Turkey's Foreign Affairs Blitz

While of minor importance to most Turks in comparison to their national football team's efficient victory over a weak Bosnia-Herzegovina side and the team's resulting accession to the Euro 2008 tournament, this past week also featured the Turkish government culminating an impressive flurry of foreign affairs activity. Although the Turkish national team has little chance under its coach, Fatih Terim, whose arrogance shadows his remarkable flair for dramatic dress-shirt and jacket collars, the government's latest efforts will surely give Milli Takım fans something to talk about beyond their team's early exit from the European football championship tournament this summer.

Turkey's latest foreign affairs campaign began almost a month ago. Motivated by Turkey's highly theatrical bluff to invade northern Iraq, Ankara hosted a rather awkward summit with Iraq's Prime Minister Al Maliki. This visit was followed by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and his delegation of 11 planes. Erdoğan and Gül would then elegantly contrast the King's visit by hosting Israel's President Peres, in addition to Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Other than the usual series of forced handshakes in front of photographers, Turkey announced that it would lead the development of the Erez Industrial Zone in order to promote foreign investment to a destitute region prone to terrorist activities.

The pace did not slow during this past week. Prime Minister Erdoğan inaugurated a gas pipeline between Turkey and Greece, a key component of the Nabucco pipeline project that transports Central Asian gas supplies to Central Europe. President Gül then participated in ground-breaking ceremonies for the new Baku-Tblisi-Kars railway, which has greater symbolic importance than practical potential due to the dilapidated nature the rail networks in all three countries. Turkey's efforts to pursue peace in Palestine were ultimately awarded with an invitation to the Annapolis Summit, which was a significant acknowledgment of Turkey's (otherwise weak) presence in Middle Eastern affairs.

In December, Turkish foreign minister Ali Babacan will visit Greece to strengthen ties and promote Turkey's candidacy for the EU.

The Turkish media has been bubbling with suggestions of Turkey's emergence as a regional hegemon. These sentiments are typified by an article by Fatih University academic, Gökhan Bacık:

Turkey seeks to take concrete actions in the Middle East to move regional politics from its current abstract content to a more practical and implemental level. This is also not surprising because Turkey has the ability and capacity to achieve this. The Erez Industrial Zone, which will be constructed under Turkey’s leadership in the West Bank, is exemplary...There is one simple fact behind Turkey’s ability to offer concrete options and opportunities: that Turkey is a historical actor that has many aspects in common with all the actors of the region. For this reason, its contribution to make the devised projects operational is vital. The operational opportunities of the other actors including the EU are limited.

There is no doubt that Turkey should be commended for its recent surge in foreign affairs activity related to the Middle East. The country must do a better job of defining its modern identity in foreign affairs and this past month has been beneficial to that end.

However, this observer suspects that the ultimate success of Turkey's efforts will be tied to the true motivations for its involvement. If Turkey seeks engagement in a front-page issue like Palestine to self-promote its status as the EU's future bridge between Europe and the Middle East, it is doubtful that they will accomplish anything of note. However, if Turkey believes that it is in its own self-interest to develop such involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, with or without EU membership, then success will be much more likely. It is quite possible that Ankara is genuinely interested in forging stronger relations with Israel as a strategic advantage for the future.

However, Turkey has been making a big push of late to secure public declarations of support for its EU candidacy from multiple EU members. It is consequently the opinion of this observer that Turkey's most recent efforts, and particularly those involving Palestine, are nothing more than an attempt to pursue newspaper headlines in order to influence the opinions of Brussels Eurocrats. Gül's plan to establish an economic zone in order to address the relationship between unemployment and terrorism seems particularly inane given Turkey's own domestic problems with terrorism. Perhaps Turkey would grab even more European headlines if it first solved the unemployment problem in its volatile southeastern region.

Considering Turkey's Transport System

A recent article in Zaman about the state of Turkey's highway system encouraged this observer to consider the current and future state of transportation in the Republic of Turkey. Visitors to Turkey will no doubt remark the ease with which the individual traveler can move from one part of the country to another. Turkey's private bus, dolmuş and taxi network arguably represents one of the most formidable achievements of the Turkish experiment with capitalism. The not so uncommon image of a sheep strapped to the roof of a dolmuş minibus underscores the importance of this network to the development of the domestic economy over the past decades.

