Turkish Public Diplomacy Faces Challenge in Yemen

Did you know Yemeni Kurds support Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s peace efforts with the Kurdistan Workers Party? The March 6 tweets from Yasin Aktay, a prominent pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) pundit, say they do.

Aktay was in Yemen on a diplomatic trip when he tweeted that Yemeni Kurds yearn for Turkey as their “motherland” and that they advise Turkish Kurds to stand by Erdogan “wherever he is standing.” Reading Aktay’s tweets and their baffled replies, I could not help but wonder what Turks are doing in Yemen.

Although I prefer to refrain from using the tainted term “neo-Ottomanism” when talking about Yemeni-Turkish relations of the last decade, rhetoric about “shared history and culture” generally masks the Turkish presence in Yemen. Indeed, from a scholarly perspective, there is plenty of naïve and idealistic rhetoric, but little rational explanation, in the framing of Turkish relations with Yemen. Much of the blame falls on the inept and amateurish style of Public Diplomacy Office in Ankara — neo-Ottoman diplomacy.

In the last decade, the AKP’s “here and there” activism, especially (but not exclusively) in former Ottoman lands, has kept bureaucrats on their toes. Yemen today seems to have little friction between career diplomats and AKP’s youth activists and party-nominated “advisers.” Every day a flock of Turkish academics, journalists and pundits tweet their “hug a Yemeni, buy a jambiya” photos from Sanaa. Quarrels have erupted on social media over whether chewing qat is halal.