Changing Global Balances of Power and Turkey

Last week the Strategic Thinking Institute hosted a conference at Dolmabahçe Palace titled "Changing Global Balances of Power and Turkey." Many scholars and thinkers from the US, Australia, Europe and the Arab countries offered very deep and comprehensive analyses of where the world we live in is heading and where Turkey stands on this course. At the conference, where names such as Fahmy Howeidy and Hassan Abu Taleb from Egypt and Richard Falk, Waleck Dalpour and Stephen Larebbe from the US spoke, an effort was made over two days and a total of six sessions to understand where the global world is heading and what place Turkey occupies in this history, within a world-historical perspective. The historical perspective, or what sociologists call the "sociological imagination," makes it possible to see the long-term historical trajectory while one is struggling with the details of events.

There is no doubt that there is a very close relationship between Turkey's visible strengthening on the global scale and its democratization. A Turkey that has not resolved its problems of human rights, freedoms and democratization, including such painful issues as the Kurdish question and the headscarf question, cannot possibly play its historical role. Without doubt, the EU process has made a very important contribution to Turkey in the matter of democratization. Today, outside that process too, Turkey has "taken ownership of its own democratization," and in this condition, if it joins the EU, it will cease to be a country that only takes things from the EU and has embarked on the path of becoming one that contributes a great deal to the EU. That Turkey has "taken ownership" of democratization is a point that must be underlined strongly in this context.

The idea that Turkey is a bridge between West and East is a familiar stock phrase, but this bridge is thought to derive merely from Turkey's geographical position between Asia and Europe. Yet although this geography has always existed, the bridge has not always had the same ease of passage. Salman Sayyid, who came from England, explained in striking fashion that the reason for this depends entirely on political will, and that if you do not have this will, geography has no importance at all. What Sayyid said also contained an invitation to focus on the question of what should come after today's West-centered world.

Establishing that the balances of power are changing does not in itself mean saying something new. Because throughout history the international balances of power change continuously. It has generally not been seen that balances of power remain the same within a century. Sometimes global balances change significantly several times within a single century. For example, as we live through an American century so long that we have come to speak of an almost unipolar world, we are at times inclined to think that this power is eternal and everlasting. Yet we should remember that until a hundred and fifty years ago the US was a country that was almost of no account in the international balances of power.

We tried to seek an answer from the participants from the Arab countries to the question of whether the increasing sympathy among the peoples toward Turkey, and of course especially toward Prime Minister Erdoğan, and Turkey's growing influence constitute a source of discomfort among Arab governments. Hassan Abu Taleb of the semi-official newspaper Al-Ahram rejected this possibility categorically. On the contrary, he explained that Turkey's return to the region is being welcomed with great enthusiasm and that on this matter the rulers do not hold an attitude different from that of the people.

Fahmy Howeidy explained that the Islamic world has a common sensitivity especially on Palestine and Islamophobia, and as he said that Turkey's real exit from the heart of the Arab world took place in 1949 when it became the first country to recognize Israel, while its re-entry took place in a magnificent way when 9 Turks shed their blood for Palestine on the Mavi Marmara, his voice trembled with great emotion.

Dr. M. Walid Radwan from Syria explained that five hundred years ago Sultan Selim the Grim conquered the Arab world by passing through Syria to Egypt with his soldiers, but that today Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Abdullah Gül and Ahmet Davutoğlu are conquering more of the same geography by passing through hearts.

These accounts are, of course, the emotional sides of the matter, and sound very pleasant to the ear. At the conference the risks that the changing global balances of power carry, both for the world and for Turkey, were also addressed at the highest level.