Turning to the East

Carolyn Drake for TIME
Turks in Istanbul's Taksim Square protest the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara

I don't know what tomorrow will bring," wrote Hakan Albayrak, a Turkish journalist on board the Mavi Marmara, hours before a disastrous Israeli commando raid on the Turkish ship heading an international flotilla carrying aid for Gaza. "But I feel deep in my bones ... that a new world is taking shape."

His words now sound prescient. In the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara incident, the traditional friendship between Israel and Turkey, sponsored for decades by Washington, appeared to have been wrecked. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormily proclaimed (in Turkish, English and Hebrew), "The sixth commandment says, 'Thou shalt not kill.' Did you not understand?" and did little to tamp down the mood of anger as Turks took to the streets.

There was more to come. Within days, Turkey voted against a U.S.-sponsored resolution at the U.N. Security Council imposing sanctions on Iran (it had earlier, with Brazil, suggested its own scheme to ameliorate the Iran crisis) and the next day announced an economic pact with Jordan, Syria and Lebanon to create a free-trade zone. Turkey, says Erdogan, who leads the Islamic-rooted party AKP, "can no longer be taken for granted," a statement that has diplomats in Western capitals wringing their hands. Has a traditional ally been lost? Is Turkey an age-old friend of the U.S. and the second most populous member of NATO turning east?

No, it's not, says the man widely credited with masterminding Turkey's new foreign policy. Soft-spoken, bespectacled and fluent in English and Arabic, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's Foreign Minister, brings an academic's zeal for precision to the murkier realm of realpolitik. "Turkey's increased proactive role abroad overlaps with U.S. foreign policy goals on many key issues like Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and the Caucasus," Davutoglu told TIME earlier this year. "We don't want a region where security is based on mutual threat." Allies, he says, "can have differences of opinion. That's what makes the relationship complementary." A senior Administration official in Washington, while admitting to disappointment at the U.N. vote, insists, "We have no problem at all with a more active and engaged Turkey."

But there's little doubt that something is afoot. In his 2001 book, Strategic Depth, Davutoglu argued that Turkey's location between East and West and its historical legacy as heir to the Ottoman Empire which once stretched from the gates of Vienna to the Persian Gulf give it a claim to a unique global role. Turkey, Davutoglu believes, can court multiple alliances and become not just a bridge but a powerhouse in its own right, like Brazil or India. Over the past year, he has jetted across the Middle East and the Balkans, signing trade deals and lifting visa requirements, negotiated between Sunni and Shi'ite leaders in Iraq and opened 30 new embassies in Africa and Latin America. Though others have used the term neo-Ottomanism to describe Davutoglu's policy, he avoids it. He'd be more likely to endorse a recent report by the Rand Corp. "Turkey's greater engagement in the Middle East is part of the broader process of the country's gradual diversification of its foreign policy since the end of the Cold War," it concluded. "In effect, Turkey is rediscovering a region to which it has had strong political and cultural ties." But how did that process of rediscovery come about? And what does it mean for the U.S. and its allies?

Out of Ataturk's Shadow
To understand what is happening in Turkey now, a little history is vital. After the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the modern state of Turkey was forged by a charismatic general, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who committed the new nation to Western ways and introduced state secularism to purge what he saw as backwardness. His reforms redesigned the most intimate moments of a poor, largely illiterate, Muslim population. Ataturk banned religious garb and schools, changed from the Arabic alphabet to Latin and introduced women's rights. "Turkey," he declared, "will join the ranks of civilized nations."

Seventy-two years after his death, Ataturk continues to cast a shadow over Turkey. For many years, generals, backed by judges, enshrined his secular legacy in an ideology known as Kemalism and used it to attack anything deemed to violate state interests. They toppled three elected governments and staged countless interventions in political life all with at least tacit support from the U.S., for which Turkey was a crucial military ally during the Cold War. "The system was based on the idea that you couldn't trust the people to govern themselves," says Oral Calislar, a respected journalist who after a 1980 coup was jailed for eight years for publishing a left-wing newspaper. "The military and by extension the judges knew what was best for society and did whatever needed to be done."

But the old Kemalist structure of Turkey has been fraying for 20 years. Erdogan's party represents an increasingly affluent, pious middle class the so-called Islamic Calvinists rooted not in Istanbul, with one foot in Europe, but in once economically backward regions of Anatolia. Europe is still Turkey's largest trading partner, but the European Union is mired in recession, while business with the Middle East and Africa is booming.

Time.com

Turning to the East

Feeling betrayed by Israel and snubbed by Europe, Turkey is forging a new identity as an independent regional power. Will the country be able to court multiple alliances, or will the West lose one of its closest friends?