Eastern Mediterranean: Turkey, Cyprus and Syria

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Sharkey on securing this very timely and important debate. I shall not touch too much on the situation in Iraq because, as we know, the situation there is fast-moving and things will probably have moved on by the time I sit down.

Therefore, I shall focus mainly on Turkey, which is too big and influential a power to be ignored. No matter how much its relations with key countries in the region are strained—which can at times make Turkey appear irrelevant—no country in the region or in the West can genuinely say that they are not taking into account Turkey’s stance while shaping their policies.

Turkey’s successful economic policies have allowed more Turks than ever to share in the country’s prosperity and join the ranks of the middle class. This middle-class emergence, enabled by the AKP, has changed the nature of politics in Turkey as more are demanding a liberal democracy.

Turkey’s huge economic success over the past decade has been greatly admired and respected around the world, and nowhere more than in the Middle East, where it is seen as a role model for many countries going through their own Arab spring in an attempt to shed their dictators. It is a secular Muslim-majority country which is democratic.

It is not that long ago that Turkey’s established foreign policy was “zero problems with its neighbours”. This now appears a distant aspiration with the recent shattering events that we have seen. Turkey’s geostrategic positioning and its involvement in developments from Iraq to Syria and from Afghanistan to Egypt make it a power to be reckoned with.

In 2012, I attended the Ditchley Foundation lecture given by the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. He started memorably recalling Winston Churchill’s words:

“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see”.

He said that it was impossible to establish an order for the future without relating this closely to the past and the present. He emphasised the importance of history and geography as two permanent parameters for any country which could not be changed. He went on to say that he was well aware that his statement about the aim of Turkish foreign policy being “zero problems with her neighbours” had been criticised as Utopian, but he had, rightly, wanted to create a new and less fearful mentality. He said that neither Russians nor Greeks—nor should Armenians—simply be identified as big enemies for Turkey. He acknowledged that there were now serious problems with Syria—we should remember that this was three years ago—but they were not Turkey’s fault, and he felt that they did not invalidate his approach. Turkey wanted to be on the right side of history, with the Syrian people.

Turkey has for a long time been pursuing a proactive policy in its neighbourhood, including in the Balkans and central Asia as well as in the Middle East. She has actively pursued new agreements with Greece, although negotiations with the EU have, sadly, gone nowhere. However, Turkey continues to pursue a proactive policy in all other parts of the world, opening new embassies and developing relationships in Africa, Latin America and the Far East.

As Turkey grows and becomes a more dynamic economy with a dynamic middle class, it needs new markets. Until 2009, Turkey had had only 12 embassies in Africa. Now it has added another 21 and more are planned. The only foreign embassy in Somalia is that of Turkey. There are half a dozen new Turkish embassies in Latin America.

Turkey is also active in the G20 and has become a contributor to the IMF rescue packages rather than, as in the past, a recipient of its loans. For Turkey, what seemed Utopian in 2002 has now become more of a reality. Turkey is using its geography and history in a non-defensive and influential way. It has demonstrated relative stability at a time when the region around it has been in upheaval. Turks do much better because they have grown economically, while the world around them has melted down both in the Middle East with the Arab spring as well as in southern Europe with the eurozone crisis. The Turkish Government broke with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and supported the opposition. For the past three years they have had to deal with a deadly civil war on their borders. That has put a strain on relations with Tehran and Moscow, which are both supporters of Assad.

The scale of the Syrian crisis is staggering: 600,000 Syrians are in Jordan; more than 1 million are in Turkey; and 6.5 million are displaced. Among the refugee population in Jordan, 90 people are more than 100 years old and 270 are more than 90 years old. The challenges remain enormous. We here in the safety of the United Kingdom cannot imagine what it must be like to be at the forefront of such a situation. At times, it is all too easy for us to call on what should or should not be done from the comfort of our country.

In April, the International Crisis Group reported:

“Turkey has built for its Syrian guests the world’s best shelters, but they are expensive, temporary and not sufficient for the continuous flow”,

and that:

“Continuous refugee flows from Syria are stretching Turkey’s capacities and necessitate long-term adjustments as well as stronger international engagement to better share the burden”.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s recent visit to Iran symbolised a shift towards Tehran and a shift in Ankara’s Middle East foreign policy. He declared a desire to stand shoulder to shoulder with Iran in combating terrorism, driven by Turkey’s evolving policy toward Syria. That is significant in terms of its implications for the Syrian conflict and for the region’s landscape, as both countries have the ability to influence the course of future events throughout the Middle East. Since I wrote that, it is interesting, given the recent crisis with ISIS, how the US has now followed the very same policy.

Throughout the 20th century, the Turkish Republic always focused and oriented itself towards the West and away from the Middle East. Iran was therefore not a central focus of Turkey’s cold war foreign policy. However, the Iranian revolution of 1979 unfavourably created tensions. Turkey’s ruling secular elite viewed Iran’s regime in an unfavourable manner. That perception was in part fuelled by Ankara’s belief that Tehran sponsored terrorist groups in Turkey with the intention of exporting the Islamic revolution to neighbouring countries. The Syrian conflict brought unprecedented tension to the Turkish-Iranian relationship. Turkey assumed wrongly that Bashar al-Assad would suffer a fate similar to that of Mubarak, Gaddafi and Ben Ali.

Prior to the Arab spring, the Turkish model was hailed across the region as a prototype for blending moderate Islamic politics in a democratic framework. Many polls found that Prime Minister Erdogan was the most popular political leader on the Arab street. Ankara’s evolving Syrian strategy has become more focused on the economic and security threats posed by continued conflict in Syria, with Turkey dealing with the menace posed by foreign jihadist militants who have established a presence on both sides of the Turkish-Syrian border.

My noble friend Lord Sharkey and others mentioned how, despite recent movement, the EU’s dealings with Turkey have been disappointing with so many chapters kept closed since 2009. I hope that the EU will start to treat Turkey in a more mature way than it has in the past.

I have a minute to say something about Cyprus. I was there a few weeks ago and I echo what my noble friends Lord Howell and Lord Sharkey said. The mood music does not look too encouraging. However, as someone who has been involved in the region and is from a Turkish Cypriot background, we live in eternal hope that one day there will be a peaceful settlement where the equal rights and prosperity of both communities will be enshrined in a peaceful solution.