The AKP’s Foreign Policy: Rupture in continuity, continuity in rupture

As a matter of fact, a certain reading of the AKP’s foreign policy choices, which might be seen as idealist, has been predominant in this debate. From this point of view, the way the AKP has engaged with the political and social turbulence in the Middle East region is an indirect effect of its Islamist-conservative ideological-political agenda. Accordingly, it is contended that the AKP’s foreign policy denotes a remarkable break both from the independent foreign policy approach of the Kemalists and the westernist approach of the liberals.       

However, no matter what differences exist in terms of style, content and orientation, it can be argued that there is continuity between the AKP’s foreign policy priorities and the basic pillars of Turkish foreign policy. At least since the Cold War, Turkish foreign policy has been based on two main columns: a) that Turkey is strategically indispensable for the Western alliance; and b) that Turkey should raise its status in the global hierarchy by the help of its strategic indispensability. The fact that the containment of the USSR has ceased to be a strategic priority for the USA in the post-Cold War era has not nullified that dual-notion foreign policy conception. Turkey has managed to retain its strategic prominence within the international political system within the period that is commonly termed unipolar. As such, the claim to being a regional power is still a crucial component of Turkish foreign policy. The distance between the AKP’s attempts to provide the Islamic countries with a model compatible with the priorities of the global system (moderate Islam) and an aggressive foreign policy is less than we generally think. This might be best summarized in former president Turgut Özal’s laconic words, “I put in one and take out three,” or Süleyman Demirel’s vision of “the Turkic world from the Adriatic Sea to the Great Wall of China,” or former minister of foreign affairs İsmail Cem’s discourse that depicts Turkey as the “Bridge between Civilizations.”       

The true believer nation against the non-national elites’ tutelage

However, while underlining the continuities in Turkish foreign policy, we must also highlight some important moments of rupture or discontinuity. The notion that the AKP’s arguments and initiatives regarding foreign policy issues are interrelated to its orientation in the field of domestic politics and that its domestic and foreign policy choices are inextricably intertwined has been accurately emphasized by many commentators. In line with this argument, we have to point out the ties between current Turkish foreign policy and the AKP’s hegemony project in order to grasp potential and constraints of the AKP’s foreign policy. It is widely acknowledged that the AKP has managed to hold onto power while simultaneously representing itself as the genuine oppressed group of the Republican period, by redefining the main thrust of political polarization in Turkey as a longstanding conflict between the “true believer” nation and the AKP as its authentic representative on the one hand and the “non-national elites supporting the bureaucratic tutelage regime” on the other. Popularizing the argument that it struggles against the state elites’ tutelage that has restrained the nation and Turkey from fulfilling its potential during the modern times, the AKP has managed to mobilize large masses, and pacify or integrate prospective dissident discourses into its own hegemony project.             

What might be regarded as an accomplishment of the AKP is that it has been able to present that old argument that has deep roots in the dark history of the Turkish nationalist conservatism in new democratic and civilian clothes, ornamented with discursive tools inherited from the left. Modernizing the discourse by suggesting that the non-national elites, the Unionist (İttihatçı) “infidels” or the “converts” have detached the state from the nation, the AKP has managed to reach out to larger masses. It has articulated its majoritarianist democracy discourse, which conceives the party as the genuine representative of the nation that is imagined as a classless and organic mass in accordance with the nationalist conservative tradition, with some distorted popular-democratic demands. The AKP has been able to present its neoliberal-conservative authoritarian regime as a democratic revolution. Although it has politically dispossessed the lower classes by the help of market reforms, it has nonetheless managed to present itself as the sole perpetrator of the civilianizing or ‘democratization’ process that has finally attained the long-waited goal of the nationalist conservative tradition: the incorporation of the nation and state.  

From this point of view, it is possible to suggest that the AKP’s political stance towards the Arab uprisings is compatible with its analysis of social and political changes in Turkey. The AKP has transposed a particular analysis of historical and political conflicts in Turkey, upon which it has built its hegemony project, into the field of foreign policy. Accordingly, the notions of status quo and tutelage, which AKP has deployed abundantly in domestic politics, have become components of the dominant foreign policy analysis. According to this approach, which was formulated by Ahmet Davutoğlu in a very systematic way, since the political power is “in harmony with the national values,” Turkey can now assume its “historic mission.” With the overthrowing of the “non-national” tutelage regime by the AKP government, Turkey has eventually liberated itself from the long-time estrangement, and turned back to the realm of the true civilized world. Accordingly, as the sole successor of the Ottoman civilization, Turkey would now have free agency in a vast territory that stretches from Bosnia to Myanmar.           

