EURASIAN POLICY IN FULL SWING IN 2005, AFTER EU IN 2004

 

The latter weeks of last year were a hectic marathon for Turkish diplomacy after its half-a-century dream of EU accession. Until October 3^rd, 2005, the EU accession will go through a calm period with Cyprus, Iraq and other flash points of the region preoccupying Ankara in its foreign policy activities. Meanwhile, pending the clarification of the situation about commencing the EU negotiations after October, the other leg of Turkish diplomacy, the Eurasian allegiance, will be Ankara’s first priority. PM Tayyip Erdogan, in particular, did not lose any time in giving a boost to this second leg of Turkey’s foreign policy, starting with a very promising economic cooperation program with next door neighbour Syria and going on with a much more comprehensive cooperation with its big neighbour in the north, the Russian Federation. As for the third leg, Turkish-American relations, which Foreign Minister Gul described, in a traditional, insincere language of 19^th century international diplomacy, “the indispensable and most important aspect of Turkey’s foreign policy,” please read the article below to see what a shambles it really is in.

 

Deputy Chairman of the official opposition party, Onur Oymen, in his eloquence as a former top Turkish diplomat, is very critical of and quite persuasive about the Erdogan Government’s acceptance of the EU’s 17 December 2004 resolution. He emphatically points out that Turkey would have done much better if PM Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Gul had not at all gone to Brussels for summit level lobbying, for a week or so, about starting negotiations for its final accession to the European integration. The first text of the EU Commission dated October 6^th, 2004 was better than the final 17 December resolution. It concerns the reservations, indeed obstructions to Turkey’s free labour movement in the EU even after full membership. The 17 December resolution replaced the word “labour” with “persons” in the EU Commission’s report entitled “Issues Arising from Turkey’s Membership Perspective, October 6. 2004”. This change of one word obstructed all Turkish nationals’ free movement in the EU even when Turkey becomes a full member after 2014, whereas the Commission’s October report was bringing understandable restrictions only to Turkey’s “free labour movement”.

Vital importance and significance behind this change of a single word

Retired Ambassador Onur Oymen may be a politician who ignores the story behind this important change, but insiders were aware of its vital significance because the developments that led to this one word change was the expression of preference Turkey made between its EU and Eurasian policies. In other words, Turkey placed the Eurasian leg of its foreign and security policies on a par with the EU leg, if not in front of it.

President Vladimir Putin was one of those insiders who appreciated Turkey’s new foreign policy preference and the impact of this appreciation was seen during PM Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Moscow last week, hardly a month after the Russian leader’s State visit to Ankara. And this frequent top level exchange of visits will continue between the two big neighboring countries. President Putin’s invitation to PM Erdogan to share their joy on 9 May 2005 during the festivities in Moscow for the 60^th anniversary of the defeat of fascism was accepted. In return, President Putin accepted in principle President Sezer’s invitation to Istanbul when Erdogan repeated it in Moscow at the latter’s request. The date of this visit is not yet fixed. It should normally take place after President Sezer returns at the end of this year the Russian leader’s visit to Ankara last month, but the warmth and sincerity of the current mutual relations prevent one from making such normal predictions. Meanwhile FM Abdullah Gul will be in Moscow in April and similar Russian visits may take place in Turkey throughout 2005 and the following years.

Behind this unprecedented exchange of top level Turkish-Russian official visits there rests refined Russian diplomacy. During the really cordial talks in Ankara at the beginning of last December, President Putin expressed the concern that the rapidly expanding cooperation in the economy, trade and tourism between Turkey and Russian could not continue after the 17 December resolutions of the EU because the European rules would put restrictions on these non-EU economic exchanges and would especially hamper tourism by imposing heavy visa conditions for Russian tourists to Turkey. The Turkish side promised they would not allow it.

At the pursuing Brussels talks, the Turkish statesmen’s determination to keep its promise to Russia went as far as the EU’s retaliation of barring Turks from free movement in Europe by changing a single word, as mentioned above. Most Turks in the know, ranging from the President to the military and the Turkish business world, disagree with Onur Oymen’s above criticism and applaud the Erdogan Government’s firm stance in Brussels.

