Harmonizing Foreign Policy: Turkey, the Eu and the Middle East by Mesut Ozcan

Author:Mesut Ozcan [Ozcan, Mesut]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138376502
Google: Oku-xQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 50047014
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

The impacts of political and economic problems

From 1994 onwards, a fragmented approach dominated decision making in Turkish foreign policy. Instability in the political system and weak governments coincided with high turnover in the foreign ministers. The weakness on the side of the political direction of the foreign policy led to an increase in the role of the military in foreign policy decisions. The examples of the increasing role of the military can be found in the issues of increasing the level relations with Israel, the S-300 crisis with Greece and Southern Cyprus, the threatening of Syria for the expulsion of Öcalan.

Despite several weak coalition governments which comprised parties with different foreign policy agendas, there was stability in the post of Foreign Minister after 1997. İsmail Cem served as the minister for five years (between 30 June 1997 and 11 July 2002) and this period represented stability in comparison with the previous period of fragmentation. In spite of the elections, changes in the government and economic crisis, the continuity in the post of the minister and the mild approach of Cem were factors of stability. Cem argues that the period of 1997–2002 differed from the historical pattern because of his “realist” approach.62 In addition to this realism, he says that his government tried to improve Turkey’s relations with several countries, benefiting from cultural and historical affinities. In this respect, he mentions five factors identified to support the goals of this policy: 1) A re-defined identity: Turkey as meeting point between East and West. 2) Cultural identity: the privilege of being both an Asian and a European nation. 3) A rapidly developing economy: a big potential in the areas of industry, commerce and tourism. 4) Peace and stability: being a factor of peace and stability in a region of great challenges and opportunities. 5) The Turkish model: combining Islamic traditions with democratic institutions, human rights, secular law and equality between the sexes.63

During this period, similar to the previous coalition governments and economic crisis, there were some problems in international relations. Although Cem acted as the Foreign Minister for a long time, the governments was comprised of several parties. The process of consensus and negotiation building among the members of the coalition took time and caused delays and difficulties in reaching conclusions on several issues. When Turkey was offered candidature status in December 1999, there were disagreements on the conditions of the offer within the government and even between the ministers from the same party about accepting the offer. The coalition made up of DSP, MHP, and ANAP was nationalist, with the DSP nationalist left and MHP nationalist right. This attitude of the government caused some delays in the implementation of reforms for the meeting of the standards of the Copenhagen Criteria. For example, some important reforms packages were accepted in the parliament just a few months before the elections in November 2002.

Beside the differences among the members of the coalition, the economic crisis also negatively affected the foreign policy of Turkey. Turkey entered the year 2000 with a new IMF backed economic program.

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