Closing a century-old parenthesis

In that regard, it is arguable that one of the main reasons lying behind the AKP’s political paralysis in the wake of the “Arab Spring” is the abovementioned ideational prism through which it evaluates the whole process — namely, its culturalist/essentialist analysis. From the very beginning, the AKP has made a generalization of its particular interpretation of modern Turkey by regardeding the Arab Spring as the Muslim nation’s revolt against the westernist-secularist authoritarian regimes. From this point of view, the Arab uprisings denote the correction of a historic “deviance” that has occurred in the last century. In other words, AKP sees the Arab Spring as the collapse of the Arab variants of Kemalism. The disintegration of the Arab ‘Kemalisms’, that is, the westernist-secularist regimes, signifies the rise to power of the ‘authentic’ representatives of the Muslim Arab nations. A century-old “parenthesis” has finally been closed. The state which had been stolen from the nation long ago by the westernist elite is now being returned to its genuine owners, similar to what the AKP did in 2002. From this culturalist/essentialist point of view, the AKP’s rise to power in 2002 is seen as Turkey’s “spring.” Accordingly, the goal of the Arab Spring was to “incorporate the state and the nation” by paving the way for Islamist currents (particularly those close to AKP) to take power in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria.               

The opinion that international circumstances were very ripe for such an incorporation was widely shared by the AKP cadres and rank-and-file members. According to this view, the relative decline in the USA’s global hegemony opened up space for Turkey, which has privileged relations with the Western alliance. As we noted above, Turkey has undertaken several attempts to raise its position in the regional power hierarchy since the Özal era. In other words, these attempts to move further along the ‘imperialist chain’ have been one of the main features of Turkish foreign policy. Indeed, the neo-Ottomanism debate commenced in the Özal era, and even İsmail Cem, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Left Party government, complained about negligence of the common Ottoman past within the mainstream Turkish foreign policy discourse. The fact that the “unipolar moment” of the USA’s hegemony has come to an end, and that the Obama administration has “withdrawn” from the Middle East are considered crucial factors that increase Turkey’s ability to maneuver. Consequently, Turkey’s role as a model country, which would have a leadership position and act in accordance with the priorities of the Western alliance in the Middle East that is in turmoil due to the Arab uprisings, is seen by the AKP strategists as a plausible and pleasing option.              

Vulnerabilities in imperialist ambitions   

Reading the turbulent events in the Middle East through that explanatory schema, the AKP cadres believed that they would be the big brother of the Arab Spring. However, the antagonisms and conflicts in the region are so complicated that they cannot be grasped with the schema of the westernist-secularist elite versus the Muslim nation. Therefore, the AKP government could not see that Ikhwan (the Muslim Brotherhood), which it has regarded as “the authentic representative of the Egyptian nation,” swiftly lost its political momentum and social support. Presumably, the AKP strategists were not able to see what was coming, for they treated the Brotherhood not as one of the political currents in Egypt but the nation’s “true believer sons”. The Muslim Brotherhood embodies the will of the nation in Egypt, just like the AKP (and particularly its leader Erdoğan) represents the will of the nation in Turkey. Actually, democracy is conceived as the equivalent of this will. The same can be said for Syria as well. Due to its similar (in fact, more sectarian) analysis of Syria, the AKP has not managed to understand that the Assad regime has a certain social basis that makes it able to resist enormous social and political challenges it faces. On the contrary, the AKP formulated its strategy on the assumption that the regime would fall very soon, which proved to be incorrect.

To briefly sum up, the AKP’s strategic defeats in Syria and Egypt are direct results of its ideological perspective and “analysis” of historic developments in the Middle East region. For the pro-government media and the AKP circles the Arab Spring can only be understood through the ideological prism described above. Thus, social and political dynamics in the Greater Middle East were translated into the terms of a certain polarization that is favorable for the AKP. Yet, it was already obvious that such an ideological –in the strict sense of the word– approach, which is obsessed with Kemalism, would result in errors in calculation. An analysis of the Arab uprisings on the basis of a particular reading of Turkish history is one of the major vulnerabilities in AKP’s imperialist ambitions.      