Welcoming PM Erdogan in Moscow, President Putin expressed satisfaction with Turkey’s 17 December arrangements with the EU. He welcomed them as a development likely to “open new vistas for Russia in Europe”, stressing that 50 percent of his country’s total foreign trade was already with the EU. President Assad’s reception of the 17 December arrangements was also the same and he also said to PM Erdogan in Damascus that Syria was now closer to Europe. Thanks to Syria’s free trade arrangement with the EU, Turkey was able to sign such an agreement with its southern neighbour and the same will be the case with Turkey’s other neighbours, primarily Russia, as hinted by Putin.

What will be the outcome of the 17 December resolutions?

Most people in Turkey are blindly pro-EU with the belief that they will be able to freely go to Europe to settle and work there. The Government is aware of the fallacy of this belief and has made its calculations accordingly. What if Europe continues with its labour and even travels restrictions on the Turks even after full membership in ten years or so? Only the EU will lose as it will bar Turkish tourists from Europe and channel them towards Russia and other neighbouring countries giving a boost to Turkey’s expansion in this region, while tourism and economic cooperation with these countries, primarily Russia, will more than compensate for any possible Turkish losses due to the European restrictions. In other words, a kind of special relationship between Turkey and Eurasia will additionally boost Turkey’s economy. The EU will not be able to object, because similar arrangements such as the UK’s Commonwealth relations, despite EU membership, exist for the UK as well as similar arrangement that exist in the EU for its other big members such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and even smaller ones like the Netherlands, Portugal, Greece etc.

In fact, rather than these economic and political considerations, Turkey’s importance for security of the West was instrumental in the EU’s decision for the 17 December resolution in favour of the Turkish accession. The above mentioned EU Commission’s 6 October 2004 report expressly confirms this, demonstrating that Europe remains partially dependent on Turkey for its security. Despite certain setbacks of the 17 December resolution, such as restrictions to the Turks’ free movement in Europe and unprecedented definitions like “open end negotiations”, meaning that the negotiations may not end up in Turkey’s accession, it was a great achievement for Ankara and sufficient for the time being, pending the progress of Turkey’s relations with its other two tenets of foreign policy – Eurasia and the United States.

Very promising beginning with the backbone of the Eurasia policy, Russia

Accompanied by more than 600 people (including four ministers -Energy Hilmi Guler, Exports Kursat Tuzmen, Industry/Trade Ali Coskun and Labour/Social Security Murat Basesgioglu-, 50 members of parliament and top bureaucrats, 90 journalists and 510 businessmen), PM Tayyip Erdogan made an impressive landing in Moscow last week to inaugurate the Turkish Trade Centre in the heart of the Russian capital next to the Kremlin and to conduct summit talks with President Putin and the Russian Government.

The outcome was simply stunning. Putin and Erdogan noted at their final joint press conference that mutual trade had reached $11 billion (Turkey’s exports being $2.1 billion plus the so-called suitcase sales of a few billions). They decided to increase it to $15 billion this year and $25 billion in 2007 by stepping up Turkish exports of manufactured goods through arrangements like the inaugurated trade centre, as well as increasing the $1 billion revenue from 1.7 million Russian tourists to Turkey last year. Turkey’s foreign capital investments in Russia total $2 billion which seems small compared to $14 billion Greek capital, but while the Turkish capital is reliable investment funds, the Greek one is the black money of the Middle East and totally unreliable.

The characteristic of the new page in Turkish-Russian relations is that it is being built on sound ground, with both Putin and Erdogan preferring mutually open hearted and sincere stances. The Russians apparently aim at winning Turkey over to the network of relations they are working to shape with India, China and Iran as a counterweight against the superpower USA and the EU which constitute the western front, despite certain trade discrepancies between the two sides of the Atlantic. As the EU is not a solid and harmonious union, but rather a multi-speed cooperation composed of a hard core which Washington calls the “Old Europe”, headed by France and German and the pro-American European countries which President Bush calls the “Coalition” primarily led by the UK, the Turkish-Russian “strategic partnership” in the offing is bound to have a significant impact on the future world balances and developments, especially given that Turkey is on the cards to become a full member of the European Integration and Russia is rapidly consolidating its economy as well as its relations with the Old Europe.

