Ambassador Selim Yenel, Deputy Under Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented this statement at the Diplomatic Discussion Group meeting organized by the Foreign Policy Institute on December 8, 2010

What is our foreign policy? What are we doing and why are we doing it? These may be the questions you have in mind. But before that let me explain what I am doing in the Foreign Ministry. I am dealing with North and South America. I deal with culture, I deal with public diplomacy and therefore I have a broad perspective on our foreign policy practices. And lately I have been given the task of heading the policy planning department. So, that gives me an opportunity to see our foreign policy on a wider perspective.

Why are we being so active? Let me give you the background of our activities. Our foreign policy has normally been very cautious. And this stems from the Ottoman experiences. As the Empire was crumbling our foreign policy and our diplomats were more on the defensive trying to protect as much as possible. During the republican era this attitude somehow continued because the Republic was being established. Therefore, of course, we had to be as cautious as possible without getting into any kind of what you might call adventures. During the Cold War era our foreign policy was rather straightforward. Because at that time we were following basically the big powers and in this case it was the US. And so we took a backseat on many of the issues that should have involved us. Our major concern, to be very frank here, was only Cyprus. Even if we had an interest or concern on many major issues, even in the Middle East or beyond, we had to look out for the big powers. We would follow mostly US policies.

This has changed with the end of the Cold War but I think there were many factors with regard for us becoming more involved. And let me try to explain that to you. We had wake-up calls after the Cold War. During the Ottoman Empire our relations with the West were adversarial, competitive, full of rivalry and sometimes we made alliances. But when the Republic was established, we had decided to become part of the West. So, our minds had changed, everything changed as you know and in time we thought that we were now part of the West. This continued especially during the Cold War era. We became members of almost every institution or organization in the West and up until the end of the Cold War, this was our basic thinking. Once the Cold War ended, soon after we had two wake-up calls which we found out that we were not actually part of the West. One was the first Iraqi War and the second one was the 1997 European Council in Luxembourg. When the first Iraqi War broke out we had asked for NATO security and some backing from NATO countries. This was not forthcoming or didn't come as soon as we wanted it to come. And secondly in December 1997 when the European Council decided on which countries would become candidates for membership to the EU, we were left out in the cold. So, these two incidents made us realize that actually we were living in a make believe world. This was some kind of unreal, virtual situation and we were not actually accepted by the West. We were, maybe you might say, tolerated by the West. And therefore we said that. “look, this is a new situation, the Cold War has ended, it's not a bipolar world anymore, it's a unipolar world and that would change a lot of things. What can we do about this?”

Contrary to all the other candidates, we had to prove ourselves with regard to the EU. In a sense we had to show that we would be providing an added value with regard to EU membership. While no other candidate had to prove anything, we had to. And in that sense we thought that our foreign policy expertise could be an asset, we could use our foreign policy as a soft power asset that EU could see as beneficial for them. Therefore we decided to become more and more active. This was before the current government came into power. But to be able to be more active of course, you have to have the proper elements in your foreign policy. For many years we did not have the economic strength to be more active. This has come in about the last five or six years. The economic growth of Turkey has presented us with a lot of opportunities. We are now providing development aid to many parts of the world. Thirty years ago, when I first entered the service, we were receiving development aid and now we are providing it. We have a strengthened middle class. We have good expertise with regard to our trade relations. The last eight years we had a single party government. All these came together providing us with more opportunities. I must remind you that the international scenery, of course, was full of vacuums. In the past, there were the US and the Soviet Union but presently things have changed and many of the issues that were discussed around the world were actually around Turkey. Furthermore, one of the reasons or one of the explanations given against Turkish membership to the EU was that, “If we include Turkey in the EU than we will be incorporating a lot of problems in our neighborhood”. So we thought that the best way to deal with that is to resolve the issues as much as possible. The Foreign Minister's coining of the policy “zero problems in our neighborhood” is an effort in this respect. We are not naive enough to believe that we will have zero problems but if we can achieve as much as possible to diminish the problems we face, that will be enough. So our basic policy is to achieve stability and security in our neighborhood, to enhance the well-being of those who are surrounding us so that we will have an almost problem free neighborhood. We are becoming more and more active in this sense in the Balkans, in the Middle East. The EU is not as dynamic as it should be or it could be in the Middle East for example. We also found out that there are calls for us to be more active. During the Cold War era and especially during the republican first years or first decades we had omitted the Middle East. We had turned west and we had forgotten everything that was related to the Ottoman Empire. Of course during the Cold War there was no possibility of getting involved in any other area anyway. But when the Cold War ended, we made a rediscovery of our roots, of our history, whether it was in the Balkans or the Middle East. However let me to remind you that we are not pursuing anything regarding a revival of the Ottoman Empire. There have been some remarks in the press that there is a new Ottomanism. This is totally false and I deny any allegations in that regard. This has never entered our minds. This is probably an imagination of some innovative writers. As I said we have rediscovered the regions we had turned our backs on but now we are willing to be more active. I think it was a discovery on both sides. We want only to be able to have good relationship in our neighborhood which has always been our goal. Our effort is to be able to have a dialogue with everybody. We have been able to do so in the Balkans and in the Middle East. But when we hear criticism from some people inquiring what has been the result, we may have not always been successful but I have to answer that we have to be patient. In diplomacy you can't have a result immediately. There have been ups and downs, there will be ups and downs again but we have to pursue, we have to be patient and we have to try to understand others. We have to have some empathy.

This new active foreign policy forced the Foreign Ministry to change itself as well. We had a new law that was passed a few months ago and since we are opening new embassies all around the world of course this caused some problems with regard to the personnel department. Yesterday we had completed the entrance exams and now we are getting new recruits in to the ministry. For the first time we had hundred people come into the system and as I said we need to have more recruits. One of the problems we had been facing is to man vacant places. Not only abroad but also inside of the ministry, as well, as there are departments that are craving for more and more people, because of our activism.

You might ask why are you getting yourself into all these things? Well, I think that we gain some positive results and we have relished this and it seems that it has snow ball effect that is continually growing. I remind you that this is a time which is good to be a Turkish diplomat. From my own personal experience, twenty years ago when I was in the U.N., there were the usual groups, and the G-77, the E.U., U.S. the Soviets, and to be a Turkish diplomat was not something that you would be happy with, because nobody would ask your opinion. Now people are asking our opinion on various issues. So in a sense it's not a bad thing to be active. Whether we can produce results is another thing. But as I said, it's a matter of being patient. We are mediating between countries but only if those countries are asking us to do so. We act only if we are asked to do so.

So, I tried to give you a brief description of what we have been doing and why we are doing it. It's a rediscovery of the world; it's a rediscovery within the context in the new world which is changing rapidly. We don't know what this era will be called in twenty or thirty year's time because every year or two there is a new description of this era and it is very difficult to put a hold on it. But definitely we're going into a much more multi polar system and we believe that Turkey has a role to play. We don't think that we are global player but that we have a regional role to play and if that regional role can help the global environment, all the better. Our role in G-20 is such, we don't know whether this will be evolving into something else but of course there are new groupings coming out. I can clearly saying that no matter what government comes to power in the future in Turkey this activism will most likely continue.