Turkey conf live-blog #2

Ibrahim Kalin, speaking in effortless, US-accented English.
He’s talking about the need for a “process analysis” as opposed to just looking at momentary snapshots.
Excerpts from his words:
During Cold War, choices were very stark and dyadic. Now they are much more complex.
Turkey is acting in its own interests, for example regarding the PKK: This has strengthened our relations with many other countries including the US as well as neighbors like Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
Noted, like Celik, that Turkey’s outreach to Syria, which used to be criticized by US officials, has now proven to be valuable and hopes the same will be the case regarding its relationship with Iran…

We see our policy of “Zero problems with the neighbors” as an extension of the European principle of good neighbors…
When Bush, for example, reached out to Putin, he said that was a good thing and so did we. But when we try to do the same thing, we are told it is destabilizing?
Four major principles guide our foreign policy:
1. Security. We act in the security interest of our country and people but also of our region. We think we can’t live in security at home when our region is marked by invasions and occupation and terrorism. This means not just state security but also human security, the security of people.
2. Freedom. People have to have the right to pursue their own interests without the intervention of outsiders under the rubric of “nation-building”. We have to have a balance between security and freedom. Turkey has been trying to address the Kurdish issue… We apply this same search for a balance to the peace process. Israel has its need for security; but the Palestinians have a need for both security and independence.
3. Prosperity. Turkey has become a major economic power. A $750 billion economy, the sixth largest in Europe. Our trade with our neighbors has increased hugely; and it’s directly related to the principle of Zero Problems with the Neighbors… Generating prosperity in itself is not the goal, but sharing it with others is important both as a matter of ethics but also to build everyone’s security and wellbeing… The business community has become an important actor in Turkish foreign policy, as have other non-governmental actors including humanitarian aid organizations.
4. Identity– people’s self-perception. People’s question as to who are we? (He refers to his own background as a philosopher.) This identifies an important aspect of foreign policy in the 21st century. It applies in many countries including here in the US, in China, in Russia, and in Europe. The same principle applies to Turkey. The way we answer it reflects Turkey’s history. Turkey is a member of both east and west. It’s the Muslim country that has had the longest, deepest relationship with the west. That underlies our longstanding application to join the EU. The EU countries haven’t responded positively yet because of their own internal problems regarding identity. We as Turks have moved beyond the idea of oppositional identities. We don’t think there is an essentialist contradiction between east and west. When people in the west think in that way, that’s part of the legacy of the Cold War from the last century… We do, however, reject the reading of history as totally Eurocentric, which refers to the experiences of others as marginal…
Today, legitimacy has become so important, and anyone who has power and tries to monopolize it and marginalize others is going to lose legitimacy…
So here is how we operationalize our principles, in the Middle East:
1. We engage with all parties. That explains us engaging with Syria and with Hamas and with various parties inside Iraq. Engaging all political actors is, we believe, in line with the foreign policy alignment of Obama. We’ve been doing this since before the US.
2. We respect the results of democratic elections in the region. We don’t get into the issue of “nation-building” which we see as unjustified foreign intervention. But we do stand up for a rights-based approach.
3. We work closely with all our regional and international allies.
4. We increase social and economic cooperation between the peoples and countries of the region. Cultural and educational cooperation. All this will help people escape from the feeling of isolation and will help build the security and stability of the region.
Let me relate this to the two big issues on the current agenda.
First, the Iran vote, which has led to such disappointment and displeasure here. We’ve been directly involved in the Iran file for nearly two years now. Throughout, we’ve been closely involved with our European and American friends as well as with Iran, even when the European and American friends had no communication with Iran. The three conditions set out in the May 17 Tehran delegation were that 1,200 kg of enriched uranium would be exchanged; that this would happen outside Iran; and that the transfer would occur in one batch.
This was the first time anyone could get the Iranians to commit to these three points. With respect to our European and American friends they tried for six years and failed…. But then, within hours of us announcing the Tehran Agreement it was dismissed. That, after all the efforts we’d expended on it. We were, however, told we should continue with our engagement with Iran. During the Security Council vote, we had to vote No, in order to keep the Iranians at the table.
We are still told by our European and American friends to keep talking to the Iranians. But how could we do that if we’d voted for the sanctions?
We are still being encouraged to continue talking to Iran; and we’ve worked hard to keep Iran at the negotiating table and committed to the Tehran Agreement; and that process is still on track.
But to extrapolate from our vote and say Turkey is moving away from the west is to resurrect the old “Us Versus Them” mentality.
regarding the flotilla incident, it’s important to understand the degree to which the killing of nine Turksi citizens has created a deep wound in Turkish society. This is one of the most tragic events in our recent history: losing nine people in killing on the high seas.
The 19-year-old citizen had four bullet wounds in his head and one in his chest. This was not shooting in self defense, this was unjustified killing.
We are fully committed to an international investigation team that will look at all aspects, including looking at the background to the flotilla plans.
… This flotilla incident looks to us like a deja vu, after the Gaza operation. Olmert sat for six hours in our prime minister’s house in Ankara then and went back to launch the operation. This time there were many ways to disable the boat, as the Israelis knew.
In the Q and A
A first question (fairly hostile in nature) about Ankara’s policy on the flotilla:
A: The Turkish government was not involved at all in the flotilla. It was a citizen initiative. We did search the boat extensively before they left and found nothing suspect at all among either the people or the freight, which was 10,000 pounds of humanitarian aid.