Is the Zero Problems with Neighbors Policy Returning to its Factory Settings?

It seems that Turkish rulers have finally come to the conclusion that a reversion to the factory settings of the "zero problems with neighbors" policy is a necessary condition for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to cope with the emerging challenges at home and abroad.
 
The story of Turkey's rise over the past decade owed a great part of its success to the revolutionary foreign policy initiatives undertaken at many levels and in many directions. Everything seemed to have continued positively until the so-called Arab Spring took place. Turkey had been part of the solutions; a unifying approach had been adopted vis-à-vis the regional actors, with the goal to help mitigate the negative consequences of regional polarizations and pave the way for EU-like regional integration.
 
Turkey had been aware of its hard and soft power limitations and dealt with the incumbent regimes in the region realistically. The continuation of the EU accession process had been seen as one of the quintessential factors of Turkey's positive image across the Middle East.
 
However, Turkey's response to the revolutionary upheavals in the Middle East has undoubtedly made it clear that there has been a serious gap between Turkey's expectations/aspirations on the one hand and Turkey's capabilities and geopolitical realities on the other. The past two years can be seen as Turkey's failure to read this stark reality convincingly. The two particular events that appear to have served as the wake-up calls for Turkey are the Western acceptance of the roles that Russia and Iran play in Syria and the position the international community has adopted in the face of the ouster of Mohammed Morsi's regime from power in Egypt. None of Turkey's expectations occurred in these countries.  
 
The way Turkey reacted to the Arab Spring, as it unfolded in many countries across the Middle East, has been extensively studied by analysts, pundits and academics. The main conclusion such a diverse group of Turkey observers reached is that Turkey has begun to put ideology and sectarian attachments at the center of its Middle Eastern policies and that Turkish rulers have adopted a very buoyant rhetoric of over-confidence beyond Turkey's hard and soft power capabilities.
 
At a time of substantial economic and political problems confronting Western powers, Turkish rulers appear to have embraced the view that Turkey acting independently and putting its national interests and aspirations at the center of its policies would likely achieve its goal of helping bring into existence a new regional order in the Middle East that would reflect Turkey's priorities and eventually elevate Turkey to the league of global powers. The Arab Spring would pave the way for Turkey's transformation into a global power through the institutionalization of a Turkey-friendly environment in the Middle East.
 
Such assumptions and calculations seem to have led Turkish rulers to get actively involved in regional disputes, most of the time with Ankara taking sides and trying to impose its priorities on regional actors in a high-handed manner. The result, as has gradually become clear, has been that Turkey's "zero problems with neighbors" approach has given way to "zero neighbors without problems" in the Middle East as well as a noticeable deterioration in relations with the United States and the European Union. 
 
Against such a background, it strikes observers that Turkey has lately embarked upon a new initiative to help mend fences with neighbors to the east and south and revitalize the accession process with the EU to the West. It is now observed that a strong determination has emerged on the part of Turkish rulers that Turkey's relations with Iran and Iraq should reflect the gist of the pre-Arab Spring.
 
In addition, the dormant EU accession process should be revitalized so that the international community does not think that Turkey's goal is to help shake up the existing orders at global and regional levels in a revolutionary manner.
 
To this end, Turkish authorities have expressed their satisfaction that a new momentum has been injected into the frozen accession negotiations with the opening of the chapter on regional policies. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited many EU member countries in recent months, and Turkey's chief negotiator Egemen Bağis has not uttered critical statements on the EU as he had frequently done in the not so distant past.
 
The positive response the AK Party elites gave to the latest EU progress report speaks volumes in this regard. None of the AK Party figures threw it into the dustbin this year. The opening of a new democratic package on Sept. 30 can also be seen as part of Turkey's public diplomacy campaign to help bring into existence a positive image about Turkey among Turkey-skeptical circles across Europe. The visit of Stefan Füle, the commissioner in charge of EU's external affairs, to Ankara and the expected visit of the French president early next year will likely put Turkey-EU relations on a positive trajectory in the near future.
 
As of today, neither the EU nor Turkey appears to think that they need each other to cope with the challenges of the future. The Turkish economy is strongly integrated to the European economy, and the continuation of the flow of European capital to the cash-needy Turkish economy is still a must for Turkey to sustain its high growth rates.
 
Turkey's positive image in non-European/non-Western geographies still hinges on, inter alia, the irreversible continuation of Turkey's EU accession process. It has also been observed that the Europeanization process itself is still one of the most important dynamics of Turkey's democratization process. In the absence of strong European input, Turkey's own internal dynamics would not suffice to bring into existence a liberal democracy.
 
Recent weeks also witnessed Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari visiting Turkey, and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoğlu paying a reciprocal visit to Iraq. It is highly likely that visits at the prime ministerial level will also take place soon. During his visit to Iraq, Davutoğlu, reminiscent of the good old days in the pre-Arab Spring period, took the utmost care to talk to representatives of various sectarian, political and ethnic groups. Turkey wanted to give the message that it supports Iraq's territorial integrity and its recent rapprochement with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) would not be at the expense of the central government in Baghdad. It seems now that Turkey does not support one particular faction in the upcoming general elections in Iraq at the expense of others.
 
