Turkey’s move to restore relations with Russia and Israel this past week marks a notable pivot in its foreign policy with repercussions for the war in Syria, the migration crisis, and the tourism and energy industries in the Mediterranean.
With action more than words, the government of Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is acknowledging the failure of its recent attempts to try to expand influence in Egypt and Syria and elsewhere in the region following the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. The approach soured ties with traditional Western allies, including the U.S. and the EU, as well as Russia and Israel.
The ostracism has proved hard for Ankara to bear as the war in Syria spills over into Turkey, bringing hundreds of thousands of refugees and a spate of terrorist attacks attributed to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, most recently last week’s deadly shootings and bombings at Istanbul airport. The government’s conflict with the Kurds in Turkey itself has turned violent in the past year, presenting another challenge.
‘Good old pragmatism’
The first concrete step to rebuild frayed relationships was Turkey’s agreement with the EU earlier this year to limit migration flows in return for aid and visa-free travel for Turks into Europe. This week’s overture to Russia suggests a possible softening in Turkey’s long-standing support for the rebels in Syria who are fighting to unseat the regime of Bashar Assad.
The restoration of diplomatic relations with Israel, after a six-year rupture brought on by disagreements over Israeli policy in the Gaza strip, opens the prospect for lucrative gas deals in the Mediterranean. But along with the Russia deal, the fence-mending suggests “an impressive return of good old pragmatism,” said Kemal Kirişci, director of the Center on the United States and Europe’s Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Before Erdoğan’s neo-Islamist Justice and Development Party took power in Turkey almost 15 years ago, Israel and Ankara were close allies.
The problems with Russia date back to Moscow’s decision last year to intervene militarily in Syria on Assad’s behalf, infuriating Turkey. After Turkey shot down a Russian war plane that strayed into its air space last November, Moscow imposed economic sanctions and withdrew its ambassador. Now, in the wake of the reconciliation moves, an opening exists for the two to work together on Syria.
A live broadcast of the opening of the flight recorder from the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 bomber which was shot down by a Turkish jet last year | Vasily Maximov/AFP via Getty Images
Turkey initiated the rapprochement with Russia. Erdoğan on Monday sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin, saying he would do “everything possible” to restore ties. Whether Erdoğan apologized or simply expressed regret depends on whether it’s Ankara or Moscow telling the story. The gesture was enough for Putin, who called Erdoğan on Wednesday. He promised to lift Russia’s ban on tourist package trips to Turkey, which he then announced on Friday, and offered his condolences for the attack on Istanbul airport.
Southern gas route
Talks between Turkey and Israel had been running for years with American encouragement before Monday’s announcement that the two countries had decided to normalize diplomatic relations.
The Israel deal could have been an impetus for the Russia breakthrough, said Matthew Bryza, a former senior State Department official responsible for the region and later U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan. “I think Putin made the calculation and said ‘OK, the pressure is being relieved on Turkey from the south, and therefore now it makes sense for us to relieve pressure from the north, because we’re not going to be able to squeeze him, because we don’t want energy from Israel to gain momentum and then shut us out of Turkey’,” Bryza said.
The diplomatic truce with Israel is a first step to unlock new gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean. A planned pipeline would carry the from Israelis waters via Cyprus and on to Turkey. Israel believes deliveries could start as early as 2019, an Israeli minister told a Turkish newspaper.
The project hangs on the outcome of intense negotiations in Cyprus to reunify the divided island, which could go to a referendum this year. The country has been split since 1974, with Greek Cypriots in the south, led by a government recognized everywhere except in Turkey, and Turkish Cypriots in the north, where Turkey still has more than 30,000 troops.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits the explosion scene at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul | EPA/Turkish President Press Office
Erdoğan has signaled his support for Cypriot reunification, and the deal with Israel removes a political hurdle to building the pipeline across the eastern Mediterranean.
On natural gas, Turkey and Russia are mutually dependent: Russia is Turkey’s largest supplier, providing 57 percent of its gas, while Turkey is Russia’s second-largest customer. “You’ll notice that Russia did not cut off its gas deliveries” after the warplane was shot down, said James Jeffrey, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, currently at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Russia needs Turkey to buy its gas, and Turkey needs Russia to provide its gas because there’s no other source for it.”
Their long-term goals diverge. Ankara wants to enlarge and diversify its pool of suppliers to fill rising gas demand and lower the cost of its imports. Moscow wants to hold on to its valuable customer.
‘Zero neighbors without problems’
The shift in foreign approach took on clarity with the replacement of the independent-minded prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, with Erdoğan’s former advisor and loyalist, Binali Yıldırım. In his first speech, Yıldırım said Turkey would seek to have “more friends, fewer enemies.”
“Everybody knew what that meant, because Davutoğlu had started out saying ‘Our foreign policy is going to be zero problems with neighbors,’ and it turned out to be ‘zero neighbors without problems,’” said Bryza.
The new foreign policy doctrine in Ankara has to grapple with some harsh realities. The neighborhood remains a tinderbox. Recent tensions left a lot of ill will with many countries. While Ankara has a stated interest to keep the ambitious migration deal with the EU on track, there are signs it might unravel before the end of the year. Relations with Germany are particularly strained, following the Bundestag’s decision to recognize the World War I massacre of Armenians as a genocide.
“Essentially, Turks across the board realized that they had to change their tone and they had to be more flexible,” Jeffrey said.
In Syria, Turkey could reduce support for the anti-Assad rebels or seek Russian support to pressure Assad to step aside. But analysts said the status quo in the civil war is just as likely. On Syria, “Turkey sees itself confronting an alliance of Iran, Syria and Russia,” Jeffrey added. “But Turkey is a classic realpolitik country with a realpolitik diplomatic tradition. That is, you can oppose people in one theater while you trade and talk with them in others.”