Was Turkey able to exploit its strategic location to establish itself as a leading regional power in the Middle East and Central Asia?, Tesine universitarie di Geopolitica

Scarica Was Turkey able to exploit its strategic location to establish itself as a leading regional power in the Middle East and Central Asia? e più Tesine universitarie in PDF di Geopolitica solo su Docsity! PICT8060 Geopolitics and Geostrategy Essay Was Turkey able to exploit its strategic location to establish itself as a leading regional power in the Middle East and Central Asia? Student number:46149392 Introduction Ever since the publication of Mackinder’s "The Geographical Pivot of History" (1904), Eurasia has been considered one of the most significant areas in the study of geopolitics. Holding a vital strategic importance for all global Great Powers, Eurasia is today one of the major confrontation arenas for international politics. Since the end of the Cold War — and especially in the post 9/11 period — Eurasian geopolitics have witnessed the swift economic development of China and India and the consequent intensification of exchanges between the East and the West. In the Middle East, the already chronical instability has been amplified by the political turmoil brought by the Arab Spring, while energy producing countries in the region have gather increasing interest from the rest of the world due to fast industrialisation and skyrocketing energy demand. In this context, one actor that has been increasingly active in the effort of shaping regional geopolitics is Turkey. As the gateway of Eurasia, Turkey holds a comparatively favourable geographical location to steer the recent geopolitical developments to its advantage. Accordingly, since the rise to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in November 2002, Turkey”s foreign policy has evolved from what is describable as “diplomatic inertia” (Grigoriadis, 2010) to an increasingly proactive and assertive stance. Tukey?s renewed ambitions have prompted an extensive debate on the country’s opportunities and challenges in the region. Concerning energy, Bahgat (2015) argued that Turkey was able to enhance its energy partnerships to secure resources both for its internal demand and for the EU, creating a “win-win-win proposition for all concerned”. Others, however, have warned both on the complexity of working with the European energy market (Demiryol, 2013) and on Russia’s monopoly on energy in the region 1|Pag. (Coskun and Carlson, 2010). Regarding culture, Bilgin and Bilgig (2011) have assessed the role of “civilizational geopolitics” in Turkey?s renewed foreign policy. In response to their paper, Cohen (2011) has warned that Turkey still has to face stark differences with the Arab Middle East and Russia’s cultural grasp in Central Asia. Finally, on trade, Kulaksiz (2019) has discussed Turkey?s rapid economic development and its inclusion in the Chinese BRI as a major regional trade hub. However, Kulaksiz also highlighted Turkey?s trade deficit with China, the lack of commercial complementarity and the small Turkish share of total Chinese FDI. Building on these premises, this essay seeks to understand whether the country was able to exploit its strategic location to establish itself as a leading regional power in the Middle East and Central Asia. Section one will examine Turkish oil and gas pipeline projects to assess whether the country was able to become an energy hub or remained a simple energy corridor. Section two will consider the AKP”s Civilization strategy and the possibility for Turkey to establish itself as a political role model for the Arab Middle East and Central Asia. Finally, section three will examine Turkey’s economic improvements and its inclusion in the Chinese BRI, to assess whether these developments granted the country commercial primacy in the region. To conclude, the essay will briefly summarise evidence from the previous sections to argue that Turkey was not able to establish itself as a regional leader in the Middle East and Central Asia. Section one: energy One of the key pillars of geopolitic is that control over extraction and transportation of energy resources can grant States a significant level of influence in regional and global political balances (Ersen and Celikpala, 2019). It is based on this understanding that, as early as the 1960s, Turkey began increasingly investing in pipeline projects (Table 1). Until the beginning of the 2000s, however, Turkey”s role was merely that of a transit country receiving rent for the use of its transmitting pipelines, as the projects were mainly aimed at addressing national demand, while the European market was almost entirely served by Russian supplies passing by Ukraine (Ersen and Celikpala, 2019). 