The Anatolian Agency quotes Turkish Prime Minister\u2019s chief advisor Yi\u011fit Bulut as saying that he expects a \u201cEuropean Spring\u201d to happen in near future.<\/p>\n
Outlining Turkey\u2019s 2023 vision at a conference in Cologne, Germany, Mr Bulut, talked about a declining Europe in contrast to a stronger East.<\/p>\n
It is very tempting to dismiss Yigit Bulut\u2019s speech as more of the bizarre comments he has made in recent months. He is best known for his suggestion during the Gezi Park protests that foreign powers were attempting to \u201ckill Mr Erdo\u011fan with telekinesis.\u201d In fact, he repeated his equally strange theory that the German airline Lufthansa was behind the trouble, because the airline was supposed to be worried about the opening of a new airport in Istanbul.<\/p>\n
None of these statements were disowned by the Prime Minister and since Mr Bulut continues to have Mr Erdogan\u2019s confidence and backing, we assume he reflects the prevailing views of the government in Turkey.<\/p>\n
After all, only last month, during a trip to Russia, the Prime Minister himself said that Turkey would abandon its quest to join the European Union if it was offered full membership to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.<\/p>\n
It was not the first time Recep Tayyip Erdogan talked about wanting to join the SCO. He had first mentioned it in 2012.\u00a0 Shortly after that, I attended a conference in Evangelische Akademie Loccum in Germany, titled \u201cStrategic Partner against Her Own Will?”. The October 2012 conference in Loccum \u00a0\u00a0brought together senior representatives of the European Union, German and Turkish Foreign ministries as well as academics from Turkey and Europe. At that time, they laughed it off when I raised the subject of Turkey\u2019s interest in the SCO. I remember one very senior diplomat dismissing my comment as \u201cfrivolous\u201d.<\/p>\n
Well, it turned out not so frivolous after all. The following April, Turkey became the first NATO state to sign a \u201cdialogue partnership\u201d with the SCO.<\/p>\n
The SCO, created in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan was once described by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) as \u00a0\u00a0\u201ca vehicle for human rights violation\u201d.<\/p>\n
We now know that the comments about the SCO were not light-hearted jokes but they were indeed accurate manifestations of the Justice and Development Party\u2019s foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Mr Bulut\u2019s statements about Europe are also a true reflection of the approach towards the West.<\/p>\n
These comments are as serious as they are difficult to understand.<\/p>\n
If the prime minister and his team are basing their assessment on their compatibility with the regimes of the SCO and the East, they are not far wrong, for Turkey has been moving away from a liberal democratic model of the EU towards a more authoritarian one resembling that of the SCO.<\/p>\n
However, what I find difficult to understand is the extent of their failure to have a coherent and far-sighted analysis of the wider world.<\/p>\n
Despite the gloom and doom about its five-year-old economic crisis, the EU as a single market is still the major world trading power. Measured in terms of goods and services it produces, Europe is bigger than the US. Even though it has only the 7% of the world\u2019s population, the EU\u2019s trade accounts for around 20% of global exports and imports.<\/p>\n
Europe’s strong political tradition, its heritage of the Enlightenment, liberalism, creativity and humanism still make it the arbiter of the world\u2019s universal values.<\/p>\n
Europe also has the edge in science, research and innovation.<\/p>\n
In reality, Europe\u2019s standing in the world is much stronger than the Turkish leaders and their advisors assume.<\/p>\n
Whereas, looking East, China has an infrastructure- centric economy that has made enormous strides but the long-term viability of China\u2019s current political system is very much open to question. As Lord Giddens put it in a recent ECFR – Anthony Giddens on Europe’s global strategy meeting in London, China also has an aging population and thanks to one-child policy and no welfare system, it has a massive structural problem of how to look after its elderly in coming decades.<\/p>\n
Another eastern giant, India, with its large current account deficit, has clearly performed poorly in recent years.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s other friends, rising stars of the Middle East, energy-rich but human-capital poor countries of Saudi Arabia and Qatar propagate sectarianism in order to expand their influence and achieve their strategic goals in the region.<\/p>\n
So, the “the descent of the West” and “a reorientation of the world” toward the East is still an open question.<\/p>\n
It is by no means a foregone conclusion that we are heading towards an Asian century.<\/p>\n
But with the direction Mr Erdogan\u2019s government seems to be to be taking; it is not that hard to conclude where Turkey will end up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Anatolian Agency quotes Turkish Prime Minister\u2019s chief advisor Yi\u011fit Bulut as saying that he expects a \u201cEuropean Spring\u201d to happen in near future. Outlining Turkey\u2019s 2023 vision at a conference in Cologne, Germany, Mr Bulut, talked about a declining Europe in contrast to a stronger East. It is very tempting to dismiss Yigit Bulut\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}