Turkish Foreign Policy in Relation to the Recent Developments in Iraq

Dr. Philip Robins, an Oxford University lecturer in politics came to Ankara in April 2006 to attend a series of meetings. As part of these meetings, Dr. Robins who is also a Fellow at St. Anthony's College with special reference to the Middle East, visited the Economic Policy Research Institute (TEPAV|EPRI). He talked as a honorary speaker at a round-table discussion organized by TEPAV|EPRI on Turkish Foreign Policy in relation to the recent developments in Iraq. During his speech, Dr. Robins first talked about the issue of Iraq and the future of Iraq. He tried to answer the question of whether Iraq is already in a civil war. He later gave examples from his area of expertise and made references to the Lebanese civil war. He talked about the militarization of politics and explained that this brought a collapse of state institutions. Dr. Robins explained the dilemma of establishing institutional and legitimate governance. As he explained, there is a chicken-egg problem related to institutionalization. Building a structure of governance from scratch creates legitimacy but legitimacy is also needed in order to make these institutions work. This dilemma has special importance in the Iraq case. In Iraq, the U.S. supported the constitutional process and the engagement of three main ethnic and religious groups into the political process in order to bring legitimacy to the system. Dr. Robins stated that if the constitutional process collapses, then we would witness the "cantonization of Iraqi state."

In the second part of his speech, Dr. Robins talked about the unique situation of Turkey in world politics due to it being in between the liberal subsystem of Europe and the real-politik subsystem of the Middle East. Answering a question on how Turkish Foreign Policy has changed in comparison to the active years of Turkey right after the Cold War of 1991, symbolized by Turkey's threat to use force in October 1988, its open alignment with Israel and relations with the Kurdish leaders and as explained in detail in his book "Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy Since the Cold War", Robins explained that the Turkish foreign policy is much more active right now than before. He stressed that it becomes necessary for countries to talk to important controversial figures just like Turkey did with Hamas leaders and as it might do with Muqtada al-Sadr in order to be active in world politics.  Even though they are controversial, these people can create real change in their own countries. On the other hand, however, Robins also cautioned and reminded that it is very important to know how to deal with the controversial figures.