Turkey's New Middle Eastern Approach

Historical Background of Turkish Rule in the Middle East

Ottomans governed the region for 400 years and before the Ottomans there were other Turkish origin groups, such as the Mamluk Dynasty, Aq (Ak) Qoyunlu, Qara (Kara) Qoyunlu Turcoman. Apart from them, many Turks occupied important positions in the Abbasid Dynasty's military and governed Iran, one of the most important countries in the Middle East, for hundreds of years. For example, the spoken language in the Shah Ismail's palace was Turkish, and many of the Iranian shahs were of Turkish origin.

Although there were many ethnic groups in the region, Turks quickly gained a privileged status among them. Of course their ruling style and positive/negative aspects of their governance are debatable. But, when compared to French, British or American powers' rule in the 20th Century Middle East there is no doubt that the Turkish periods were more successful in providing security and stability in the region. Palestine, for instance, was one of the most significant symbols of coexistence during the Ottoman period in the region, and witnessed bloodshed after it broke off from the Ottoman State in 1917; dreadful conflicts have not stopped in the region since that time. Likewise, Lebanon was a place in which different ethnic and religious groups lived together for centuries but after the governing passed from the hands of Turks to the French, Lebanon became a symbol of conflict, ethnic-religious intolerance, and civil wars. French did not respect the Lebanon's multi-ethnic and multi-religious structure and made efforts to Christianize the country. They support some of the groups against other groups, they brought Christian Armenians and encouraged the internal intolerance among the groups for their narrow national interests.

On the issue, Iraq was also not so different from Lebanon or Palestine. Under the governing of the Turks, Shia and Sunni groups, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other groups all lived together without any serious conflict among them. At that time Baghdad was called "the Sultan of the cities" and Iraq was at the forefront with its welfare and calmness compared to other regions. We see decentralization approach was adopted in the Middle East under Ottoman sovereignty. Each region's conditions were taken into consideration by Istanbul Government and special measures were taken according to region's demographic features.

Despite the Turks' successes in governing, after the First World War, British and French powers blamed the Ottoman Turks for everything that went bad in the colonized Middle Eastern countries and they tried to create an animosity among the Arabs towards the Turks. In time, the Middle Eastern countries began to declare their independence from the colonizers one by one, after which some leaders, such as Gamal Abd Al-Naser and Saddam Hussein, used the rhetoric of Arab Nationalism and tried to decrease local people's interests in Turkish people. In other words, colonizers, followed by Arab nationalists in the nation-state process, supported anti-Turkish policies.

Indeed, changes in Turkish policies towards the Middle East also contributed to this process. Kemalists in Turkey searched for the reasons of the Ottoman collapse in its religious and traditional roots, and in this context they related the Ottomans' underdevelopment and ‘backwardness’ to its Islamic roots and eastern orientation. Even in the conservative-liberal Adnan Menderes period, Turkish understanding didn't change drastically and Turkey's alliance with NATO prevented it from developing an independent Middle Eastern policy. For a long time Turkey's relationship with the region remained on the basis of its urgent and conjectural necessities and security issues. In the 1950s, Turkey identified its interests in the region with Western World's interests, and as a result, it was perceived as an agent of the West in the region. However first the Jupiter Missile (IRBMs) Crisis, then the Johnson Letter Crisis in 1964 and the arms embargo on Turkey in 1975, the ban of opium poppy cultivation in 1971, and all other disappointing experiences with the US made Turkey conscious about the problems with one-dimensional foreign policy.
United States’ president in the Johnson Letter threatened Turkey not to intervene in Cyprus problems. NATO and the US clearly told Turkey that it would be abondoned before the Soviet threat if Turkey does not strictly follow the Western ‘orders’. The Johnson letter represented a complete failure in Turkish foreign policy. Until the letter, Turkey was one of the rare countries, where ‘no one said go home to the Americans’, yet when the US did not behave like a ‘normal’ ally, Turkey searched new alternaties in foreign policy. Imagine the US imposed an embargo in 1975 on military shipments to Turkey during the high tension years of the Cold War. The US thus became may be the first country in history who imposes embargo on its own military ally. Apart from the US, other European countries’ pro-Greek attitudes let Turkey down, and forced the Turkish policy makers to search a new foreign policy. In the Cyprus crisis particularly Turkey turned its face to the Muslims states and the Third World to balance its NATO allies ‘partial policies’. Turkey was now aware of the disadvantages of its fully Western foreign policy and paid a heavy price for it. As a result, Turkey realized its need for a multi-dimensional foreign policy. In this context, Turkey tried to improve its relationship with the Middle Eastern countries too, but for many reasons, could not develop a foreign policy approach different from the West's till the 1980s.

The first reason for this inefficiency in Turkish Middle Eastern policy was the Cold War. With such strong competition between the US and the Soviets, it was not possible for Turkey to follow an independent foreign policy. The Cold War hostility left very limited manoeuvre area for the regional small and mid-size countries.

And Turkey's own economic problems also prevented it from following a different foreign policy in the region. It is not easy to understand Turkey's situation at that time by approaching the issue with today's conditions. We are talking about difficult times in which even the costs of government officials' visits to other countries were a problem. Imagine the intercity between Ankara and Istanbul was not paved asphalt before the 1950s. If you are poor, your foreign policy will not improve.

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