Who will save the countries that support the coup in Egypt?

Looking at what is going on around us, it is said that the situation for Turkey is not very encouraging compared with three years ago. After all, Turkey had been advancing step by step toward the goal of forming a complete basin of peace in the whole region together with all the neighboring countries around it.

The foreign policy actors who set these goals "worth a fantasy world" for Turkey are still at work, but because of recent developments things are judged not to be going well.

In fact, the assessment should begin by asking what is not going well and what Turkey's role in it really is. What is not going well is, at worst, the zero-problems policy that Turkey itself declared and implemented in the face of the areas of resistance that exist in this cause. And it is this policy itself that is immediately targeted in response to all the problems around us.

Is the reason the "zero-problems policy" is being targeted that it is wrong, or that, though right in essence, it is faltering? This is not clear. What is strange and confusing is that those who opposed this policy fiercely even when it was first pronounced are now opposing it just as fiercely because it is being deviated from.

The truth, however, is that, despite all the problems being experienced and newly emerging, Turkey has not given up the zero-problems policy. This policy is, in the end, nothing beyond an expression of good will and will aimed at solving problems, and Turkey has not given up this will.

However, zeroing problems can sometimes be done by ignoring them, but more often problems are not solved by ignoring them; they grow even larger. On the other hand, facing those that cannot be ignored can sometimes require very great efforts. Zeroing problems may require facing a great many problems that have been pushed under the rug until now and making them more visible. In cases where problems have become a source of livelihood, income or power for someone, taking up the problem can create much bigger problems. For this reason, assessing whether solving the problem is worth undertaking compared with the problems it will itself produce is a matter of political choice. Active policy produces great friends and allies, but also hidden or open great rivals and adversaries. The obstacles and hindrances these produce can constitute in themselves one of the most important problem areas of the zero-problems policy.

In this context, relations with Syria and Egypt are generally pointed to as the lost areas of Turkey's foreign policy. Yet no one can say that the source of the problems with either country is Turkey. But those who blame Turkey in this matter should also have an idea of what alternative policy could be followed in Egypt and in Syria and what the opportunity costs of that policy might be.

What should Turkey have done, for example? Ignore what the Syrian dictator does, who commits massacres against his own people that would not be committed even against an enemy, who kills women and children using chemical weapons, and continue normal relations? Even if what he did were ignored, could normal relations with Assad be sustained? What relationship can be established by shaking hands with someone with the blood of more than a hundred thousand people, the women and children he slaughtered, on his hands? What kind of perverse fantasy is this, for God's sake?

Those who see not sustaining normal relations with the bloodstained regime in Syria as a policy weakness immediately write into the column of foreign policy failure Turkey's stance, the most natural, most humane stance that needed to be taken against an administration in Egypt that carried out a coup and put a feather in its cap with a massacre as well. It is a fact that relations with those currently ruling Egypt are bad. But is this a result of a weakness in Turkey's foreign policy, or of the abnormality in Egypt?

In my view, what is truly abnormal, what should truly worry us, is the mindset that wants us to continue relations in Egypt (as in Syria) as if nothing had happened. A mindset that does not erase from its heart and mind the coup plotters who have committed all these crimes, and not only does not erase them but visits them and encourages them, still permits coups, massacres and every kind of intrigue inside Turkey too.

Meanwhile let us not neglect the real-politik dimension of the matter either. For the attention of those drawing up profit-and-loss balance sheets after the coup in Egypt, one should take a good look at the economic-political picture presented by participants from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries at the meeting titled "The World's Test in the Face of Coups Against the Will of the Peoples," held in Istanbul last week.

Indeed, the present and future losses of the countries that supported the coup in Egypt cannot be finished being counted. The Egyptian economy was already in a very bad state. After the coup it has collapsed completely, and the economic cost of keeping this coup order going shows signs that it will utterly destroy the stability of many countries.

Let those who wanted it because it got the coup done in Egypt go on being seized by the delusion that Saudi Arabia or the Gulf is strong or coming out ahead. The support they gave to this inhuman coup has in essence dragged them into a complete quagmire economically. In this state, it is impossible for them to keep financing Egypt's economy, which has hit rock bottom, forever. We are not even counting the political dimension, that is, the disgraceful state into which they have tumbled with their own peoples and internationally.

The news that will sadden those who so love the fantasy of Turkey's having sunk into a quagmire is this: of the coup as a socio-political disaster in which everyone has lost in Egypt, the country it has touched with the least harm is again Turkey.

The others are obliged from now on to spend all their energy and effort on finding a way out for themselves. This punishment is enough for them.