‘Precious Loneliness’ and Turkey's Awakening to Regional Realities

One of the consequences of the West's indifferent response to the use of brute force in the massacres committed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces in the course of the country's civil war has been growing Turkish criticism of Western nations as being hypocritical and having double standards.
 
Turkey's salvos against Western countries intensified after the ouster of Mohammed Morsi by the military and the hesitation of Western powers to call it a coup.
 
Although many commentators argued at the beginning of the Arab Spring that the revolutionary developments in the Middle East would bring Turkey much closer to the Western world because Turkey would serve as a credible role model for the region's transitioning countries, the later stages of the Arab Spring have made it abundantly clear not only that the Western world is no longer interested in the democratic transformation of the region, but also that the countries in the region -- notably Iraq, Syria and Iran -- are now very critical of Turkey's assertive liberal foreign policy, a reflection of Ankara's will to help institute a new order in the Middle East.
 
This unwanted situation seems to have prompted high-level figures of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to define Turkey's new position as “precious loneliness,” which somehow reminds the general public of the “splendid isolation” strategy that the British Empire adopted in the second half of the 19th century.
 
Though this is not the place to compare these two foreign policy positions in detail, suffice it to say that while “splendid isolation” refers to well-crafted strategy on the part of British statesmen -- the idea that the continuation of British influence all over the world required the empire to stay as far away from the internal power struggles of European politics at that time as possible -- “precious loneliness” is a last-minute attempt to justify Turkey's value-oriented, normative foreign policy mentality and the loneliness that this seems to have effected in Turkey's external relations.
 
From a principled point of view, there is nothing wrong with Turkey pursuing a value-oriented foreign policy. In fact, this deserves acclamation and respect. Indeed, Turkey's attempts to strike a balance between its interests and values during the pre-Arab Spring era and to let its values determine its interests over the last three years can also be seen as a demonstration of Turkey's growing power and its determination to be a more responsible foreign policy actor in its neighborhood.
 
This suggests that it would be unfair to put all the blame for the current deadlock in Turkish foreign policy on the shoulders of Turkish decision-makers; it was far from obvious in the initial stages of the Arab Spring that Western countries would so quickly give up on democratization in the region. And the internal obstacles to democratization were still quite strong.
 
Turkey should not be blamed for not having achieved its goal of “splendid isolation” with its last-ditch efforts (i.e., “precious loneliness”) to salvage what was left over from the prestigious “zero problems with neighbors” era.
 
It now seems that the time of “precious loneliness” will come to an end as the West organizes military strikes on Syrian targets in the wake of chemical attacks against innocent people. The irony here is that Turkey will soon rejoin the Western world through the well-known doors of the decades-long strategic partnership between Ankara and Western capitals. Rather than Turkey acting as a partner of the West in the process of democratization in the region, the days ahead may show us once more that Turkey's value, in the eyes of the West, still derives from its strategic location and hard power.
 
If Turkey participates in a military operation against Syria, particularly by sending troops into the country, all the attempts of Turkish rulers to change Turkey's image in Middle Eastern eyes and bring a more cooperative, soft-power-oriented model to its relations with the region over the last decade will have failed. It is highly likely that Turkey's image in the region as a neo-imperial country acting in close cooperation with the former imperial powers of the West will be perpetuated. After all, Syria, despite its current problems and internal struggles, is the birthplace of Arab nationalism and pan-Arabist movements.