Being disturbed by "an assertive Turkey"

It is evident that Turkey has been quite assertive recently, both through the reforms it has carried out at home, its economic and social breakthroughs, and in foreign policy. The reflection abroad of the successes achieved at home is perceived all over the world as a "rising Turkey", and while this excites some people, it naturally disturbs others.

Setting aside those disturbed by Turkey's rise, it is quite clear that the world's oppressed and the world's Muslims are excited by this rise. It is a situation that we have witnessed with our own eyes, especially in the streets we visited, on trips we have made in recent years in Islamic countries or anywhere in the world.

Those who look for, or claim to have found, imperial ambitions in this rise of Turkey are generally those who approach the revival of the Islamic world as a threat too. Those segments in Europe or America that look at Islam or Muslims not at all kindly see very well that this rise of Turkey creates a stirring, an excitement in the Islamic world as well, and are greatly disturbed by it. They express this disturbance either in crude Islamophobic discourse or in subtler expressions such as "axis shift" or "neo-Ottoman ambitions".

It is also natural that among those who infer neo-Ottoman ambitions from Turkey's rise there are some Arab nationalists. One should not expect Arab nationalism to look kindly on the new situation that has emerged with Turkey's rise. It is not unexpected that these nationalist attitudes not only interpret Turkey's interest in the Arab world in this way but also incite their own publics against Turkey. But the rising public opinion of the Arab-Islamic world already has a reaction against these Arab-Kemalist elitists of the post-colonial period. The Arab awakening or spring is in any case an awakening, a spring against the long winter these segments made them live.

Assad's recent resort to accusing Turkey and Prime Minister Erdoğan of reviving Ottomanism explains this situation well enough. In essence, it is impossible for Assad and these Arab nationalist elitists not to see that Turkey's rise coincides with the awakening of their own peoples too, and therefore with the rise of the whole Islamic world.

As for Turkey, as has been stated repeatedly until now, it has no ambition such as neo-Ottomanism, and no goal such as ruling anyone or managing anyone's national will. On the contrary, the goal Turkey is focused on is to turn the region into a basin of peace that has established its peace within itself and is integrated. This basin of peace means loosening the thick walls that have been put in between and that tear countries apart and cut their relations, increasing their commercial and cultural exchange, and thus also sharing the level of prosperity reached somewhere. It is quite clear that this is an ambitious goal, and it can be objected to only in the name of each country's own nationalist-elitist reflexes. It is quite normal for Assad or Turkish and Arab nationalists to object to this goal, because they feel and see that there is no place for themselves in the new order of an integrated region.

What is not normal here, and what therefore I cannot make sense of, is the objection to Turkish foreign policy proceeding in this direction by Ali Bulaç, one of the indisputably most important names of Islamist thought and tradition in Turkey. Bulaç's opposing Turkish foreign policy with the arguments and insinuations of Arab nationalists is truly not understandable.

As an Islamist, how can one object to an assertive policy locked onto the goal of regional integration on the ground that it is in conflict with France or with Russia or with any European country? With what Islamist argument can Davutoğlu's approach, which states that in African countries Turkey should confront France everywhere France goes, be criticized? Or do we no longer believe that France is one of the imperialist countries that exploited many regions of Africa to the marrow?

Bulaç says that this speech by Davutoğlu was noted by France, the US and Britain and that Turkey was punished for this reason in Libya. This is a scandalous assessment of the kind of which one can say "where would we even begin to correct it". Evidently he has not been able to follow what has happened in Libya well enough. First, no one is punishing, or able to punish, Turkey in Libya; on the contrary, it was Turkey that left France's and Britain's ambition to occupy Libya with a ground operation stuck in their craw. Had it not been for Turkey, Libya would be the target of an occupation similar to that of Iraq today. In fact, it would suffice for him to recall Sarkozy, who rushed in a panic to take Cameron along on Erdoğan's Libya trip and put himself in comical situations. In essence, if he is to speak of a punishment over Libya, he could cite France's hurriedly bringing the Armenian bill onto the agenda. That too only shows how desperate France is in this matter.

Second, France's situation in Libya was a complete desperate scramble to save the goods of a sinking ship, whereas Turkey established, as a result of the spring process in Libya, much better relations than before, and will continue to do so. The rest is something for France to think about.

Third, he who fears the crow does not sow millet, and one who magnifies the power of the unbelievers so much in his eyes cannot do Islamism. It is a bit odd for Bulaç, who for years, both on modernism and in the name of Islamist ideals, strolled at the peaks of astonishing assertiveness, to advise today a Turkey that made a claim at the beginning of the century and created excitement across the whole Islamic world to keep its feet in line.

Moreover, the only basis I can ultimately understand for Bulaç's criticisms directed at Turkey's Syria policy is that Assad has remained standing more than was thought. That he blames Turkey instead of Assad as the primary party responsible for the nearly 40 thousand deaths that Assad's obstinacy has left behind, the refugees approaching a million and a devastated Syria is another oddity. Yet Turkey's only goal at present is not to continue the war but to end it. It is not Turkey but Assad who is fighting against Syria's uprising people. But when he takes Assad's resistance by massacre as his success, and opposing him as both "failure" and "imprudence", it must also be recalled: what policy is there with absolute success at its end and no risk whatsoever? Let me go a little further and ask: did Hz. Hussein make a wrong calculation in his uprising that ended with the martyrdom of all his comrades in the cause? Let us not even mention Uhud...