The Middle East at the crossroads - part II

Around that time, relations with Israel began to cool. In March 2004, Erdogan condemned Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Shaikh Ahmad Yassin in Gaza as an act of state terrorism.

Turkey’s diplomatic recognition of Israel can be traced to its application for NATO membership. Recognising Israel was a US precondition; Turkey did so and became NATO’s sole Muslim member in 1952.

That did not inhibit the Turkish government from recognising the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1986.

Following the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accord of 1993, the special relationship between Turkey and Israel blossomed. In 1997 the two countries signed a free-trade agreement. Military co-operation increased to the extent that the two states conducted annual joint armed-forces exercises. Ankara allowed Israel to set up a clandestine listening post near its border with Iran.

In the wake of Israel’s Operation Sea Winds, Ankara cancelled the upcoming joint military exercise with the Israeli Defense Forces. While both sides will honour current defence contracts, there’s no prospect of further military deals between the two countries.

The boycott of the popularly elected Hamas government in the Palestinian territories in 2006, followed by the three-week long Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009, strained Israeli-Turkish relations to a breaking point. “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill,” Erdogan shouted at Israeli President Shimon Peres as the January 2009 World Economic Forum.

Fatigue has set in among Ankara’s policymakers in another diplomatic field. While they have not withdrawn their application for full membership in the European Union, under consideration since 1999, they are less keen for club acceptance. Turkey’s associate membership of the EU’s antecedent, the European Economic Community, goes back to 1963.

Given the Eurozone's economic crisis and persistent opposition of Germany and France to Turkey's membership, the EU gloss has worn off. Turkey focuses on the region where it holds a central position geographically.

Reorientation in Ankara’s foreign policy dovetails with domestic developments. For many decades after the republic’s founding in 1923, affluent, university-educated, westernised elite - popularly called White Turks - dominated the military, bureaucracy, judiciary and education, exercising disproportionate power.

Their power eroded as rural folks migrated to urban centers in large numbers from the 1960s, became literate and realised the power of the ballot. Starting in the mid-1980s, an increasing number of ordinary Turks benefited from unprecedented access to information and personal mobility - satellite television, telephones and cars. With the literacy rate at 90 per cent-plus, working and lower middle classes lost their awe of the White Turks.

Rural immigrants to cities - accounting for a quarter of the national population of 72 million - found solace in the mosque and a caring institution in AKP. In the unfamiliar, impersonal urban environment, they found ethical moorings in Islam.

They along with energetic entrepreneurs from Anatolia, covering 97 per cent of Turkey’s territory, became beneficiaries of the Erdogan administration’s adroit management of the economy with annual GDP growth of 5 to 7 per cent.

In fact, Turkey’s growing economic might undergirds its political ambition. The World Bank ranks Turkey, with per capita GDP of $12,480, as an upper middle-income country. Its public debt of 49 per cent of the GDP is healthy, far below that of leading Western nations. Turkey withstood the global credit crunch better than most countries. No bank has gone bankrupt due to tough regulations, with AKP well aware that banks were the major source of corruption among the traditional secular parties.

Erdogan’s foreign policy realigns Turkey with its history and geography, in the process raising its regional and global status.