Al Jazeera in the Middle East, Turkey and power

"If you cannot solve your own problems, someone else comes and solves your problems, but not content with solving them, takes his commission in the form of power. As long as the countries or actors of the region in the Middle East fail to display the will to solve the problems among themselves on their own, they open a field of intervention to external actors. In this way, the problems we produce among ourselves turn into fields where others produce power by showing initiative."

These words, which I am relaying in substance, belong to Dr. Hakan Fidan, who spoke on behalf of Prime Minister Erdoğan at the forum titled "Media and Power in the Middle East" organized by Al Jazeera in Doha. In the session, in which one representative each from the US, Iran, Palestine and Lebanon also took part, Fidan, explaining the perspective underlying Turkey's recently increasing influence in the region, in effect presented with these words a concise story of the domination of foreign powers in the Middle East.

By taking the initiative in communication and dialogue among regional actors, Turkey plays an important role in bringing the region closer together, integrating it and fusing it. When the problems among the countries of the region are solved, it is noticed that the solutions produce important advantages for both sides. Through a simple act of dialogue it is understood that the interest of one side is not to the detriment of the other. When a foreign policy goal of zero problems with neighbors is made to be adopted, as a concept, by all the countries of the region, there is no measuring the total synergy created. When this goal is reached, actors from outside the region cannot have an influence over the region to the detriment of its people.

Prof. Ahmet Davutoğlu, the architect of this foreign policy, which developed as a true revolution in Turkey's history and raised Turkey to the position of an actor in the region that can never be ignored, is at the same time the actual implementer of this policy. It does not escape the eye that Davutoğlu, who dropped in on Al Jazeera's forum while in Qatar, is received not like an ordinary diplomat of Turkey but like a close relative whom everyone knows well and holds dear. The wide bridges of the heart opened by this approach, which successfully adds human warmth to diplomacy, could not in any case have been managed with the approach of a diplomatic clerk.

Although the participants in the forum in Qatar are very hopeful about Turkey's latest political opening, they cannot skip the question of whether this policy, to which they are not very accustomed on Turkey's part, is a state policy or an AKP policy. Starting from the fact that, although the AKP's vote share is 47 percent, the AKP's Middle East policy at times reaches 70 percent, we try to explain that, whichever government comes to power, there can no longer be a return from this foreign policy horizon that has opened up before Turkey.

Al Jazeera is a great invention of the emirate of Qatar, whose native population is around 250 thousand. It is a wonderful example that, even from a tiny population and a minuscule piece of land, if one wishes, a way can be found to have a say in the politics of the whole world. Of course, we cannot ignore the dimension of money from oil that made this easier. But we also know that a similar or corresponding invention has not come from a great many countries with more money.

Al Jazeera has become a very powerful actor especially in the social transformation and the rise in the level of democratic consciousness in the Islamic world. In parallel with its broadcast network reaching all Islamic countries, it increases its influence more every day. Thanks to its persistent commitment to the objective broadcasting principles it has set, it has a credibility that no one can dispute. Thanks to Al Jazeera, the country of Qatar and its emir too have reached a respect in world politics that cannot be ignored.

Without doubt, the reality of Al Jazeera is an important example showing that getting stuck on the negative sides of the process of globalization, lamenting over the costs of these sides and being stuck in feelings of helplessness is not a fate. On the contrary, it is the reward of being able to see that the process of globalization, like all processes, contains areas of important opportunity as much as negative sides.

When Fahmy Howeidy of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram said in his speech at the forum, "had today's media existed in the thirties, a state called Israel could never have been founded," he was pointing, despite the many aspects of the media that can be criticized, to the effect of the areas of political participation that it has unavoidably opened up for people in spite of dictators.

The relationship between media and power is not always a one-way relationship. There is always a course oscillating between the media of power or the power of media. The loss of independence in the Middle East has largely arisen because of the discourses produced by media that do not reflect the facts, that are Orientalist, or that are directly the voice of domestic or foreign powers.

It is clear that the way for the region to regain its own independence, self-confidence and will is also possible thanks to a media organization passionately committed to reflecting the facts in the same process. The forums that Al Jazeera has turned into a tradition are devoted to the search for a media of this quality.