If only the peace-lovers would explain it to Assad a little too

BERLIN

Turkey's Syria policy is still being debated at home at the level of "until yesterday we were friends enough to vacation together, how did we become enemies overnight." It is probably thought that Turkey suddenly got swept up in conquest fantasies and fell into an adventurism that wants to launch expeditions into Syria. That is why one cannot move for anti-war romantic peaceniks who set about teaching Turkey, the Prime Minister or Davutoğlu the evils of war.

What kind of sensibility, one wonders, is it a sign of that these peaceniks have said nothing for quite some time about how to stop Assad, the true enemy of peace, who brutally slaughters hundreds of people every day with the heavy weapons he holds through state power. After all, the one fighting right now, and fighting against its own people at that, is not Turkey but the Syrian state.

While Turkey's Syria policy is debated at this level inside Turkey, in the world, in Europe, in Germany, Turkey's foreign policy in general and its Syria policy in particular are being examined with great attention and interest in an effort to understand them. The two-day conference titled "Turkish Foreign Policy: Threats and Opportunities in Changing Regional and Global Neighborhoods," organized under the Southeast Asia Association (Südosteurope Gesellschaft), founded in 1952, was only one of the similar meetings being held in many parts of Europe these days.

In the hall where the negotiations on the unification of East and West Germany were conducted, while Turkey's foreign policy was laid on the table in all its dimensions for two days, no approach showed any trace of the kind of superficiality we often encounter in Turkey. Looking from here, one even gets the impression that the policy Turkey is pursuing is understood far better. One feels, for example, the pressure that Turkey exerts on Europe through its silence on Syria. Here it is Europe that is on the defensive. Because when the situation in Libya was no worse than this, a decision to intervene was reached at once and Libya was intervened in with haste. At that time, the intervention taking the form of a ground operation and an occupation was prevented only by Turkey putting NATO forward.

Likewise, Saddam's Iraq was invaded on the basis of fabricated intelligence that it possessed weapons of mass destruction. In the end, no weapons of mass destruction were found, but an adventure was entered into that resulted in the deaths of nearly a million people in Iraq and in the end served no one. Yet in Syria, Assad himself confesses to possessing chemical weapons by saying he could use them if necessary, and is fighting against his own people in a way that cancels his own state's legitimacy. In response, European countries and the international community are doing nothing but defending themselves, while trying to go to endless lengths to explain whether the conditions necessary for an intervention have formed.

One of those who attended the meeting and has been following Turkey closely for years, while explaining that, in spite of everything, what was said at the meeting did not sufficiently grasp Turkey, says he finds Turkey's foreign policy much more rational than is supposed, but just as difficult to interpret, complex and successful. Of course I should note that he is not saying only positive things. He criticizes, for example, that Turkey is not making enough use of the possibilities for cooperation with the EU, both on security and on humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees.

Meanwhile, the confusion and internal contradictions that the EU is experiencing within itself over Turkey also make it more understandable that Turkey is diversifying its foreign policy options. The criticisms directed at Turkey's quests on this matter remain feeble, because it is also seen that, through its openings in the Middle East and the Islamic world, Turkey is creating a wide sphere of influence. At a level where relations with the EU are better, why shouldn't this sphere of influence that Turkey has reached also be put to use in the EU's favor?

Coming back to the Syria issue, no one in fact needs to remind Turkey how bad war is. It is very unfair, at the very least, that Turkey should be the addressee of such reminders, because Turkey is by no means itching for war. Contemplating the possibility of war and being prepared for it is one thing; itching for war, wanting war, is another. Turkey's being able to show that it is prepared for a possible war and that it will not shrink from it if necessary is also the precondition for establishing peace. Otherwise, even in the hardest times, even at moments when it was thought that no option but war remained, Turkey has proven itself more than anyone in finding and putting forward possible and reasonable non-war options.

When it became clear that the quartet initiative launched earlier with Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia would not work, Prime Minister Erdoğan's unexpected meeting with Ahmadinejad while in Baku, and his voicing of different trilateral options in that meeting, show the capacity to produce new diplomatic-political options. The call to the warring parties to enter the Feast of Sacrifice with a ceasefire should also be assessed in this framework.

Turkey, in spite of everything, is still more concerned than anyone to produce non-war options