As previous chapters have explained, the circle of foreign policy actors had only begun to broaden in Turkey during the 1960s, as new political currents and a loosening of the consensus on foreign policy had started to develop.49
The process of foreign policy-making is one of the least well-studied aspects of Turkish foreign policy and suggestions can often only be speculative or illustrated by occasional examples. Nonetheless, what could be described as the group of‘state actors’ apparently continued to be the dominant decision-makers during the 1990s. These included, principally, the President, Prime Minister and foreign minister, plus the commanders of the armed forces (combined, since 1961, in the National Security Council) and the professional diplomats in the foreign ministry. Thanks to the weakness of successive governments, the military regained some of its role as an independent policy-maker.50 There
were also differences of approach between individuals within the state elite. In particular, during his period as President between 1989 and 1993, Turgut Özal was more visionary and more prepared to take risks and new policy directions than either his predecessors or his successor. More broadly, he tried to convert the presidency into an independent source of policy and power. After his death, Süleyman Demirel, who had taken relatively little interest in foreign policy during his previous stints as Premier, oversaw a return to a more conservative, traditionalist and institutionalized style in foreign policy.51
While the lack of detailed research makes it hard to be categorical, there were some fairly clear signs of a shift of the balance of power between foreign policy actors after the AKP came to power in 2002. In particular, the elected government increased its authority at the expense of non-elected officials, the army in particular. Although it is hard to be exact about this, populist currents, and public opinion generally, also appeared to become more influ- ential. As examples, in 2004, in giving full support to the Annan peace plan for Cyprus, the government successfully overrode open objections by the military chiefs, although the plan was later rejected by the Greek Cypriots (pp199–200). Similarly, in 2007 it overcame attempts by the military to boycott the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq, and to launch unilateral cross border operations into Iraqi Kurdistan (p237). The causes of this shift of power were almost entirely domestic– in particular, the army’s loss of public standing due to the‘Ergenekon’ and ‘Sledgehammer’ cases – and the outcome of the military appointments crisis of July–August 2011 (p143). Nonetheless it had important foreign policy implications, since the unelected state elite, especially the military, had lost its dominance in the direction of policy.
In Turkey, as in other countries, the available evidence indicates that most ordinary citizens attach far less importance to foreign policy than to domestic issues. Thus, a survey conducted by the Strateji-Mori polling organization in Istanbul in 1997 found that 57 per cent of the respondents described them- selves as ‘not-interested’ in foreign policy, with only 23 per cent ‘interested’: not surprisingly, those with higher education were more likely to be interested
than those without.52During election campaigns, opinion polls nearly always
suggest that most voters attach primary importance to the state of the economy, with foreign policy well down in the list of priorities – if indeed it figures at all.53 Similarly, the programmes and election manifestos of the political
parties devote little space to foreign policy. As an example, the current pro- gramme of the AKP devotes almost all its attention to ‘Basic Rights and Political Principles’, the economy, public administration and social policies, with foreign policy onlyfiguring as a short section at the end of the document, almost as an afterthought.54
Public opinion polls in Turkey on foreign policy questions should be treated very cautiously, since people may well give arbitrary or poorly-informed answers, so as not to appear ignorant. Thus, in a poll conducted in December 2010, an astonishing 42.6 per cent of respondents rated the United States as ‘the biggest foreign threat directed against Turkey’, although there was not the slightest sign that the USA was likely to attack the country: probably, people were simply using the opportunity to express their opposition to American policy in the Middle East.55More broadly, assessing the effects of
shifts in opinion on foreign policy is extremely hard, due to the risk of confusing cause and effect. As an example, the decline of public support for Turkey’s eventual membership of the European Union after 2004 (p192) appears to have been the result, rather than the cause, of growing political problems in the Turkey–EU relationship; in this case, public opinion was a dependent, not determinant variable. Nevertheless, the available evidence suggested that, with the passage of time, it was becoming more influential and more vocal in for- eign policy-making, especially on issues that raised serious questions affecting national security, and on which there was extensive media coverage and general support. A prime example was the overwhelming public opposition to cooperation with the United States in the invasion of Iraq, in spite of reluctant support for the idea by the government; this resulted in the unex- pected parliamentary vote of 1 March 2003 that refused to allow US troops to enter northern Iraq from Turkish territory (p167). The knowledge that public opinion supported a strongly critical attitude towards Israel, especially after the deadly Israeli bombardment of the Gaza strip during December 2008–January 2009, and the attack on the Turkish aid ship Mavi Marmara in May 2010, was almost certainly instrumental in determining Tayyip Erdog˘an’s increasingly anti-Israeli rhetoric: for once, he had a foreign policy issue on which he knew he had the bulk of public opinion behind him, and on which he knew people felt strongly – even those who did not support the AKP (pp230–1).56 This made it virtually impossible to re-establish the previous
entente with Israel, even if he had wanted to do so.
