Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, on September 19, 2013. ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images On Tuesday, the Blouin Creative Leadership Summit will bring together an array of thinkers including World Policy Institute President Michele Wucker and the Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth to explore the changing dynamics of the Middle East. A major part of this narrative is the abrupt turnabout in Turkey’s fortunes in the region. Indeed, Turkey has not been having an easy time of it on the international stage lately. The rejection of its bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics in Istanbul is only the most recent in a series of blows for the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A lot had been riding on this bid for his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Istanbul 2020 was supposed to represent the crowning achievement of the Erdogan government’s efforts to elevate Turkey’s international standing to heights unseen in its modern history, an effort that has seen severe setbacks in recent months. These arise partly from Turkey’s own domestic turmoil. But the greatest share of the woe derives from the AKP’s floundering response to recent political upheavals across the Arab world — the base from which it had built up the country’s position of global prominence in the first place. The heavyweight status with which Turkey emerged in the wake of the Arab Spring has now been jeopardized by the Erdogan government’s increasingly evident foreign policy failures. It is, in any case, a new low for a party that has prided itself on successfully transforming Turkey from a hopeless European Union-wannabe to a Middle East power player over the past decade. A crucial element of this political success across the region was through the projection of its soft power, a strategy known as “Neo-Ottomanism” and engineered by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Through the implementation of this strategy, which saw a ramped-up diplomatic engagement with Arab governments and an expansion of Turkish cultural exports into the region, the AKP was effective in expanding Turkey’s sphere of influence into the Arab World after decades of apathy towards its Middle Eastern neighbors. Erdogan’s growing personal popularity also helped to reinforce this shift, reaching a fever pitch after his infamous 2009 walkout at a Davos summit on Gaza, during which he theatrically admonished Israeli President Shimon Peres. His bombastic, brawling political persona — which Turkish commentators have described as “Kasimpasali,” in reference to the blue-collar Istanbul neighborhood from which the leader hails — helped to turn the prime minister into a bonafide folk hero across the Arab World and further burnished Turkey’s new image as a regional standard bearer. In the years leading up to the Arab Spring, the depth of Ankara’s effort to promote ties with these states was already on clear display; it waived visa requirements for Arab tourists amid proposals of a “Shamgen” zone, modeled after the European free-travel area (a spin off of the classical Arabic word for the Levant) as Davutoglu set new records for travel to regional capitals. Arab tourism to Turkey also ballooned in 2011 with a 26.7% increase from the previous year, alongside the growing appetite of Arab consumers for Turkish media exports, particularly its famed soap operas. But Turkey’s soft power push in the Arab World really paid off in the wake of the political upheavals sweeping the region, leaving it well positioned to emerge as a model state and regional leader, both a democracy and a Muslim country with a sense of shared cultural heritage. Erdogan arrived to a hero’s welcome in Cairo in late 2011 and made it clear that he saw Turkey as a model for Arab states, eagerly pointing to the AKP’s own success in Turkey as a roadmap for other Islamist parties in the region. His government’s vocal involvement in the transformations taking place — along with its backing of emerging Islamist parties — effectively put the AKP at the helm of a new wave of political leadership in a transitioning Middle East. With the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Ennahda in Tunisia, and with Bashar al-Assad seemingly on his way out in Syria, the AKP seemed to be succeeding in its goal and Turkey’s international stature was at an unprecedented high. While the promise of the post-Arab Spring years seemed to be wearing off as the Syrian conflict dragged out into an apparently endless civil war and amid growing political challenges against Turkey’s Islamist allies, the military coup against Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in early July became a definitive game changer and marked an abrupt turnaround in Turkey’s fortunes in the region. Seemingly overconfident about the strength of their Islamist allies (and their own regional influence by extension), the Erdogan government appeared blindsided by Morsi’s ouster and found itself shoved to the wayside in the face of a rapid re-calibration of power dynamics as Gulf monarchies stepped up to bolster Egypt’s new military-backed government with billions of dollars of economic aid. Years of laying the groundwork with Turkish soft power ended up no match for Gulf hard power as a fierce backlash against Turkish influence began gaining momentum in Egypt and beyond. Qatar, another major backer of Islamist parties, was also caught on the wrong foot after the coup in Egypt but nonetheless made an effort to play nice with its new leadership, in marked contrast to the Erdogan government’s defiant response which only further infuriated Egypt’s new government. That same “Kasimpasali” posture that helped Erdogan gain the admiration of Arabs in the first place has now proven to be toxic: his impassioned outbursts against Egypt’s new military leadership– which he has