What is also noteworthy is Ankara coming closer to Arbil, particularly concerning cooperation on gas and oil. Pipelines are under construction that will export gas and oil from the Kurdish region to Turkey. Turkey's goal is not to encourage the KRG to seek its future outside of Iraq. Turkey's insistence that these pipelines are to be connected to the existing Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline and revenues that would originate from the export of oil and gas in the Kurdish region will be shared by the central government in Baghdad and the regional government in Arbil according to the articles of the Iraqi constitution suggest Turkey's respect for Iraq's existence as a unitary state.
 
It also seems that one of the motivations pushing Turkey to improve relations with the KRG is to help secure the support of the latter against the separatist Kurdish movements across the region, most notably the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria and terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) in Turkey. Turkey supports the particular Kurdish movements in the region that see their future within the territorial borders of their home countries, rather than push for a region-wide independent Kurdistan that would likely be composed of Kurdish entities scattered across Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
 
Another development that suggests an about-face, or critical apprehension, in Turkey's Middle Eastern policies concerns Turkey's efforts to help dispel the image that Turkey lends its support to jihadist movements in Syria. To this end, high-level Turkish figures have recently announced that Turkey does not give aid to al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria and very much encourages the opposition circles to take part in the Geneva talks.  
 
The question is how one can account for this about-face in Turkey's approach to the Middle East and Europe.
 
One factor seems to pertain to the ongoing negotiations between the international community, P-5 plus Germany, and Iran concerning the nuclear policies of the latter. What is at stake in such negotiations is not that Iran ceases its efforts to develop nuclear capabilities, but to figure out the modalities through which Iran's reintegration to Middle Eastern/international politics as a legitimate actor becomes possible.
 
Assuming that the ongoing negotiations yield positive results and Iran regains its international legitimacy, Turkey's maneuvering capability in the region, as well as vis-à-vis the extra-regional actors, would decrease so long as Turkey is seen to be pursuing sectarian and ideological policies and is at odds with its neighbors. This is to say that in an environment in which Iran appears to have mended fences with the West while Turkey is going after its order-instituting policies in the Middle East, Turkey's isolation -- no matter how precious it is -- would get solidified. Hence, Turkey's recent efforts to revert back to the factory settings of the "zero problems with neighbors" approach.
 
It is no secret that the United States is fed up with Middle Eastern problems and wants to see regional actors and the European Union act responsibly and take some of the burdens off US's shoulders. For Turkey to play such a role and continue to have strategic cooperation with the United States, relations with Iran, Iraq and Egypt should be improved.
 
The "I know best" approach would not bring Turkey anything other than the self-comforting status of "precious loneliness." One should also take into account that the United States, still the most important security actor in the Middle East, does not want to see Iran become the number one country reaping the geopolitical benefits of any US downsizing in the region.
 
There are four American allies in the Middle East that could potentially counter-balance Iran, namely Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt. If Iran got rid of the burdens emanating from the political and economic sanctions following a historic deal with the West, the Middle East might possibly evolve into Iran's playing field unless the four countries mentioned stemmed this tide. Turkey could play such a counter-balancing role vis-à-vis Iran, if and only if it viewed the region from the prism of the "zero problems with neighbors" policy.
 
This also explains why the United States is pushing Turkey to revitalize the accession process with the EU and mend fences with all Iraqi groups. The most important place to balance Iran is Iraq. Unless Turkey proves to be a promising actor for Iraqis to do business with, Iran is just around the corner.  
 
The second factor that appears to have engendered the recent Turkish efforts to come to grips with the Middle Eastern realities on the ground concerns the upcoming elections at home. The AK Party era in Turkish politics epitomizes the constitutive relationship between domestic and foreign policies. The past decade bears witness to many examples of foreign policy initiatives undertaken with domestic political considerations in mind, and vice versa. The golden age of the "zero problems with neighbors" foreign policy understanding also corresponds to the AK Party's electoral victories at home.
 
Similarly, the AK Party's response to the Arab Spring and the deterioration in bilateral relations with neighbors to the south seem to have offered ammunition to AK Party critics in recent years. Four particular examples in this context are the way the government handled the Gezi Park protests; the approach the government adopted towards the civil war in Syria; the pro-Muslim Brotherhood position the government embraced with respect to the course of developments in Egypt; and strong criticism the government authorities leveled against the Maliki government in Iraq.
 
While the strong reaction the government adopted toward the Gezi Park protesters has tarnished Turkey's image, particularly in the West, Turkey's position in the other three cases mentioned above seems to have weakened the AK Party's hand against its political contenders.
 
Turkey is now entering an election season, and any success story abroad will likely help the AK Party regain some of the political ground it seems to have lost in recent years. While the rapprochement with the KRG and the visit of Barzani to Diyarbakır might, on the one hand, strengthen the AK Party's position in southeastern Turkey against the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and give a boost to the ongoing settlement process, mending fences with the EU, Iraq, Iran and Egypt might, on the other hand, weaken those who argue that Turkey, under the reign of the AK Party, has been after imperial aspirations and captivated by the lure of flamboyant nationalism.
 
The revitalization of the "zero problems with neighbors" policy seems to be one of the instruments the ruling party could employ to demonstrate that it does not pursue sectarian and polarizing policies either at home or abroad.