Turkey's humanitarian diplomacy and development cooperation.

• Author: Hasimi, Cemalettin
• Position: Report

Distance Matters

One way to examine Turkey's quest for multi-dimensional and effective foreign policy is to focus on the development assistance and responses to humanitarian crisis. As poverty, inequality, human resource weakness, economic vulnerability and humanitarian crisis continue to haunt global politics, Turkey, in search of being a global actor, has become involved deeply with such a policy and given a political priority to development cooperation activities and humanitarian assistance. The political will of active engagement with such issues, found positive responses, in less than a decade, and Turkey's efforts has become subject of numerous praises, particularly in terms of its pace and effectiveness. (1)

"If I request computers from the UN, they will take months and require a number of assessments. They will spend $50,000 to give me $7,000 of equipment. If I request computers from Turkey, they will show up next week" says Mohamed Nour, the Mayor of Mogadishu, Somalia, in September 2013 when he was asked about Turkish aid to Somalia. (2)

In January 2013, the President of Somalia, Hassan Sheik Mahmoud, elaborated on what he defined as the features of the Turkish model in Somalia.

"The Turkish model in Somalia is very, very clear ... They said we want to do this thing in Somalia, and they do it. They are there. They come there, starting from their top leadership, the prime minister of the country with his family, the rest, deputy prime minister, ministries. There is a deputy prime minister who comes to Somalia every other month just to monitor and see how the projects are going on. They are building or implementing projects that are really tangible ones ... They are doing the work there. They are driving their own cars. They are moving the city. They are building. They are teaching. They are--and there are a number of clinics that provide a free service to the people in Mogadishu alone. They are doing the same thing--they started doing the same thing in Puntland and Somaliland. Today Mogadishu is cleaner because of the support of the Turkish. They provided the garbage collection trucks and everything and the city is cleaner today." (3)

Neither the President nor the Mayor is alone in praising Turkish aid. Since 2011, virtually all political actors, refugees, representatives of UN, and NGOs from and outside of Turkey have made similar comments. Two years later today, Turkey's humanitarian aid to Somalia has become one of the most well-known acts that has gained the hearts and minds of people in Africa and elsewhere. (4)

There are reasons for Somalians to focus on the "being there" aspect of international-humanitarian aid, as almost all urgent humanitarian aid to Somalia for the last 20 years has been coordinated at a physical distance because of "security concerns." While there is no doubt that security matters, Turkey is not immune from such a concern as, in addition to several other attacks and threats, its embassy was recently subject to a deadly assault. (5) Despite the security situation, Turkey has been active in the re-building of Somalia, particularly since August 2011 with the historic visit of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (6) Urgent humanitarian aid has developed into a comprehensive program for rebuilding Somalia and Turkey has been defined as the only country "investing in the stability of Somalia unlike other countries waiting for stability to invest." (7) Further, Turkey has also been active to a varying degree in several countries with similar security problems, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc. (8)

While there is no doubt that the effectiveness of international aid suffers from insecure political conditions, such a context is not unfamiliar to aid activities and it cannot be the sole factor to explain the difficulties of international aid. Apparently, what matters more is not simply the physical distance but what can be defined as the affective distance. (9)

Turkey has managed to contextualize the very meaning of international aid in a way that enables it to move beyond all "distances," specifically emotional detachment created by the established world-system of nation-states. The receiver is perceived not as "a foreign person in need of help" but as a living individual that witnesses and symbolizes the global injustice and mistaken policies of "other states" dominating the world-system. In this context, international aid has been treated as a natural part of the very meaning of Turkey itself, rather than being a mere result of strategic calculation, political alignment or expression of solidarity. It is what defines the New Turkey as a whole, from domestic politics to its vision of global politics and the self-perception of Turkish political elites. Such a perception can be seen in daily phrases and speeches delivered by the Turkish Prime Minister (PM), Deputy PM's or NGOs in Turkey.

The mobilization of NGOs, direct involvement of virtually all political-official figures, re-organization of aid institutions and continuous references given to aid organizations are expressions of such political re-writing of aid activities in Turkey. It is this institutional, procedural and political deployment of "affect" that enabled Turkey to cultivate a different form of international cooperation aid that has its own peculiarities, moving beyond the limits of present international aid both in practice and procedure.

The case of Somalia and the success of Turkey is one of many examples but it receives more attention because it is a triggering case that has made the impact and effectiveness of Turkey's international aid more visible. Furthermore, the case suggests a full framework to examine the distinguishing features of Turkish aid from other similar development cooperation. (10) Nevertheless, as of 2013, Turkey has been active in more than 100 countries, ranging from Asia to Africa, the Middle East to Europe and America to the Far East.

So questions remain: What is the political history of Turkish aid? How can the success and distinguishing features of Turkey's international development aid be explained? Is it simply another example of newcomers to the list of donor countries or is it more than that? How is the link between humanitarian diplomacy and aid maintained in the discourse of Turkish foreign policy? These are crucial questions that need to be answered in order to contextualize Turkey's foreign aid policies.

"Foreign Aid" and International Politics

Just as Turkey's humanitarian aid covers more than Somalia, official development assistance (ODA) itself is more than urgent humanitarian aid, which only represents one subset of ODA. Foreign aid simply refers to the flow of materials and resources in cash or in kind from a developed state to developing or less-developed nations.11 However, the form and content of what is considered official aid is as complex as international politics. To resolve such difficulty, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) provided a specific definition of ODA in 1961, which has become standardized and suggests certain criteria to distinguish between different forms of aid as the following:

"... flows to countries and territories on the DAC List of ODA Recipients and to multilateral development institutions which are provided by official agencies, including state and local governments, or by their executive agencies; and each transaction of which is administered with the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as its main objective and is concessional in character and conveys a grant element of at least 25 per cent." (12)

Setting the framework for development aid, ODA includes three subsets of aid as "official development assistance, official aid and other official flows." The first includes direct or indirect aid to the least or middle developed countries with economic development and welfare as the main objective. The second refers to aid given to multilateral development institutions and developing countries. In terms of reporting, there are certain specific requirements set by ODA eligibility, such as the exclusion of direct military aid and enforcement aspects of peacekeeping forces. The third area refers to aid that is not directly aimed at development or conveys a grant element of less than 25%. In the third framework, all activities including "projects and programs, cash transfers, deliveries of goods, training courses, research projects, debt relief operations and contributions to non-governmental organizations," as well as humanitarian aid, meets the ODA criteria. (13) Despite this clear-cut framework the ODA criteria have remained inadequate to cover all the different forms of assistance, specifically those given through and by NGOs, in parallel to transformations in international politics. In the last two decades, NGOs have developed beyond an "intermediary agent in the delivery of aid" into "a direct agent that delivers and organizes aid" on the ground, (14) challenging the established framework of aid organizations particularly since the end of the Cold War.

Alongside the presence of an intense humanitarian discourse in international aid literature, there is a direct relationship between priorities in a nation's foreign policy agenda and international aid. In other words, "realistically" and carefully crafted national interests, as a general tendency, form states' policies and priorities on international aid. This relationship, which does not necessarily constitute a negative correlation by definition, has been well documented and the response to the relationship varies. Some have defined this as part of broader and "sinister" national interests and others have taken it as an essential expression of humanity or global responsibility. However, the necessity for aid has never been directly disputed or rejected.

Turkish aid...