A golden age of relations: Turkey and the Western Balkans during the AK party period.

• Author: Ekinci, Mehmet Ugur
• Position: Report

While Turkish foreign policy has become increasingly active and assertive, it has recently confronted with a number of challenges in the Middle East, leading critics to claim that the AK Party government's "zero problems with neighbors" vision has failed. (2) In the meantime, however, Turkey's relations with the Western Balkans (3) have displayed a completely different picture. During the last decade, Turkey has not only maintained, but also advanced its good neighborly relations with all countries in this region.

This article aims to provide a general overview of Turkey's relations with the Western Balkans during the AK Party government. It will argue that compared to the 1990s, diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural relations with this region have improved significantly, even though Turkey's concerns and aims with respect to the region remained largely the same. This improvement was thanks to the convergence of a number of factors such as Turkey's diplomatic activism, its better economic performance vis-a-vis other regional players, the strengthening of civil society and business sector in Turkey and the slowing down of the Europeanization of the Western Balkans. The improvement of relations has been most observable in economic and social terms, and from the late 2000s onwards, the Turkish government also expended considerable effort to convert it into political influence. However, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Turkey's diplomatic engagement with the region has been in decline. While Turkey's economic activity in the region is still increasing, the window of opportunity for a stronger political position may narrow in the future.

Turkey's Western Balkans Policy since the 1990s

After the Cold War

Many aspects of Turkey's Western Balkans policy have shown strong continuity since the end of the Cold War. (4) Having remained virtually separated from the region by an iron curtain for almost half a century, Turkey has been endeavoring to (re-)establish itself in the Balkans for about two decades. As the dissolution of the Communist bloc and the emergence of new states brought about swift and radical changes in the international and regional systems and created new opportunities as well as challenges for Turkey, the policymakers in Ankara realized the necessity of developing a new outlook for approaching the region. (5) Given the atmosphere of transition and uncertainty, Turkey felt an urgency to act pro-actively to forestall security threats, contribute to regional peace and stability and strengthen its social and economic bonds with the Balkans, among other surrounding regions.

In addition to geo-strategic concerns, economic and socio-cultural motivations (6) drove the Turkish policymakers in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War to develop a new, more active, policy in the Balkans. (7) Accordingly, Turkey offered its contribution to the security and welfare of the region by participating in security operations and, albeit sporadically, offering political initiatives for dialogue, concluded bilateral agreements, encouraged trade and provided technical, educational, and developmental assistance. However, these efforts did not bring about a rapid change in Turkey's political and economic status in the Western Balkans. While the ensuing conflicts and tensions in the region prevented new venues and opportunities for international cooperation, political quarrels as well as economic crises in Turkey throughout the 1990s and early 2000s prevented this country from fulfilling its political, economic, and social potential in materializing its foreign political ambitions. In other words, neither the political circumstances in the Western Balkans nor its own political, economic, and social resources allowed Turkey to more actively engage with the region.

In terms of domestic, international, structural and agency-based factors, the early 2000s were a turning point for Turkey's relations with the Western Balkans. In the wake of the Kosovo War of 1999, the European Union launched the Stabilization and Association Process with the Western Balkans and at the Thessaloniki Summit of 2003 it offered the prospect of full integration. As all states in the region regard the accession to the EU as a strategic priority, the membership incentive has brought about a relatively peaceful atmosphere and led to steps for normalization of relations among states and communities. The increased stability has also enabled the Western Balkan governments to concentrate more on domestic reform, economic liberalization, and institutional consolidation. All this has created new opportunities for Turkey to become further involved in the region and expand its relations. The improvement of Turkish-Greek relations at the turn of the millennium ended their longstanding rivalry in the Western Balkans and induced them to relax their security-based approach and engage in the region on the basis of economic interdependence and soft power instead. Meanwhile, after a series of short-lived coalition governments, which lasted more than a decade, the coming to the power of the AK Party with the November 2002 elections opened a new era in Turkish domestic politics. During the AK Party government, political stability, economic growth, as well as structural and democratic reforms have provided Turkey with better resources and higher confidence in foreign policy. The changes in Turkey have also strengthened its civil society and the role of business actors, and these actors began to take an increasingly important part in Turkey's external relations.

The AK Party's Approach: New Concepts and Dynamism

Since its inception, the AK Party government has adopted Ahmet Davutoglu's (8) ambitious framework for Turkish foreign policy, which involved an integrative and holistic utilization of the country's geostrategic, social, cultural, and historical resources. Unsurprisingly, the Balkans is among the regions that Davutoglu placed the greatest importance. In Stratejik Derinlik (Strategic Depth), he presents his prescriptions regarding Turkey's Balkans policy mainly along three lines: first, he believes that in order to strengthen its influence over the region and maintain it both during peacetime and in case of tension or conflict, Turkey should primarily strengthen its relations with the elements connected to Turkey "with history and by heart" (read the Muslims) and bring the Ottoman-Turkish cultural heritage to the fore. Second, he regards Turkey's geographical, social and economic resources that can connect the Balkans to other nearby basins as an invaluable asset. For him, acting as a pivotal state connecting the Balkans with the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia will not only contribute to peace and stability in these regions, but also increase Turkey's diplomatic leverage. Third, Davutoglu finds it essential that Turkey forestalls the involvement of other external powers in the Balkans by actively engaging in intra-regional politics and having closer relations with all relevant actors there. (9)

Having laid out in Stratejik Derinlik his geostrategic views regarding Turkey's near abroad, Davutoglu developed new ideas and concepts as he was actively involved in foreign policy making. As a general vision, he introduced the concept "zero problems with neighbors," which in a nutshell aims to minimize conflicts and maximize trade and investment opportunities for Turkish businesses. (10) The long-term objective of this is to develop a peaceful environment and a network of economic interdependence centered around Turkey. (11) Obviously, this will also mean a central political position for Turkey, as any interdependence between Turkey and the smaller states around it would be an asymmetrical one, in which the vulnerability and sensitivity of the latter will be higher. (12)

For specifically the Western Balkans, Davutoglu has defended two main principles, which have also been officially endorsed by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (13) The first one is regional ownership, which means that the problems of the region should be resolved by the participation and will of the indigenous actors. The aim of this is not only to check the political influence of external powers over the region, but also to disentangle the Western Balkans from the disagreements and rivalries among these powers, all of which have had a hand in the strife, tensions, and instability that have existed in the region for at least two centuries. The second principle is all-inclusiveness, i.e. taking into account all the views of the parties in an effort to settle the conflicts in the region. The idea behind this is that through dialogue regional actors can revise the existing arrangements that had been introduced and promoted by external actors in a more balanced outlook so as to satisfy the parties directly involved.

Although preceding governments had devised similar pro-active and integrative approaches for the Western Balkans, they were unable to carry them out systematically and vigorously due to the reasons mentioned before. With better political and economic resources and increased cooperation of the state with civil and business actors, the AK Party government was able to put them more effectively into practice. In addition, different from the general outlook of Turkey's post-Cold War Balkans policy, Davutoglu's vision has involved an important element, that is the more active and institutional use of the common religion in approaching the Muslims in the region. Indeed, the existence of a sizable Muslim community with a shared Ottoman past has long been a strong, if not the strongest, factor shaping the interest of conservative members of the AK Party and its precursors in the Balkans. (14) Considering the fostering of Islamic identity, particularly among the Bosniaks and Albanians, as a strategy that would facilitate and accelerate Turkey's presence in the region...