Turkey can be forgiven if it feels like telling the world "We told you so."
With the United States and the European Union trying to stem the tide of refugees fleeing Syrian President Bashir al-Assad’s vicious bombings against his own citizens, the West is gaining a renewed appreciation for Turkey’s geopolitical significance by straddling the EU and the Middle East.
The EU is scrambling now to come up with a $3 billion package to help Turkey settle 2.3 million Syrian refugees that have crossed its borders – and who threaten to overwhelm Europe.
Turkish Ambassador to Ukraine Yönet Can Tezel said that Turkey has for years warned the West of the humanitarian catastrophe that Assad is causing by his dictatorial rule and human rights abuses, including use of cluster bombs and chemical weapons against his people. By its own estimates, Turkey has also spent close to $8 billion to help Syrian refugees while getting only $450 million in assistance from the West.
“We felt morally and legally obliged to embrace them,” Tezel said of not only the Syrian, but also the 300,000 Iranian and 50,000 Afghanistani refugees now settled in Turkey because of war. “That’s what we’ve been doing for the last four years…The European Union is rather belatedly waking up to this reality.”
Some in the West, however, don’t see Turkey as such a saint. They accuse Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s autocratic rule as being a prime source of instability and say that he is going soft on the Islamic State.
As for Erdogan’s popularity, it will be tested on Nov. 1 in early elections in which his ruling Justice and Development Party – known as AKP – may not win a majority in parliament. Criticism is rising within Turkey as well. As Suat Kiniklioglu, a former member of parliament with the ruling party wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Oct. 19: “Unfortunately, Turkey’s government seems more interested these days in punishing those who insult the president on Twitter than in tracking Islamic State cells in the country.”
Much of this criticism strikes Tezel as unfair. He said the people will decide Erdogan’s fate. Democracy is “the only game in town,” he said.
Tezel also said that Turkey, as a victim of terror, will fight terrorists. On Oct. 10, more than 102 people were killed in Ankara in a suicide bombing, with Islamic State terrorists as the prime suspects. “You don’t have ‘good’ terrorists and ‘bad’ terrorists,” he said. “All terrorism is deplorable…Of course, we are hitting back and we will continue to hit back.”
As for its relations with Ukraine, Tezel said that Turkey’s multiple challenges will not cause it to soften its support for its northern neighbor.
Turkey has given Ukraine $50 million in loans and $10 million in humanitarian aid. Erdogan visited Kyiv in March. Turkey has also offered advice on constructing successful industrial parks and public-private partnerships.
Also importantly for Ukraine, Turkey will never accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea and will insist on adherence to the Minsk peace process to end the Kremlin-instigated war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas. “It is in the interests of Ukraine and certainly Russia to bring this to a positive end,” the ambassador said.
He said that Turkey and Ukraine are both bridges between East and West.
“The competitive advantage of Turkey is speaking with the West with knowledge of the East and speaking with the East with knowledge of the West,” Tezel said. “This is our multiculturalism. We are a NATO member, a founding member of the Council of Europe and hopefully will become an EU member. This doesn’t stop at all our having good relations with the countries in the Middle East.”
Turkey has been trying to become an EU member for more than 50 years Some skeptics have bluntly said that the EU will simply not allow a non-white, mostly Muslim nation bordering the Middle East to join its club.
While acknowledging Turkey’s accession process “has been going very slowly and unfairly” because of double standards in the EU, the ambassador is more hopeful about Turkey’s ultimate membership. “If the EU wants to be a place where it can affect universal values and can be an international actor, then Turkey has a lot to offer,” he said.
Turkey’s desire to meet EU requirements has made its democratic institutions and economy more competitive, translating into greater prosperity for the nation’s 79 million people and the world’s 16th largest economy. “EU membership for Turkey is a serious strategic choice simply because we want to give our people better political, economy and social standards,” Tezel said.
Turkey’s advances didn’t happen overnight and, “as difficult as it is, Ukraine has to go through that, too,” although “they have lost too much time since their independence…it’s already it’s already late. Things should go faster.”
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, (L) during their meeting in Kyiv on March 20.
But this is one ambassador who knows how quickly Ukraine can change when it wants to do so.
He arrived in February 2014, when President Viktor Yanukovych remained in power as the EuroMaidan Revolution was reaching its peak. Then Petro Poroshenko became president in June 2014. Then, in Turkey, Erdogan assumed the presidency in August 2014. Consequently, it was not until September 2014 that Tezel presented his credentials to Poroshenko.
The 50-year-old Istanbul native, a married father of three children, said that some consider him naive about Ukraine. He prefers to see himself as an optimist with good reasons to believe in Ukraine.
He tells businesspeople that “we believe in the potential of Ukraine, the new Ukraine in the making. It is difficult. It will take some years, but with its human resources, natural resources, geography and location, this country has a bright future.” He agrees with his Western colleagues who say that “more needs to be seen and felt by the people. This is the chance. I don’t want to say it’s now or never. You should never say never. But this is the right time. People want it. The Ukrainian people deserve it.”
But in the end, it’s up to Ukraine.
“Europeans and the world will not solve Ukraine’s problems. Ukrainians will solve them. And Ukrainians cannot import Ukrainians from the moon. They have to do it. It is first and foremost a Ukrainian issue. We are ready to help.”
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected].