The ally to be tolerated

Furthermore, the fact that the global jihadist movement proceeded from the periphery to the center of the ‘territory of Islam’ thanks to the turbulence of the Arab uprisings has caused a radical shift in the Western alliance’s strategic priorities. For instance, the USA, which had had a positive attitude towards regime change in Syria, changed its position due to the ascent of ISIS, and began to consider the preservation of the current Syrian regime (at least partially) as a viable option. In the name of stability, it has preferred to cooperate with the military in Egypt, even though it gave the Muslim Brotherhood a chance in the very beginning. Consequently, the disparity between the priorities of Turkey and those of the Western alliance has become even more apparent. No doubt, Turkey’s inability to backtrack is related to the AKP’s ideological prism we described above. Given the international political mood following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the AKP government that hailed the ascendance of the ISIS ascendance in the region as a “Sunnite uprising” and favored ISIS over the Kurdish forces fighting in Rojava has come to a dead end.          

In consequence, Turkey’s capital proved inadequate to be a regional power. The recent regional developments have dislocated the AKP’s claim of being model country. Turkey has shifted from being indispensable to being ‘tolerated’ in the eyes of its Western allies. It is clear that the AKP government’s strategy to promote itself as an actor of the enormous change in the region has come to an end. However, a crucial point deserves to be underlined at this point: the AKP government’s imperialist ambitions cannot be explained merely by its ideological preferences and political orientation. The desire and aim of becoming regional power is also a strategic preference of the Turkish capital that has gained confidence and yearned for regional resources in the recent years. In that regard, the axis shift in Turkish politics towards the Middle East is related to the dynamics of capital accumulation in Turkey. With the integration into the global neoliberal capitalist system in the post-1980 period, an ‘imperialist’ political perspective towards the Middle East and the Turkic countries in the former Soviet territory has occurred in accordance with the Turkish capital’s need for novel markets and capital export channels. As we noted above, this political perspective that was promoted most vehemently by Özal could not be implemented because of the acute hegemony crisis and the immaturity of such an option in terms of the depth and scale of intra-capital struggles.                 

However, circumstances have altered significantly in the 2000s with the flourishing of the small and medium-scale “pious” bourgeoisie, and with the ascendance of the AKP that aims for an effective hegemony project in favor of Turkish capital. In response to the recession in the European export markets after the 2008 global economic crisis, the AKP has headed to the Middle East and managed to reduce the crisis’ possible negative impacts on its organic bourgeoisie. However, in the wake of the Arab uprisings, this line has become even more aggressive. The AKP government has opted to engage with the Muslim Brotherhood within the void occurred following the partial withdrawal of the Obama administration, and pursue a more sectarian policy in the context of the new Arab Cold War. However, the AKP has swiftly lost its position as a model country, since Turkey does not possess the resources and credentials necessary to become regional power. Neither the Turkish capital nor the AKP government was capable of assuming such a mission.      

The ambition of becoming regional power still persists

Nevertheless, the setbacks that the AKP has experienced perhaps due to its “impetuousness” and “doctrinal” deeds to implement that strategic orientation should not be interpreted as though these imperialist ambitions have entirely vanished. Although the recent venture of AKP has been a serious disappointment for the Turkish capital class, the desire and aim of becoming regional power and rising in the global hierarchy still persists. For, that orientation has material roots in the dynamics of the Turkish capitalism, as much as it is ideological. Therefore, Middle Eastern politics will continue to be important both for the Turkish capital class and for the Turkish state in the next term.

Consequently, it is difficult to explain the relation between the AKP’s foreign policy choices and the historical trajectory of Turkish foreign policy as total rupture or continuity. The approach that highlights continuity might ignore the intrinsic bond between the foreign policy pursued in the AKP era and the AKP’s hegemony project. The second approach that prioritizes rupture might neglect the intrinsic ties between the AKP’s foreign policy and the dynamics of the Turkish capitalism and the intra-capital struggles. Therefore, we need a more nuanced perspective that emphasizes rupture in continuity and continuity in rupture.