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The images of Turkey held by most people probably do not reflect this unique country’s vast reservoir of what Harvard professor Joseph Nye (2004) calls “soft power” – cultural, social, economic, intellectual and other “non-military” forms of capital that influence perceptions and behavior of citizens and elites of other countries. Indeed, at the time of this writing, global media are focusing on Turkey’s display of “hard power” as it wages a military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria as well as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Southeastern Turkey and the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq.
The collection of essays in this volume on “Turkey as Mediator: Stories of Success and Failure,” edited by Dr. Doğa Ulaş Eralp, is a timely reminder that, despite what else Turkey might be doing along the lines of traditional Realpolitik, its foreign policy is far more nuanced than current headlines would have us believe. Turkey been active as a mediator in the Western Balkans, Middle East, Somalia, the P5+1 negotiations with Iran, and elsewhere – a role which took off in earnest during current prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s previous tenure as foreign minister (see Muzalevsky, 2012). Significantly, its record as a third party is even more impressive than that of either the EU or U.S., especially in the Western Balkans (see Zenelaj, et al., 2015, and Chapter 3 in this volume). Turkey’s singular status as a third party can be easily grasped through a thought experiment: Are there similar books about, say, “Britain as Mediator,” “France as Mediator,” “China as Mediator,” “Russia as Mediator,” and any other national group, written by conflict analysts and conflict resolution practitioners from those countries? I cannot think of any!
The obvious question now is: What accounts for Turkey’s impressive record as a third party intervener in some of the world’s most intractable conflicts -- a fact also documented in a master’s thesis undertaken by one of Turkey’s senior diplomats, Hasan Akin (2014), who serves as first secretary at the Embassy of Turkey in Washington, DC?
First and foremost, I would argue, is Turkey’s rich cultural and historical heritage -- an indisputable fact that renders Turkey the ideal bridge between Asia and Europe, the Islamic and Christian worlds, the West and the Middle East, North and South. Turkey’s unique hybrid identity includes membership in NATO, aspirations to become a member of the EU, a democracy in a predominantly Muslim society with a well-established Jewish community and, until recently, excellent relations with Israel. Indeed, Turkey stands out as a democratic/capitalistic model for other Muslim majoritarian countries. In an earlier essay (Sandole, 2009, p. 639), I even argued that:
as a Muslim and secular state, with membership in NATO and the Council of Europe, plus aspirations to become a member of the EU, Turkey remains an anomaly: a status which, despite some very real challenges,, could enable it to nip in the bud the ‘clash of civilizations’ dynamic between the Islamic world and the West that, via a pernicious self-fulfilling process, has become a reality.
To his credit, Dr. Eralp comments on these “very real challenges,” which are eroding Turkey’s democratic infrastructure and its effectiveness as a third party intervener. What helps compensate for this democratic deficit is Turkey’s impressive intellectual resources in conflict analysis and resolution (CAR); i.e., the conflict and peace studies multidiscipline has been institutionalized in a number of universities across the country, establishing training and degree programs for Turkish diplomats and others, including an increasing number of students from abroad, who wish to develop professionally as skilled conflict analysts and conflict resolution practitioners.
In a separate essay, Dr. Nimet Beriker (2015, pp. 18-19) -- a contributor to this volume – provides a brief, balanced critique of Turkey’s efforts to establish CAR academic programs, including the country’s premier, first MA, program in the field, established by Dr. Beriker herself at Sabanci University in Istanbul. Her initial model was the master’s program at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) at George Mason University, where she enjoys the singular status of being the very first international recipient of S-CAR’s Ph.D.
As an S-CAR faculty member, I worked with Dr. Beriker and our colleague Dr. Dan Druckman to design the initial contours of the Sabanci program prior to its full-blown launch in 2000. I have also taught for the Sabanci program where one of the MA students I encountered early on is the editor of this volume: Dr. Eralp followed in Dr. Beriker’s footsteps and went on to S-CAR to earn his Ph.D. there as well. I had the honor of supervising Dr. Eralp’s doctoral dissertation which subsequently became a published volume on the role of the EU as a third party in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the wake of the genocidal wars of Yugoslavian dissolution of the 1990s (Eralp, 2012).
Drs. Beriker and Eralp, and their fellow contributors to this volume, have provided the global CAR community not only with edifying “stories” about Turkey’s unique role as a regional and global mediator, but also with vivid displays of how, perhaps counterintuitively, this culturally rich country has been able to employ CAR as “soft power” and, in the process, generate “lessons learned” and contribute to the field’s multidisciplinary literature.
The impressive efforts of these young, primarily Turkish conflict researchers and conflict resolution practitioners, support my original assessment that Turkey remains the ultimate “bridge-builder” between, for instance, the Muslim and Western Worlds – whether in the Western Balkans between Serbian Orthodox Christians, Croatian Catholics, and Bosniak and Albanian Muslims or between the US/EU and the Middle East and North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Turkey plays this role more effectively than any of the “great powers,” including the U.S. In effect, this volume reinforces the view that Turkey remains well placed to nip in the bud the “clash of civilizations.”
This book provides an overview of successes and failures of Turkey’s mediation initiatives in different fragile and post-conflict societies. It is the first of its kind to run a systematic analysis of Turkey’s peacemaking. This edited collection treats its readers with a variety of analyses on the dominant narratives that guide Turkish mediation, the tools used by the Turkish government, and Turkey’s evolving self-image as a mediator since the mid-2000s. The book sheds a critical spotlight on the learning curve of the Turkish Foreign Policy as it initiated and supported peace processes between the western Balkan countries, in the Middle East, in post-civil war Somalia, and in the nuclear talks between Iran and P5+1. The book concludes with a summary of assets, challenges, and opportunities for Turkey’s sustained emergence as a mediator in international politics.