As is the case in all countries, the suitability of logistics network is one of the keys to economic growth. In its position as an emerging market economy, Turkey is faced with the typical challenge of upgrading its logistics infrastructure in order to meet the criteria of foreign investors. The aforementioned bus, dolmuş and taxi network is not particularly relevant to the logistic needs of modern industry.

The challenge of strengthening a country's logistics infrastructure has traditionally fallen on the back of the public sector. More recently, there has been a growing liberalization of state control over strategic assets. A deluge of worldwide private investment has ensued. Turkey's ruling AK Party has embraced this trend, having already sold off significant portions of Turkey's infrastructure portfolio. Most recently the port of Izmir was sold to Hong Kong-based Hutchison-Whampoa for $1.25 billion. Similarly, Germany's Fraport bought the operating rights to Antalya's airport for $3.2 billion. Although such sales inevitably arouse suspicion concerning whether the government received fair value, the fact remains that these infrastructure assets are better off in private hands in terms of the future investment that they will receive.

While seeking suitors for its existing assets, Turkey's government has turned its attention toward the development of the country's road system. In line with the seaports and airports, the government is trying to sell the management rights to the country's existing toll-roads and toll-bridges. This strategy of selling toll-road concessions is the key to Turkey's ability to afford the creation of new highways across the country. The construction of a highway linking Gebze-Orhangazi-Bursa-İzmir is already underway, and another such project linking Ankara with Izmir will most likely begin in 2008. When the AK Party took power in 2002, it aimed to build 15,000 kilometers of new roads. Roughly 4,000 kilometers have already been completed.

Like public works projects all over the world, the AK Party's program is not without its inequities. For example, the number of roads built in the region of Kayseri (770km), which is a traditional stronghold of the AKP, is greater than any other part of the country by more than 100 kilometers.

Beyond this type of age-old political dilemma, there exists the broader question of whether the AK Party's emphasis on roads is in fact prudent. Istanbul's traffic is already horrific and the construction of a system of wider roads elsewhere will only cause this phenomenon to spread to other locales. In light of the rising costs of petroleum of which Turkey has nearly none, this observer wonders if is truly wise to concentrate so much of the country's infrastructure investment on motorized transportation.

As it turns out, Turkey has a very long, albeit largely unfruitful, history of train transportation. British military activity in Egypt and Iraq during WWI was largely motivated by an urgent need to stop Germany's ambition to build a rail connection between Berlin and Baghdad via Anatolia. A subsequent effort by Ataturk to expand the country's rail network was cut short by the leader's death.

Therefore, the majority of Turkey's contemporary railroad network was built at the beginning of the 19th century by German engineers, who were paid by the kilometer. As a result, Turkey's rail routes are far from direct. A cross-country train voyage is not only dangerous, but it also takes an eternity. This state of affairs exists in stark contrast to the modern Mercedes coach buses and trucks, which can complete the same journey in half the time and twice the comfort, safety and reliability.

If Turkey is to improve the competitive position of its economy in the future, it ought to pay more attention to the realities of today's world. European governments are aggressively investing in linking together their rail infrastructures since they realize the economic benefits this will add to their increasingly integrated economies. Even America, which boasts the world's most impressive highway network, relies on its railways for a great deal of freight transportation. Initiatives like the Trans-Asian Railway Network are the future and are highly complimentary to Turkey's desires to function as a gateway between Europe and Asia.

Developments such as fast-train service connecting Istanbul to Ankara (and eventually Ankara with Konya) as well as the recent announcement of the reconstruction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad in the near future are encouraging although insufficient. To meet Turkey's future economic ambitions, laying new and reliable track would not only benefit interior Anatolia's highly agrarian economy, but it will also encourage more dynamic industrial development.

The construction of more roads possesses the short term benefit of helping the country's growing automobile industry as well as the pockets of its bus company tycoons. However, this decision would appear to have unfortunate consequences for the Turkish economy's long term competitive position.