rhythmic diplomacy’.

The second problem in the passage is the idea of objectivity. After leaving the so-called river,

Davutoğlu argues that the individual then undergoes an ‘estrangement’ (Turkish: yabancılaşma) from the other ‘grains’ (Turkish: zerrecikler) that are flowing in the river, which thus allows the individual to assume the role of a ‘morally disinterested observer’ (Turkish: ahlâkî kayıtsızlık içindeki gözlemci). This state of estrangement or alienation allows the observer to make objective judgements about the river, and its relations with other rivers. This proposition is deeply flawed. As with Mackinder, Davutoğlu is not an impartial reader of natural geopolitical narratives, but rather an active writer of these narratives. However, in his pseudoscientific method of observation, Davutoğlu ‘does not recognise his own agency in (re)inscribing Turkey’s identity’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.182). Davutoğlu is determined to inscribe Turkey as the ‘leader’ of an ‘Islamic civilization’ (ibid., p.191), and hence any geopolitical ‘readings’ he provides are inevitably coloured by his own personal

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ideological goals. This is significant because, as Ó Tuathail notes, geopolitical observation ‘is inseparable from the desire to use the displayed scene for one’s own purposes’ (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.34). Davutoğlu is thus unable to observe the river from outside, because he is a part of the river; just as Mackinder’s disembodied mind which ‘flits easily over the globe’ was inextricably bound to that same globe (ibid., p.87). Scholars have argued that any application of Mackinder’s theories to

modern-day politics makes ‘a mockery of the actual state of affairs’ (Bassin & Aksenov, 2006, p.111). The outcome is thus that Davutoğlu’s geopolitical readings/writings should be treated with great caution.

A further problematic feature of Strategic Depth is its seeming reliance on ‘civilizational’ geopolitics in particular. ‘Classical’ civilizational geopolitics, as understood by the critical geopolitician John Agnew, was an 18th and 19th century discourse which predicated international relations upon the basis of the superiority of European civilization (Agnew, 1998, pp.87-9). According to this discourse, European civilization existed in opposition to the exoticised Muslim ‘other’ (ibid., p.89). As discussed in the previous chapter, the Ottoman Turks in particular were marked out as fundamentally non-European, with no prospect of entry into the European civilizational sphere (Agnew, 1998, p.94; Burke, 1980, p.24). The strikingly anti-Muslim nature of this discourse has not dissuaded Davutoğlu from making use of it for his own purposes, however. Indeed, Özkan has highlighted the inherent contradiction of Davutoğlu’s recourse to Western geopolitical models in an attempt to direct Turkish foreign policy away from the West (Özkan, 2014, p.122). Bilgin and Bilgiç likewise highlight Davutoğlu’s practice of criticising the Western exceptionalism inherent in civilizational geopolitics while at the same time replacing it with Turkish/Islamic/Ottoman exceptionalism in his own writings (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181).

Davutoğlu argues that Turkey has its own ‘civilizational basin’ (Turkish: medeniyet havzası) which it mistakenly abandoned in the 20th century in order to join the Western civilizational sphere after the founding of the Republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.70). Davutoğlu’s

geopolitical visions are predicated on the idea, similar to Samuel Huntington’s, that human geography is divided into a number of civilizations but, as opposed to Huntington, he does not believe in the inevitability of a civilizational clash (Murinson, 2006, p.949; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.101; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181). However, civilizational discourse does inevitably place foreign states into the categories of those that are ‘like us’ and ‘not like us’, with concomitant effects on how foreign policy is formulated towards those states. Whereas İsmail Cem preferred to inscribe Turkey as an entity ‘straddling civilizational divides’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.191), Davutoğlu has argued the need to remove Turkey from this ‘bridging’ role in order to become a geopolitical ‘central country’

(Davutoğlu, 2004). The motivation behind this appears to be to transform Turkey from a ‘marginal’ state within the Western ‘civilizational sphere’ into the central state of the ‘Islamic’ or ‘Middle Eastern civilizational sphere’. Through an analysis of Davutoğlu’s civilizational geopolitics, Özkan,

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Murinson and Stein have all argued that Davutoğlu’s – and hence the AKP’s – foreign policy preferences are therefore based on hegemonic aspirations over its Muslim neighbours (Özkan, 2014, p.119; Murinson, 2006, p.949; Stein, 2014, p.9). Pro-AKP academics such as Laçiner have refuted arguments that this constitutes a shift away from the West, however, arguing that Turkey’s renewed focus on the Middle East is dictated purely by pragmatism and Realpolitik (Laçiner, 2009, p.160).

The question of Neo-Ottomanism

For the past thirteen years AKP foreign policy has emphasised a more vigorous engagement with the former Ottoman territories of the Middle East (Taşpınar, 2008; Stein, 2014; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011; Larrabee, 2010). As Ahmet Sözen (2010) and Göktürk Tüysüzoğlu (2014) have pointed out, this has led many analysts to characterise AKP foreign policy as ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ (e.g. Taşpınar, 2008; Murinson, 2006; Kınıklıoğlu, 2007), while others such as Laçiner (2009) have argued against the ‘Neo-Ottoman’ label. The widespread application of this term may be due to its flexibility. Due to the various incarnations of Neo-Ottomanism throughout Turkish history, its precise meaning has become blurred. Indeed, Sözen points to the loose nature of the term, and while accepting that Davutoğlu’s policies can be seen as Neo-Ottoman according to some definitions, he argues that this does not provide the full picture (Sözen, 2010, p.112). Tüysüzoğlu is similarly circumspect, opting to concede that the AKP’s foreign policy doctrine ‘sits easily alongside the neo-Ottomanist approach’

(Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.93).

