Turkey's foreign policy reset will not be easy

Turkey’s foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, was a shining star until the Arab Spring bloomed and misguided developments followed. In the course of the change that began in Tunisia and culminated in the toppling of the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt and reached the borders of Syria, everyone in the world was familiar with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s formula of "zero problems with neighbors policy." That formula was seen as illustrating the success of Turkey’s foreign policy achievements under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s premiership

With the eruption of the Syrian crisis and its transformation into a civil war and regional proxy conflict, Turkey's "zero problems with neighbors" policy was gradually replaced by a policy of "no neighbors without problems." This wasn’t actually a choice of a new policy but a total reversal of the original policy.

This near-180 degree turn of Turkey’s regional policy has inspired regular ironic remarks. Two weeks ago, I was speaking to the prestigious Independent Turkey Commission, chaired by former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari, on the developments in Turkey. One person interrupted my talk and sarcastically said, "To have poor relations with all of Israel, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran all at the same time is something you can’t do easily, even if you wanted to. That is an extraordinary achievement. What kind of zero problems with neighbors is this?" He omitted two other important political centers: Washington and Moscow. 

Davutoglu visited Washington two weeks ago. In addition to his counterpart US Secretary of State John Kerry, he met with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and national security adviser Susan Rice; gave a lecture at the Brookings Institute and held a meeting with Washington opinion-makers in an off-the-record session at the Turkish Embassy. As usual, Davutoglu’s Washington visit was conveyed to the Turkish public as a successful mission. But information reaching us from Washington corridors is not upbeat. For example, an opinion-maker who attended one of the meetings and who has direct access to the White House told me, “The man is too self-congratulatory.”