Strategic Depth

June 8, 2023

Turkey’s Strategic Depth doctrine revisited

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Defying Western expectations, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won in last month’s runoff election. Turkey's longest-serving leader, Erdogan won 52.2% support in the runoff, defying polls that predicted economic strains would lead to his defeat.

In his victory speech on May 28, Erdoğan denounced his NATO allies who didn’t hide their preference for his opponent Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the election. “Didn’t German, French and British magazines publish covers to beat Erdoğan? They also lost. You have seen the alliances that have been formed against us for months. You have seen who is with whom. They failed and they will not succeed from now on,” he said.

His new mandate is expected to allow Erdogan to pursue increasingly independent policies that have strengthened Turkey’s position as a regional military power.

According to TRT, Erdogan's independent foreign policy, decades of political experience and domestic programs gave him the edge over his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who led a fragile opposition alliance.

Erdogan’s long tenure has increased Türkiye’s political bid to become a global power as the US has continued to lose its international influence and soft power across many areas from the Middle East to Central Asia, TRT said adding:

Erdogan has skillfully pursued a middle ground in many conflicts from Libya to Ukraine, protecting Turkish interests across the chaotic Middle East and increasing Ankara’s political stakes in Turkic-dominated Central Asia.

In the Ukraine conflict, Türkiye has also acted as a mediator, brokering a landmark grain deal between Kiev and Moscow mainly thanks to Erdogan’s good friendship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

West Frustrated

Turkey is in NATO, sits close to the wars in Ukraine and Syria and often frustrates western powers in how it negotiates those conflicts.

Erdogan has maintained close ties with Russia and refused to participate in Western sanctions, while also supplying weapons to Ukraine.

The next five years will likely see a continuation of Erdogan walking a fine line and his transactional approach to foreign policy.

"There's absolutely no reason to think that [Erdogan] would reverse course or soften his approach," said political analyst Selim Koru.

"There is sort of a Western bloc that is broadly geopolitically aligned, and the Bloc wanted Turkey to be in its camp. Turkey essentially has said no, it wants its own camp and isn't interested in participating in any kind of geopolitical alignment where it isn't the boss," said Koru.

The Strategic Depth Doctrine

Tellingly, Turkish foreign policy under Erdogan has been associated with the name of Ahmet Davutoğlu, once his chief foreign policy advisor. It is virtually impossible to discuss Turkish foreign policy since 2002 without a reference to Ahmet Davutoğlu, one of the few academics who joined the ranks of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP).

In his book “Strategic Depth,” published in 2001, Davutoğlu elaborates on his strategic vision about Turkey. He argues that Turkey possesses “strategic depth” due to its history and geographic position and lists Turkey among a small group of countries which he calls “central powers”. Turkey should not be content with a regional role in the Balkans or the Middle East, because it is not a regional but a central power. Hence, it should aspire to play a leading role in several regions, which could award it global strategic significance.

In Davutoğlu’s view, Turkey is a Middle Eastern, Balkan, Caucasian, Central Asian, Caspian, Mediterranean, Gulf and Black Sea country, can simultaneously exercise influence in all these regions and thus claim a global strategic role.

Davutoglu identiӿes several areas of the ‘cross-border spheres of inӾuence’. He uses a concept of Turkey’s contiguous ‘land basins’ that include the Balkans, Caucasus and the Middle East to describe Turkey’s potential spheres of inӾuence. He enumerates the Black, Eastern Mediterranean, Caspian seas and the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Basra as a natural extension of Turkey’s maritime basin. He also stresses a shift in geopolitical status of Turkey from a barrier, predicated on its NATO membership during the cold war, to a bridge to a new regional system, which extends beyond Erzurum Plain and includes states of Caucasus and Eurasia. He also notes that the concept of the ‘continental basin’ allows Turkey to gain ‘strategic depth in Asia, and projection into Europe and Africa’. [1]

Instead of letting other countries use Turkey to promote their regional and global strategic role, Turkey should develop a proactive policy commensurate to its historic and geographic depth, which is amplified by its Ottoman legacy. To achieve that aim, Turkey should capitalize on its soft power potential. This is based on its historic and cultural links with all the regions which it belongs to, as well as its democratic institutions and thriving market economy.

In Davutoğlu’s own words: “Turkey enjoys multiple regional identities and thus has the capability as well as the responsibility to follow an integrated and multidimensional foreign policy. The unique combination of our history and geography brings with it a sense of responsibility. To contribute actively towards conflict resolution and international peace and security in all these areas is a call of duty arising from the depths of a multidimensional history for Turkey.”

On the international front, Davutoğlu argues that Turkey needs to resolve all the bilateral disputes which have hampered its relations with its neighbors. In what was coined as “zero problem policy with neighbors,” he states that in recent decades Turkey has wasted crucial efforts and time in conflicts with its neighbors. For Turkey to become a regional leader and play a global strategic role, it needs to overcome phobic syndromes and establish cordial relations with all its neighbors. Its foreign policy should aim to resolve all the pending disputes which Turkey’s diplomatic inertia had accumulated in the past, so it can seek its own global strategic role. Developing close relations with all rising global powers, China, India, Russia and Brazil, would be a key in that process. Seeking a leading role in inter-civilizational and inter-religious dialogue would become one of Turkey’s leading priorities, as Turkey could capitalize on his historical and cultural legacy.

He identiӿes eight former empires Britain, Russia, Austro- Hungary, France, Germany, China, Japan and Turkey as countries with historical depth. In his comparative analysis, he comes to the conclusion that these countries experience similar problems of ethno-nationalism, separatism and general anti- imperialist dissension in their respective regions. As a result, Turkey, due to its historical legacy of the Ottoman Empire, possesses a great geographical depth. With reference to Turkey, he notes:

Geographical depth is a part of historical depth. For instance, Turkey is not just any old Mediterranean country. One important characteristic that distinguishes Turkey from say Romania or Greece is that Turkey is at the same time a Middle Eastern and a Caucasian country. Unlike Germany, Turkey is as much a European country as it is an Asian country. Indeed, Turkey is as much a Black Sea country as it is a Mediterranean one. This geographical depth places Turkey right at the centre of many geopolitical inӾuences.

To borrow Richard Falk, Davutoglu proposed a deliberate revival of the Ottoman past, ‘both as a matter of cultural enrichment, but also as a source of an enriched Turkish identity as a political actor’. [2]

References

[1] ‘The ‘‘Strategic Depth’’ that Turkey Needs’, An Interview with Ahmet Davutoglu, The Turkish Daily News, September 15, 2001.

[2] R. Falk, ‘Reconsidering Turkey’, Zaman, October 6, 2004.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com