Party loyalties were generally reflected in the media, in which the main national dailies and commercial TV companies (that are in many cases owned by the same groups) supported a pro-western secularist position, while the minority of pro-Islamist newspapers and broadcasters adopted the opposite stance. The influential Feza Group, owning the newspaper Zaman and the TV
channel Samanyolu, combined broad support for the AKP with a liberal rather than distinctly Islamist position. After 2002, the press was broadly divided into two camps, pro- and anti-AKP, with the former predictably supportive of the government’s foreign policy, while the latter opposed it. The media as a whole could take stridently nationalist stands towards particular incidents– as for instance, in the crisis with Greece over the islet of Kardak (Imia) in 1996– which made crisis management far more difficult (see p196). Similarly, extensive media coverage of both the bombardment of Gaza and the Mavi Marmara affair played a major role in stirring up the public reaction, deepening the Turkish–Israeli rift.
During the 1990s, there was much discussion of whether Turkey was developing a ‘civil society’ similar to those of western democracies, in which non-governmental organizations, such as business groups, trades unions and voluntary bodies, were coming to play a bigger role in the country’s politics.57
Of these, probably the most influential were business associations, notably the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSI.AD) and the Union of Chambers (TTOBB). Both these groups, like the two main labour confederations, Türk-I.s¸ and DI.SK, supported pro-western and anti-Islamist policies,58although the Islamist-nationalists had their own business association,
MÜSI.AD, and labour confederation (Hak-I.s¸). Within Turkey, there were also emergent lobbies formed by people of particular ethnic origins. Besides the obvious case of the Kurds, these included citizens of Bulgarian, Bosnian, Chechen and Abkhazian origin, although just how influential they were at points of crisis can be disputed, particularly in Turkey’s relationships with Russia, and its policies in the Balkans (see pp210, 202). Among other ethnic organizations, that of the Uighur refugees from China’s Xinjiang province, had only a periodic impact (pp246–7). Other emerging non-governmental orga- nizations that had some role in foreign policy included environmentalist groups such as the Turkish branch of Greenpeace, protesting against the passage of huge oil tankers through the Bosporus.59
Under the AKP, two NGOs with clearly Islamist sympathies began to have a significant impact on Turkey’s international relations. The first was the educational and cultural movement established by the influential Nakshibendi religious leader Fethullah Gülen. In the current context, the most important of the Gülen movement’s activities was the foundation of a chain of privately financed schools in an impressive range of countries, ranging from south-east Europe to central Asia, Africa and even the United States (pp224, 247). These projected conservative (though not specifically Islamic) values and had generally high academic standards. During the 1990s, the movement had been regarded with grave suspicion by the Turkish military and staunchly secularist politicians and bureaucrats, but under the AKP it achived a far wider degree of acceptance, and even moral support, as a unique attempt to promote Turkey’s image on a global scale.60
Meanwhile, the most striking instance of NGO activism, which had highly controversial effects on foreign relations, was the crisis caused by the attempt
by an aid convoy headed by the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in May 2010 (pp230–1). The lead organizer of the convoy, the Turkish-based ‘Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief’ (I.HH), was not entirely apolitical, since its main attachment was apparently to the radical-Islamist Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi, or SP). Nevertheless, in the country as a whole, most AKP supporters were almost certainly sympathetic to the aims of the blockade-runners, as were many supporters of other parties. Hence, the government was pushed into an international crisis by a non-governmental organization that it was hard to stop, for political if not for legal reasons.