Perceptions of Turkey in the Middle East

We continue our impressions of how Turkey is perceived in the Middle East from where we left off, in Riyadh.

Before I had even found time to examine the recently published 2012 edition of TESEV's "Perception of Turkey in the Middle East" study, conducted every year under the coordination of Prof. Mensur Akgün and whose results I always await with curiosity, I ran into it at a gathering in Riyadh. As I said before, it was a Saudi journalist who put the study in front of me, and what he objected to in the results was in particular that the perception of Turkey was declining while the perception of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates was on the rise.

Frankly, what struck me at first as interesting was not so much the content of the report as that journalist's objection to the finding that the image of both S. Arabia and the UAE was improving. Yet after I examined the report, which I downloaded to my computer as soon as I left the gathering, I decided that it did not deserve that much objection. Because the report contained data from 2012, and it was evident that the journalist felt an anger toward both the UAE and S. Arabia, and the policies that gave rise to this anger belonged rather to 2013.

It was already known that Saudi Arabia was on bad terms with the Brotherhood, especially in Egypt, but it is its policies in support of the coup that have, by now, largely affected its image in a negative direction. The TESEV report notes that although Turkey has not lost much of its status as the most admired country compared with 2011, its approval rating has dropped by about 10 percent, which is not very surprising, particularly when Turkey's Syria and Egypt policies are taken into consideration.

In 2011, on the one hand, there was no such deep dispute with anyone in the region because of Syria, and on the other, thanks to its stance alongside the January 25 Revolution, which had just taken place in Egypt in an atmosphere of a kind of consensus, Turkey was a favored country in Egypt as well. Yet the course of time brought with it a political polarization within Egypt, and Turkey was affected by this polarization too. However non-sectarian a policy Turkey may pursue, the fact remains that a significant part of the population of Syria, Iran and Lebanon, among the places where the research data were gathered, hold a sect-based attitude toward Turkey.

In the end, there is no debate over whether the perception is justified or over its real cause. One of the most striking results of the study is that the positive perception of Turkey in the region continues in spite of all the changes and the reactions coming from countries such as Syria, Iraq and Iran. This year, among 18 countries inside and outside the region, Turkey is the most positively evaluated country, at 69 percent.

In fact, Assoc. Prof. Ahmet Uysal of the Institute for Strategic Thinking also conducts similar studies, though not periodically, and the results run parallel to those put forward by TESEV. Still, especially for S. Arabia and the UAE, we can already say that the results after the Egyptian coup will show a tragic change compared with the data that can be compiled these days. A Saudi academic friend tells me that S. Arabia's current foreign policy is criticized by at least 70 percent of the people. Especially after the rapprochement between Iran and the US, the possibility that Turkey, too, may resolve its problems with Iran and move closer to it has further increased the discontent with S. Arabia's Egypt policy. Because, according to many intellectuals and academics, by supporting the coup in Egypt, S. Arabia and the Gulf countries on the one hand wrong Egypt and the entire Islamic world, but above all they do great harm to friendship with Turkey. While the possibility of losing Turkey's friendship is at the center of the criticism in this sense, the theme of "isolation" in foreign policy holds a prominent place here too.

Of course, one should not expect Turkey's active foreign policy and its stance against coups to be met with unquestioned goodwill. Solely because of this stance, broadcasts originating in the Gulf or on Egyptian state television criticize Turkey's position from morning till night. Admittedly, the fact that such heavily hostile broadcasting is not producing the expected effect on the current perception of Turkey is telling in terms of the popular influence of the media.

One of the trends that has recently developed among the middle and upper classes in S. Arabia is buying an apartment or property in Turkey. A significant portion of the people at certain levels whom I met have apartments in Istanbul or Yalova, and a significant portion of those who do not are planning to buy one. We made almost the same observation in Kuwait, which we visited last year, and, as you may recall, we shared it in this column.

Turkey's perception in the Middle East is of course not independent of its politics, and these politics are not independent of the dynamic developments in the Middle East that force one to take sides. That is why it is quite natural for the perception to fluctuate, while Mensur Akgün's regular reports (prepared together with Sabiha Senyücel Gündoğar) are important works recording these shifts in perception.