As discussed previously, the beginnings of the first movement named Neo-Ottomanism lie in the latter half of the 19th century. As a cultural and political movement, it ‘loosely gathered intellectuals from different branches of literature, journalism, arts, and politics, where the main drive of the members of the movement was to implement reforms in the Ottoman Empire through internal dynamics’ (Sözen, 2010, p.106). This group called themselves the ‘New Ottomans’ (Turkish: Yeni

Osmanlılar), and it was to their unsuccessful efforts that the Tatar scholar Yusuf Akçura was referring

when he discussed Ottomanism in his 1904 work ‘Three Types of Politics’ (Lewis, 1961, p.326). Perhaps part of the Neo-Ottoman label’s looseness comes from the fact that yeni in Turkish appears able to serve both as ‘new’ and ‘neo’, thus drawing parallels between Neo-Ottoman foreign policy under the AKP, and the New or Young Ottoman reformers of the 19th century, when in reality the movements have little in common. In any case, as argued before, the Turgut Özal regime of 1983-1993 is widely seen as the first modern iteration of a foreign policy that can be described as ‘Neo-Ottoman’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.11; Özkan, 2014, p.128; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.192). Özal is credited with opening Turkey up to its non-European neighbourhood, and also for laying the groundwork for much of the AKP’s initial foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East and Central Asia (Larrabee, 2010, p.158; Sözen, 2010, p.119; Murinson, 2006, pp.945-6).

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The late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen a general renewal of interest in the Ottoman past in Turkey, which arguably has fed into the AKP’s interest in former Ottoman geopolitical space (Kınıklıoğlu, 2007b). Analysts have highlighted Turkey’s earlier role as mediator between Syria and Israel, as well as its warm relations with Iran (which was never an Ottoman territory) as evidence of a more prominent role for Turkey in the Middle East (Larrabee, 2010, p.164; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.95; Murinson, 2006, p.954). Since the Middle East is comprised of many countries which were formerly under Ottoman rule, it is perhaps inevitable that comparisons will be made with the Ottoman era. For reasons of pragmatism, scholars with a pro-AKP agenda tend to deny that the AKP’s policies

constitute Neo-Ottomanism, however. Sedat Laçiner, for instance, writes that Neo-Ottomanism is not possible, since any project which called itself such would be vigorously resisted by the former subject nations of the Empire (Laçiner, 2009, p.161). AKP officials themselves reject the term

‘Neo-Ottomansim’ (Larrabee, 2010, p.160). While acknowledging the importance of the Ottoman past in modern Turkish geopolitics, Davutoğlu himself is wary of labelling his Strategic Depth doctrine a Neo-Ottoman project (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.94). Reacting to the widespread use of the term in

association with his work, Davutoğlu has publicly made clear that he does not consider himself to be a ‘Neo-Ottoman’ (Today’s Zaman, 2009). Nonetheless, Strategic Depth is fundamentally based on Davutoğlu’s understanding of Turkey’s Ottoman legacy, and as the architect of AKP foreign policy there is thus undeniably a Neo-Ottoman ‘flavour’ at the very least to Turkey’s foreign policy approaches. As such, aware of the good reasons for avoiding the term ‘Neo-Ottoman’, Göktürk Tüysüzoğlu describes Davutoğlu’s rejection of the term as ‘straightforward political pragmatism’ (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.92). Neo-Ottomanism contains inevitable connotations of imperialism, which thus renders Davutoğlu’s predilection for classical geopolitical theory yet more problematic. The earliest proponents of classical geopolitics – e.g. Mackinder, Haushofer and others – were, after all, primarily concerned with expanding their countries’ respective empires (Heffernan, 2000, p.32; Ó Tuathail, 1996; Özkan, 2014, p.122).

Analysis of the AKP’s Neo-Ottomanist approach once more divides scholars into those who laud its pragmatism and those who warn against its expansionist and/or pan-Islamist agenda. Larrabee, for instance, sees Turkish Neo-Ottomanism merely as a natural adjustment to the changed conditions of the post-Cold War world (Larrabee, 2010, p.160). Özkan, however, argues that the AKP’s initial rapprochement with Assad was part of a longer-term plan to turn Syria into Turkey’s ‘hinterland’ (Özkan, 2014, p.133). And while trade with the countries of the Middle East has increased dramatically under the AKP, there is disagreement over the extent to which the Neo-Ottomanist approach excludes countries which were not traditionally part of the Ottoman world. Nicole and Hugh Pope note that the AKP has tried harder than any of its predecessors to solve the Cyprus issue, for instance, and has also broadened Turkey’s diplomatic footprint in Africa (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.344). And as mentioned before, the AKP initially turned out to be one of Turkey’s most pro-EU

The impact of AKP geopolitical visions on Turkey’s foreign relations and role as a regional power.