"The World Is Bigger than Five": A Salutary Manifesto of Turkey's New International Outlook.

• Author: Aral, Berdal
• Position: ARTICLE - Report

"The World is Bigger than Five": Substance and Context

"The world is bigger than five (in Turkish dunya bebten buyuktur)" is now a well-known motto, which has been consistently used and popularized by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since 2013, when he was prime minister. It could possibly be viewed as a follow-up to Turkey's overall critique of the United Nations (UN) system in the course of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) rule since 2002. Erdogan has coined this motto and used it on various domestic and international platforms as a manifestation of his frustration with the UN system and his vision of a more functional and representative UN. For example, during his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2014, he used this motto to draw on the tragic consequences of the privileged presence of the five permanent members (P-5), namely the United States (U.S.), United Kingdom (UK), France, China, and Russia, within the UN Security Council (UNSC). These states all have the right to veto any draft resolutions, even if the required nine votes out of fifteen have been obtained. (1) Erdogan thus highlighted the failure of the UNSC in bringing about an effective solution to the conflicts in Palestine, Syria and many other places that have led to the loss of countless innocent lives. He also decried the disappointing silence of the Council in the course of the overthrow of Egypt's first elected president Mohamed Morsi by a coup d'etat in 2013 which, in his view, put the main raison d'etre of the UN into question. (2) In his address to the UN General Assembly on September 20, 2016, Erdogan repeated the motto and said "The United Nations Security Council should be reformed in order to render peacekeeping and peace-making activities more effective... A Security Council that does not represent the entire world can never serve to re-establish peace and justice around the world." (3)

Erdogan has consistently maintained that a major source of deficiency about the UNSC is its failure to manifest a fair representation of world community. Most of the permanent members within the Council are from the West, whereas Asian and African representation is significantly weak. Although the combined population of Asia (4.6 billion) and Africa (1.3 billion), makes up well over three quarters of the world population, excepting China as a permanent member, states from these two continents have been allocated only one third of the entire membership in the Council. This lack of representation is, of course, a fortiori valid for the Muslim world, which consists of 1.7 billion people, simply because there is an absence of a Muslim-majority state as a permanent member. Although these are some of the ills which Erdogan associates with the Council as an indication of this body's 'crisis of representation,' his suggested solution appears somewhat different from most of the advocates of UN reform. Erdogan does not, as has been by Germany and Japan, advocate an increase in the number of permanent members with the accompanying right of veto like other members of the P-5. Rather, he demands that the veto mechanism be completely abolished. (4) This is how he expresses his vision of a reformed UNSC as regards its composition: "I continue to urge the community of nations to abolish the practice of permanent membership in the UN Security Council, increase the number of its members to 20, and adopt new rules under which all nations will take turns sitting on the committee." (5)

The tone and substance of Erdogan's critique of the UN system indicates that, in comparison to the moderate and measured criticisms raised by other leading advocates of reform such as India, Germany, and Japan, Turkey has been more vocal about the depth and scope of the problems associated with the UNSC. (6) Erdogan's high-pitched objections target not only the UN system, but also other international mechanisms and institutions injuring global justice. (7)

The main themes that have come out of Erdogan's series of critical remarks and proposed changes to the UN system could be summed up as follows: Since the conditions that existed after the Second World War have fundamentally changed, the preferences and expectations of the humanity should no longer be held captive to the will of the five permanent members in the UNSC. There is a frustrating absence of fair representation of the world community in the Council, a key factor behind the paucity of resolutions in serving "the cause of justice." With this term Erdogan expresses his longing for a Council that confronts and takes effective action vis-a-vis aggression and massive human rights violations wherever they occur, irrespective of the identity of the culprit. In order to render the Council more democratic, effective, transparent and just, the number of its members should be increased on the basis of non-discriminatory geographical representation. In an age in which the term 'democracy' has become a catchphrase, existing structures and modes of decision-making within the UN are incompatible with democratic principles. Therefore reforming the UN system has become an urgent necessity.

A number of international developments must have motivated Erdogan to make such an extensive critique of the UN and, in particular, the Security Council. The Bosnian tragedy of 1992-1995 was possibly one of the first major issues in the post-Cold War era that alerted Turkey, along with numerous other states, to the problematic structure of international institutions. The arbitrary occupation of Iraq by the U.S. and the UK in 2003 raised Turkey's concerns given the failure of the UN to prevent this tragic occupation, which resulted in the huge devastation of life and physical infrastructure in Iraq. (8) The double standards, which featured in the way in which the UNSC treated the Arab revolutions that began in 2010, also intensified Turkey's discontent with the UN system. (9) While the UNSC took robust action against the Libyan regime, authorizing sanctions and the use of force, for crimes committed against humanity due to the killing of protestors demanding greater freedom (Resolutions 1970 and 1973 of February and March 2011 respectively), it remained either silent or adopted 'soft' resolutions in other settings of the Arab revolutions, although mass killings, disappearances and widespread torture were also prevalent in Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and Bahrain. It was in particular the Syrian tragedy which brought Turkey into the picture on account of its proximity and the devastating scale of killing with the consequent refugee crisis. As in other cases, this huge humanitarian tragedy was caused by the killing and torture overseen by the security forces of the Assad regime against the people that took to the streets, in 2011, demanding political freedom. The disappointing performance of the UN with regard to these crises with strong international ramifications has been perceived by Turkey as a symptom of the deficiency of the structure and decision-making apparatus in the UN. In the Syrian case, the UNSC has either remained silent or contented itself with the adoption of resolutions on minor aspects of the conflict, instead of imposing sanctions or authorizing military enforcement action, on the basis of the right of humanitarian intervention vis-a-vis the Syrian regime, which has persistently committed crimes against humanity. These crimes eventually led to a terrible civil war in the course of which hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives.

As observed by Hurd, the Syrian tragedy is yet another reminder of the bitter truth regarding the crude reality of power politics which was ingrained in the UNSC right from the beginning:

The reaction to Syria helps show some truths about the Security Council that liberal internationalists sometimes forget: the Council was created to help the Great Powers impose their vision of global order on the rest of the world. The veto was added to ensure that when they do not agree on what should be done, the Council would do nothing. The Council therefore oscillates between complete irrelevance and imperial domination, with Great-Power consensus providing the switch that determines which condition obtains on an issue. Neither result offers much help to regular people who are suffering as a result of global forces...when the Great Powers do agree with each other, the Council becomes a mechanism for them to impose their views on the world. (10) During the AK Party era, Turkey has consistently called for an overhaul of major institutions of global governance such as the UN, IMF and World Bank. This is a reflection of Turkey's search for global justice, a world order that recognizes the existence of a multipolar world, more proper decision-making and peace-enforcement mechanisms that are responsive to international crises. (11) Turkey's vibrant rhetoric is a consequence of its recently gained status as a rising power. This is the suitable context in which to understand Erdogan's "the world is bigger than five" motto as an apt expression of Turkey's predilection for a more just, more egalitarian and more peaceful international order. The UNSC's problematical structure, composition, decision-making mechanism and possession of excessive powers with hardly any legal restraints; combined with its pathetic performance in most situations of military aggression and other situations of human tragedy that have transpired, particularly after the Cold War, constitute the backbone of the motto - "the world is bigger than five."

Historically speaking, all of the five permanent members of the UNSC, emboldened by their self-appointed privilege and aware of their immunity to impeachment, have, both during and after the Cold War, acted upon their own whims rather than endeavoring to observe international law and justice. The P-5 countries have been in a position to incarcerate the free will of...