The psychological foundations of the "Turkey's loneliness" discourse

Is it inevitable that Turkey, as it grows, should face greater threats, tensions and conflicts at the regional and global level, or is it a foreign policy failure? Naturally, this question has an aspect that proposes looking in reverse at perspectives such as "loneliness" and "encirclement," which have lately been attributed to Turkey. The truth is that how you look at an event decisively determines how you see developments.

Turkey is pursuing a more active foreign policy than at any time in its century-long history, and this activity inevitably brings it face to face with many actors on many fronts. Perhaps the place where the matter can be seen most objectively is Turkey's export figures. That exports, which stood at 35 billion dollars, have today exceeded 180 billion inevitably produces many rivals for you. All the more so as part of this competition is in the field of the defense industry...

That interest in Turkish products has risen all over the world and that the view of product quality has changed in a positive direction is a product of the very progress Turkey has recorded in this period.

But is it inevitable that development in these fields turns Turkey into a country fighting on every front and increasingly isolated?

First of all, who claims that Turkey has become isolated, by what assessment, and in what field? It is true that Turkey has entered into disagreement, even occasionally into clashes, with Russia, Iran, the US, France and the Syrian regime over Syria, but do all its relations with the same countries rest on conflict? On the points of disagreement it has its theses and claims and it insists on them, but in many other fields (except for the Syrian regime) it maintains relations with them at an even more advanced level than before.

On many issues in which Turkey is assertive it confronts an axis, but it finds a way to balance that axis with other axes, and as a result Turkey is now manifesting its presence with an unprecedented effectiveness in every field, from Syria to Iraq, from Libya to Somalia.

Rather than evaluating each event on its own, the loneliness thesis is fond of gathering the parties that stand against Turkey in all the disputed matters, absolutizing their opposition, and attributing a failure to Turkey. In the process, by granting in advance that the other side is right in every dispute, it displays a very "foreign" attitude. With this "foreign," even somewhat "French" attitude, what foreign policy can be proposed to Turkey other than submission to power and unprincipledness?

Yet if they have objective criteria regarding the loneliness attributed to Turkey, let them apply them to other countries too and see what they find.

For instance, Egypt, with which relations are currently bad: is it so sociable in the world? Does it have an ideal and successful foreign policy relationship with the countries of the world? If it does, what benefit do these relations bring it? By all its economic indicators the country has now virtually become a "non-country"; its economy is sunk, there is no investment climate whatsoever, and it has no standing in the world. If you wish, look more closely, and you will see far greater calamities. We are not even speaking of its having turned the country into a hell for its own citizens in terms of political freedoms.

And the United Arab Emirates? With whom does it get along? Is Turkey to envy the foreign policy of this country, which supported coup attempts and terrorist organizations in Turkey even when its relations with Turkey were at their best, and whose name among the Arab peoples has become, instead of "Imarat," the state of "mu'amarat," meaning "intrigue"?

In this process, is Turkey to envy Saudi Arabia, with which it has somehow fallen out? The current relations of Turkey with an administration that disgraced itself before the whole world by sawing its own citizen to pieces inside its own consulate grounds, far from costing Turkey anything, have earned it great prestige. If you do not see this, what kind of sociability will you speak of to cure loneliness?

What kind of desire for sociability, what kind of longing for a foreign policy, is the yearning for a world in which we could go on living rosily without any dispute with coup plotters, intriguers, sawyers and those who massacre their own people?

Let us come to the Western side. How can the sore point in Turkey's relations with the US, for instance, be removed? There are two ways:

1. Turkey makes no sound about the state that the PKK is openly being made to establish on its borders, and lays out in complete submission how it will cooperate on this, becomes a hero of the US, but becomes a disgrace of Turkey and of the ummah.

2. Again, Turkey raises no objection to Israel's Zionist policies and supports its occupying, expansionist policies, becomes again a hero of the US and of the Jewish lobbies within it, and a disgrace of Turkey and the ummah. It would have Israel, the US and perhaps many European countries by its side, but who would not be by its side, let those who are so bored with loneliness tell us.

This talk of loneliness in foreign policy, with apologies to everyone, harbors serious psychological illnesses when you dig beneath it. They can recommend that Turkey renounce its own rights so that Turkey may not be left alone.

Why? What is our problem? Do we lack the heart to object to the whole retinue of those trying to erase Turkey from the Mediterranean, at a stage prior to dispute, through a division that not even wolves would make? Are we to swallow this oppression saying that if we objected to all of them at once we would be very alone?

The psychological disorder, the fear of being left alone, stems in part from not seeing those who are by one's side, and perhaps from looking down on them.

Yet Turkey is not alone by either assessment. That is, there is tremendous support both from the countries and peoples they dislike, and Turkey's only relation with the countries it is in dispute with is not those matters of dispute. In other matters, relations and alliances continue.

Third, by the same criteria no country is different from Turkey; indeed they are much worse off.

Ultimately, there is tremendous movement in the world, a new division and therefore a host of quarrels, and in this process everyone takes part in these quarrels in various ways with new alliances.