2|Pag. Country Petroleum oils o Naturalgas | Country Petroleum oils. Natural gas Austria 0-5 0-5 Italy 10-20 10-20 Belgium 0-5 0-5 Latvia 0-5 0-5 Bulgaria 0-5 0-5 Lithuania 0-5 0-5 Croatia 0-5 0-5 Luxemburg 0-5 0-5 Cyprus 0-5 0-5 Malta 0-5 0-5 Czechia 0-5 0-5 Netherlands 10-20 10-20 Denmark 0-5 0-5 Poland 0-5 0-5 Germany 10-20 10-20 Portugal 0-5 0-5 Estonia 0-5 0-5 Romania 0-5 0-5 Finland 0-5 0-5 Slovakia 0-5 0-5 France 10-20 5-10 Slovenia 0-5 0-5 Greece 0-5 0-5 Spain 10-20 5-10 Hungary 0-5 0-5 Sweden 0-5 0-5 Ireland 0-5 0-5 United Kingdom 5-10 10-20 Table 2: Share (% of trade) of imports of petroleum and natural gas by Member State, 1" semester 2019 Finally, Turkey”s pipeline projects may be negatively impacted by wars, terrorism and conflict zones, which have plagued the region for many years (Ersen and Celikpala, 2019). To its south, Turkey faces complex crises in Syria, Yemen, Israel and Palestine, escalating rivalries between Iran and Saudi Arabia and chronic instability in Irag, Libya and Lebanon. To its north and east, Turkey faces the thorny conditions of Nagorno- Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea and Donbas. Finally, to its west, Ankara confronts worsening tensions between Russia and Western countries (Ersen and Celikpala, 2019). Unless Turkey succeeds in addressing all these complicated challenges, it might simply remain a transit country unable to shape the energy politics of Eurasia. Section two: civilization geopolitics According to John Agnew (2003), civilizational geopolitics emphasise the role of culture and civilization, rather than national geography or ideology, as the bases of a country’s strategic behaviour. In this sense, Samuel Huntington (1993), defined civilizations as “self-contained entities with sui generis characteristics” determined by 5S|Pag. history and culture, and hypothesised that cultural and religious cleavages would be the main drivers of foreign policy in the post-Cold War era (Bilgin and Bilgig, 2011). In the context of Turkey, civilization geopolitics have been applied in the country’s foreign policy through the work of Ahmet Davutoglu - chief advisor to Prime Minister Erdogan (2003-2009), Minister of Foreign Affairs (2009-2014) and Prime Minister/Leader of the AKP (2014-2016). In “Strategic Depth” (2001), Davutoglu took a critical stance towards the country’s past foreign policy — traditionally Western- oriented, secular and Kemalist (Cohen, 2011) — by proclaiming the need for Turkey to play a leadership role in its “natural sphere of influence”, comprising the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Mediterranean. This vision, officially adopted by the AKP since 2002, rests on the glorification of the country's Ottoman past and presupposes the identification of a “civilization basin” in which Turkey holds an historical responsibility to guide and assist its “sibling countries” (Bilgin and Bilgic, 2011). In practical terms, the central aim of Turkey”s civilisation strategy has been to propose itself as a role model for combining modernisation and democracy with the promotion of Islamic values, an aim that Ankara has tried to achieve by strengthening religious and cultural affinities with countries like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan (Cohen, 2011), while strategically preserving its connections to Western Countries, NATO, the Council of Europe and the OECD (Larrabee, 2010). FRANCE i Fasd e a Pi i Btanbul Madrid li Pa e. 7 n ù É RI N | iI ISU LU EST D SAFAVID È (aLe RaAVZGA SIRIO e, EI ICEl OFMOROCCO } n Figure 2: Territorial extension of the former Ottoman Empire 6|Pag. More than in any other instance, this strategy has concretised in the possibility for Turkey to play a mediation role between Western countries and Iran on nuclear issues. Compared to other regional actors, Turkey has earned Iranian trust by recognising its “importance in the region and denying its allegedly destabilizing role” (Bonab, 2009). Iran perceives Turkey as the most independent and neutral regional actor, especially because it avoided the imposition of sanctions, contrary to the USA and the EU. Iran has repeatedly expressed his readiness to accept Turkey”s role as a bridge with the West, and in 2019 Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani stated that the two countries share “close views on important regional issues” and should thus enhance their security cooperation (Teheran Times, 2019). On the other hand, the West sees Turkey as more reliable than other regional actors, including Russia, especially given Ankara’s opposition to the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran (Bonab, 2009). If achieved, the mediation role would indeed grant Turkey renewed relevance as a central power in the region. However, Turkey?s ambitions have met several challenges. To begin with, Syria, one of the most fundamental States with which Turkey tried to strengthen relations, has been plagued by a devastating civil war since 2011. As the main supporter of the opposition to Al-Assad’s regime, Turkey?s relations with the Syrian government have irreparably deteriorated (Hinnebusch and Tiir, 2013). Furthermore, as the conflict represented an opportunity for autonomous Kurdish forces to gain significant territory