Turkish Populism Goes to the Polls

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On Sunday, Turkey will head to the polls in parliamentary elections. Although issues such as the economy, a new constitution, and the conflict in the Kurdish-majority southeast have featured most prominently in the campaigning, Turkey's foreign policy has emerged as a central rallying point for the Justice and Development Party (AKP). But the populist streak that has given a boost to the party's support over the past years has also had consequences for relations with longtime allies. In distancing itself from the United States, the European Union, and Israel, the Turkish government has done considerable damage to its relations with the West.

This may be changing, however: Amid the political turmoil sweeping the Middle East, there are signs that the populist and anti-Western strand in Turkey's foreign policy may have run its course. Once election season is over, Turkey is likely to rediscover the importance of engaging with the United States and the European Union.

Well into the 1990s, Turkey did not really have a foreign policy. Instead, it had an orientation, or what analysts have in mind when they speak of "Turkey's turn from the West" or "Turkey's shift eastward." With the country's powerful military running the show, the lines were fixed. Turkey was a stalwart NATO ally, a Western outpost, a country happily divorced from its Ottoman past and, by extension, from the entire Arab world. It was also a country removed from its citizens. Aside from cases when public opinion had to be mobilized -- renewed fighting in Cyprus, say, or tensions with Greece -- foreign policy was rarely up for open discussion.

Over the past decade, however, the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has considerably trimmed the military's influence over political life, foreign policy included. To meet EU accession criteria, Erdogan's AKP stripped the army of its majority on the National Security Council, for years the most important body in charge of foreign policy. Building on the work of its predecessors, the AKP government replaced a foreign policy based on security with one focused on engagement, soft power, and trade, in the process diffusing tensions with neighboring countries such as Iran, Iraq, and Syria (known as the "zero problems" policy).

Other changes have come from the bottom up. As the domestic political arena expanded and democratization took root -- thanks in no small part to the EU accession process -- the media, business interests, NGOs, religious groups, and other parts of civil society have taken on a much more visible stand on issues that had traditionally been the remit of state elites and the military establishment. Civil society groups, for example, pushed aside traditional concerns of national security to pave the way for Turkey's reconciliation with Greece in the late 1990s and helped shift the domestic debate on Greek Cyprus in 2003 and 2004.

Never before in Turkey's modern history has foreign policy been so directly wedded to domestic politics: The architects of Turkey's foreign policy used to answer to the generals; these days, policymakers answer to the public. And never before has a Turkish government staked so much of its reputation on its international accomplishments, real or hypothetical.

On the campaign trail, the AKP's senior members have consistently championed the party's foreign outlook. At a speech in April, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said, "Our ideal is to make this country a pioneer in the world, like our predecessors who carried out their goal of order for the whole world." Erdogan has made similarly proud and sweeping rhetorical gestures, telling supporters last month that "those who want democracy, those who want freedom, those who want to be rid of tyranny, oppression, and exploitation, now look to Turkey." A few days later, he added, "Now it is Turkey that sets the agenda. It's Turkey's word that everyone awaits."

The AKP, expected to win Sunday's vote by a landslide, has reason to trumpet its foreign policy accomplishments. Under the "zero problems" policy, Turkey's relations with its Middle Eastern neighbors are better than at any time since the founding of the republic. Regional trade is booming: Turkey's exports to the Middle East more than doubled between 2002 and 2010 as a share of total exports, now reaching 20 percent. (The share of exports to Europe has dropped over the same period by about 10 percentage points, to about 45 percent.) Turkish diplomats, meanwhile, have taken on a more active role in the region. Some Turkish initiatives have been successful (the effort to free four New York Times journalists captured in Libya); some were said to have almost succeeded (the 2008 talks between Syria and Israel); some have been dismissed by allies (including the proposed nuclear swap deal with Iran in 2011); and some have been stillborn (a road map for Libya that failed to call for Muammar al-Qaddafi's departure). But all have been universally seen as evidence of Turkey's growing clout and ambitions.

As Ziya Öniş, a professor at Koç University, told me, the government "has used its assertive foreign policy and its popularity in the Arab world" to build popular support. Indeed, 65 percent of those Turks responding to a recent poll by the Turkish think tank TESEV back the AKP's foreign policy; around 80 percent of those surveyed said that they believe that Turkey can be a model -- cultural, political, and economic -- for the countries of the Middle East.