dismissed as “orchestrators of a coup”– have been construed in the North African country as a grave insult — and by positioning himself on the frontlines of his government’s push to chastise Cairo, Erdogan has put himself personally in firing range. Egyptian news channels recently resurrected embarrassing footage of Erdogan from a 2003 incident in which he was thrown off of a bucking Arabian horse — and have recently taken to playing it on loop. As appropriate as the metaphor may seem at the moment, the way the clip has gone viral across Arab media (a decade later), reveals the strength of the growing resentment against Erdogan and the very focused, personal nature of the backlash against Turkey. As a result of the AKP’s unwillingness to back down or at least temper their stance like Qatar, their initial foreign policy failure on Egypt has only been compounded — and it’s beginning to compromise the very same mechanisms through which it was able to spread Turkish influence in the Arab World in the first place. Amid much public sniping back and forth between various political figures in both countries, calls for boycotts of Turkish exports — including its soap operas — are gaining traction. Prominent Egyptian artists and filmmakers announced in early August that they would be backing an initiative to block Turkish soaps from broadcast in Egypt. This, along with moves like the Egyptian tourism syndicate’s call to delist Turkey as a travel destination, might not make a giant impact on their own but their symbolic weight helps to propel the narrative forming in Egypt and in other Arab countries of Turkey as a new regional pariah. As the largest and, arguably, the most politically significant Arab country, the messaging coming from Cairo will undoubtedly make an impact across the region and, judging by the pressure mounting against Ennahda in Tunisia, Turkey’s proxies are not faring well. (Their defiant backing of the Muslim Brotherhood is certainly not endearing them to Gulf states either). By throwing their lot in fully with Islamist parties, the AKP has handicapped its broader objective of promoting and maintaining Turkey’s position in the region — long a bragging point. With crucial elections coming up in April 2014, this foreign policy failure could not have come at a worse time for the prime minister and his allies, who have also faced their most significant domestic political challenge in recent months following the Taksim Square protests. The government has responded to their position of vulnerability, however, by framing it as evidence of their moral righteousness. While defending Turkey’s growing isolation in the Middle East, Erdogan’s principal foreign policy adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, tweeted on July 31 that it should be considered a “precious isolation,” coining a phrase that in recent weeks has become shorthand for the official AKP line on their response to the recent regional political upheaval. The messaging here, aimed at AKP’s conservative base, is itself a turning-inward, one that also accounts for the particular targets of Erdogan’s ire-filled outbursts — Western nations and Israel. By laying the blame for regional turmoil on tried and true targets, Erdogan can rally his base against external enemies, conveniently eliding the AKP’s own failures on that score. In the process, however, he has further tarnished his government’s international image, already suffering in the wake of its brutal crackdown on protesters in the wake of Taksim. Which brings us back to the Olympics. While the failed bid may actually be a blessing in disguise, considering the serious social and political ramifications of the economic burden imposed by the games (see: Greece, Brazil), Erdogan really needed the victory to change the direction of the conversation around his government. That does not mean, however, that he will not use the failed bid to his own advantage; judging by his response to the IOC’s choice of Tokyo (he immediately accused the body of “turning its back” on Muslims), he is integrating the news into the “precious isolation” narrative his government has developed. As Erdogan vies for the Turkish presidency in 2014, and with local elections on the horizon, expect this kind of posturing to continue as the leader shifts his government’s defensive position into an offense. As he fights to protect AKP control of crucial mayoral seats in cities like Izmir and Istanbul, Erdogan’s tough stance and enduring political popularity will be necessary to rally support for the party as its approval ratings drop. However, embracing isolationism and alienating other international governments will be a tricky game going forward. The prime minister is facing increasingly tense domestic political quandaries — and if the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) stance in recent days is any indication, they could hit dangerously close to rattling the AKP’s core supporters. It is also a crucial juncture in the Syrian conflict next door. As the U.S. and other governments begin moving towards some still unclear form of action against the Assad regime, the AKP’s isolationist stance does not lend itself to the sort of leadership position in Middle East affairs it has become accustomed to. Whether forfeiting Turkey’s spot at the vanguard of regional political developments will translate into a significant political liability for Erdogan and his party at the ballot box remains to be seen. But even electoral success does not mean victory for Erdogan. It will, after all, have come at the cost of Turkey’s global reach and the disavowal of the AKP’s one major contribution to modern Turkish politics. World,Ahmet Davutoğlu,Ankara,Davos,Egypt,European Union,Ibrahim Kalin,Istanbul,Justice and Development Party (AKP),Middle East,Mohammed Morsi,Neo-Ottomanism,Qatar,Recep Tayyip Erdogan,Shimon Peres,Syria,Tokyo,Turkey,Lora Moftah