Eurasian geopolitics and the Turkish-Russian energy corridor make this Turkish-Russian partnership a very important factor in the globalizing world. The backbone of this energy corridor will be the Blue Stream pipeline from Russia to Turkey’s Black Sea port, Samsun. The pipeline is already linked to Ankara and will now be extended to Ceyhan, which will be a major energy terminal for the East Mediterranean region and Southern Europe, possibly starting with Israel. A high-level insider told Hurriyet (12^th), “President Putin and PM Erdogan have taken the political decision on this issue (Russian LNG to Israel). The rest is the technicians’ work.”

In the energy cooperation field, under consideration is the building of a natural gas liquidation centre in Ceyhan for the exportation of Russian LNG, the rapid completion of the Tuz Golu (Salt Lake) natural gas depots near Ankara and the completion of Turkey’s natural gas grid in a joint venture with Gazprom and other Russian multinationals.

Turkey and Russia will also make joint investments in Eurasia and elsewhere, with special emphasis on Iraq’s reconstruction after the general elections within a fortnight. Turkey is all for conducting the elections in Iraq on 30 January, whilst Russia has its reservations as long as the US-led Coalition has occupation forces there.

At PM Erdogan’s initiative, next year may be declared the “Turkish-Russian Partnership Year”  and in the following years Russia Year will be celebrated in Turkey with special festivities and Turkey Year will be marked in Russia too.

A major breakthrough for Cyprus with Moscow’s help

Last but not least, the Cyprus problem was on the negotiation table in Moscow during this historic visit. President Putin telephoned Kofi Annan in Erdogan’s presence. Remarking that the embargo on the Turkish Cypriots was not fair, he asked the UN Secretary General to help end the political and economic isolation of the Turkish Cypriots. He also urged the continuation of the Annan Plan on Cyprus.

This major breakthrough for Turkey’s Cyprus cause was a result of over two years of preparations. At the penal discussion of Istanbul University on December 12^th, 2003 on “Russia’s Cyprus policy”, President Putin’s chief consultant on Eurasia policies, Alexandre Dugin said:

“Russia’s and Turkey’s sovereignties are under threat in this uni-polarized world. We have to act rapidly in order to establish the Eurasian Strategic Union with Russia, Turkey and the regional countries. We now have to give birth to the idea of Eurasia of 300 million peoples.” Also present at the Istanbul seminar was a former Soviet Ambassador to Ankara, Albert Chernishev, who is an important factor in improving Turkish-Russian relations to today’s unbelievable level. After the Istanbul seminar, Chernishev and Dugin, along with Anatoli Zavtsev, another consultant of the Russian leader for Trans-Caucasus and the Middle East, went to Nicosia to have talks with President Denktas. The outcome of these contacts and preparations for Cyprus was last week’s breakthrough in Moscow about which Dugin reportedly said, “Russia can now play with Cyprus with both its hands.” 

In short, the Moscow talks extended the Turkish-Russian partnership from bilateral cooperation to regional and even international strategic level. Putin said they would energize the multilateral cooperation in the Black Sea region. Railways and sea transport links will be improved. Turkish contractors who have successfully handled $12.3 billion contracts in Russia in the last 15 years will further expand their activities there. As part of the Turkish-Russian strategic partnership on regional and international issues, the Soviet leader offered Russian assistance to Turkey for the improvement of Turkish-Armenian relations. PM Erdogan said they had already opened the air routes with Armenia, but ground transport was still closed because of the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijan lands and Armenia’s refusal to recognize the 1921 Kars agreement for the Caucuses.

The American leg of this article has to be left to another article due to lack of space.  It should only be underlined here that Ambassador Edelman has inadvertently played a major role in these developments as a diplomat who has gone down in world diplomatic history as a unique ambassador who publicly threatened more than once to punish the prime minister of the host country if he paid an official visit to a neighbouring country, Iran, in this case. (What a significant contradiction between President Putin’s elegance in reminding Turkey of the setbacks the EU accession will impose on the expansion of Turkish-Russian relations and the Bush Administration’s new “diplomacy of bullying”).  We will see how future developments will unroll as the Turkish press reports that the American Ambassador will shortly return home to occupy a top position also concerned with Turkey in the State Department. uras@ada.net.tr – January 16^th, 2005