in north-east Syria, Turkey’s issues with its own Kurdish minority have also come into play. In conflict with the violent separatist PKK since the 1980s, Turkey sees the establishment of the Autonomous Kurdish Territory in Syria as a threat to its internal and international stability (Bilgic, 2019). Even if relations with Syria had not deteriorated, a series of historical, linguistical, political and culturally differences hinder the possibility for Turkey to be a role model for the Arab Middle East. Politically, Turkey - a moderately Sunni Islamic state with a considerable secularist past, is still very far from Syria - a ruthless Alawite dictatorship, Iran - an extremist Farsi Shiite regime, and Iraq - a coalition of communists, secularists, Sunnis, and Shiites led by a Shiite cleric (Woods et al., 2020). Linguistically and ethnically Turkey cannot be considered Arab, as its official language is Turkish (rather than Arab) and its main ethnicity is Turkic (Arabs make only 5.3% of the population). Historically, Turkey begun its modernization process already in 1923, while most States 7|Pag. (Akcay, 2017). As part of this network, Chinese companies have also invested in the ports of Kumport, Candarli and Mersin. Key Projects subsumed under China's Belt and Road initiative Figure 5: China's Belt and Road Initiative, key infrastructure For Turkey, whose strategic goal is to become Eurasia’s transport and trade hub, the BRI could constitute a very fruitful opportunity. Combined with Turkey”s strategic location, intensified investments in transports and increasing free trade with neighbouring countries could allow Turkey to be “a crucial transit centre within a fully- fledged Eurasia-wide network” (Atli, 2018). However, Turkey has encountered several challenges in the achievement of this goal. First, since 2007 the economic growth rate has steadily decreased (going negative in 2014, 2016 and 2018) and productivity became increasingly stagnant, with rising inflation and unemployment, due both to the AKP”s mounting corruption and arbitrary decision-making and to the downfall of EU- accession talks, which removed incentives for further reforms (Acemoglu, 2015). In recent years, trade with the EU did not experience an encouraging growth and the 2019 Turkish import/export balance resulted in a deficit of $294 billion (European Commission, 2020). Second, economic cooperation with China also does not seem to offer a valid alternative yet, as Turkey reached a trade surplus with China only in 1993- 94, while in all the other years, the trade surplus in the commercial relationship has been overwhelmingly Chinese (Akcay, 2017). Furthermore the Turkish and Chinese markets lack commercial complementarity, since both countries specialise in textiles, food, and light industry (Kulaksiz, 2019). Regarding the BRI, it should be noted that the project serves mainly the interest of China, aiming to raise revenues by utilising the excess of its domestic production in the construction of BRI infrastructures. Furthermore, the 10|Pag. project may even worsen Turkey”s export/import balance with China, as the Chinese market is still characterised by heavy restrictions on imports and advantageous subsidies for domestic companies (Akcay, 2017). Finally, as with energy and civilisation, it is fundamental to consider the possibility that instability and terrorism in the region may highjack the completion of significant BRI projects (Kulaksiz, 2019). Conclusion During the last two decades, Turkish geostrategy has drastically changed from its previous outlook for a wide range of different reasons. Conflicts in Ukraine and Georgia have prompted the EU to avoid exces sive reliance on Russian energy supplies and search for new partners in Central Asia and the Middle East. For Turkey, this constituted a unique opportunity to exploit its strategic position between the EU market and the resource-rich countries of the region, and to increase its leverage in regional geopolitics. A more proactive stance has also been adopted in the enhancement of ethnic, cultural and religious links with countries that once were part of the Ottoman empire, today considered by Turkey as a civilisation basin where a leadership role can be played. By encouraging social and economic reforms and promoting free trade in the region and overseas, Turkey has also intensified its active participation in global trade routes and partnerships that may considerably increase its revenues and quality of life. From the analysis of the three sections discussed above, one single red line can be traced to connect all these different dimensions of Turkish international policies: the country’s “bridging” nature. Far from being just a geographical attribute, this characteristic permeates most aspects of Ankara’s geostrategy, from connecting energy consumers and energy suppliers, to associating Western democracy with political Islam, to linking together European and Asian markets. 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