Spotlight: Analysts say Erdogan's foreign visits not likely to trigger policy reset

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to kick off a foreign tour at the end of this month that enables him to have a series of meetings with top leaders of the world but is not expected to lead to a readjustment in Turkey's foreign policy, a much-needed overhaul to break the country's growing isolation, according to analysts.

Erdogan is scheduled to visit India, Russia, China, the United States and then join other NATO leaders for a summit in Brussels toward the end of May.

"This chain of high-profile visits is unlikely to amount to a reset in Turkish foreign policy," Faruk Logoglu, a former diplomat who held top posts in the Turkish Foreign Ministry, told Xinhua.

Logoglu feels Erdogan's visits "appear to be more a tactical product arising from the necessities of domestic politics and economy rather than being an initial step of a strategic overhaul of Turkey's foreign relations."

Once boasting a policy of "zero problems with neighbors," Turkey has found itself growingly isolated in its region due mainly to its insistence on the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"We are quarrelling with everybody and Turkey is getting more and more isolated," Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), said last month.

Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has long been criticized at home for pursuing a sectarian foreign policy in the Middle East that does not serve the country's best interests.

Arguing an overhaul in Turkey's foreign policy would require, among others, a genuine commitment to peace in Syria and the restoration of the rule of law at home, Logoglu said, "These benchmarks are hard to meet, given the president's views and policies to date."

Turkey has major differences of opinion regarding the Syrian civil war with Russia and Iran, staunch supporters of the Syrian government, as well as with the United States, a NATO ally.

Yasar Yakis, a former AKP foreign minister, also feels "the realities in the field will force Turkey to make these adjustments (in foreign policy) rather than the meetings that President Erdogan will hold with foreign leaders."

Erdogan will be in India on Sunday, where he is expected to mainly discuss strengthened economic ties with the country's president and prime minister.

Then he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on May 3, where economic and military ties will be discussed, but the Syrian civil war is expected to top the agenda.

In a bid to mend ties with Russia, Turkey partly changed its position on Syria last summer by stopping support to rebel groups fighting to topple the al-Assad government. In addition, Ankara said it did not seek any longer to oust the Syrian president.

Following a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base early this month, Turkey has, however, once again changed its position by insisting on al-Assad's removal.

On the economic front, Turkey expects Russia to lift sanctions on some Turkish agricultural products, a measure Russia imposed in 2015 after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet near the Turkish-Syrian border.

Turkey has recently retaliated by stopping import of some produce, such as wheat, from Russia.

On the military front, Turkey is planning to purchase S-400 air defense system from Russia.

The sale of the sophisticated air defense missiles may be finalized depending on the progress of the talks between the two leaders, Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said last Sunday.

Cahit Armagan Dilek, director of the Ankara-based 21st Century Turkey Institute think tank, is not optimistic about the deal to be finalized.

Both Turkey and Russia will simply use the S-400 negotiations as a trump card against the West, he told Xinhua.

Under U.S. and NATO pressure, Turkey gave up buying a similar missile defense system from China in 2015.

Erdogan will travel to China for the Belt and Road Forum on International Cooperation to be held in Beijing on May 14-15, where the president is scheduled to meet with some foreign leaders.

Dilek believes that Erdogan may use the summit in Beijing to boost his declining prestige by showing he entertains close ties with leaders around the world.

In recent years, Erdogan has been more and more described in the Western media as a dictator due to allegations of increasing authoritarianism. He dismisses the claim, saying he is so named as he speaks up against tyrants.

The Turkish leader is scheduled to be in the United States on May 16-17 where he will meet with President Donald Trump for the first time, and their talks are expected to focus on Syria and U.S. military support for Kurdish militia in Syria.

Washington sees the Kurdish militia as a reliable ground force in the fight against the Islamic State (IS), but for Turkey, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) is simply a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) outlawed by Ankara.

The United States has turned so far a deaf ear to Turkish outcry over its support to the YPG, which has carved out three autonomous cantons in northern Syria by taking advantage of the civil war.

Turkey sees the emergence of a YPG-controlled Kurdish autonomous region along the Turkish border, which may later gain independence, as a major threat to its national security.

In the past week, Turkish jets bombed PKK and YPG targets in northern Iraq and Syria, sparking concern and criticism from both Washington and Moscow.

On May 25, Erdogan will land in Brussels for a summit of NATO leaders, where he has the opportunity to meet with leaders of some EU countries.

Turkish calls since last year for a top-level meeting with the EU to discuss the problems in bilateral relations have gone unanswered so far.

Turkey has aspired to be a full EU member over the past decades, but their relations have been ruptured now and then by unending rows over issues like democracy, human rights and refugee.

The ties have soured further since March, when Germany, the Netherlands and some others moved to bar Turkish cabinet ministers from addressing Turkish immigrants ahead of the April 16 referendum on constitutional changes in Turkey.

The EU has been accusing Turkey of growing authoritarianism, violations of the rule of law and crackdown on dissidents and the media particularly following last July's failed military coup.

Turkey, for its part, accuses the 28-nation bloc of protecting terrorists like the PKK.

Officials from both sides have even started to talk about the possibility of ending Turkey's negotiations on joining the union.

The EU will be the global actor with which Erdogan will have the most problems in the coming days, maintained Dilek, a former Turkish staff officer.

He argued that it is quite possible that uncertainties in Turkish foreign policy may be the rule from now on due to the emergence of a one-man rule as the referendum greenlights a stronger executive presidency.

The analysts feel that the series of meetings Erdogan will have with the world powers is important for Turkey, yet they have misgivings about whether Turkey could profitably use them given the country's increasingly negative image in terms of democracy and the dubious character of the referendum, which both the Turkish opposition and European bodies say was rigged with malpractices.

"These visits are extremely important, because they are taking place in a period when Turkey's options are diminishing," Yakis told Xinhua.

Referring to the fact that a report on the plebiscite by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is full of harsh criticism and that Turkey was recently put under political monitoring by the Council of Europe, Yakis added that "the coincidence of these visits with such developments are likely to affect negatively the outcome of the talks."

Amid claims of widespread rigging in the referendum, Turkey's main opposition CHP will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights over the result.

Yeasayers won by garnering a slim majority of 51.4 percent, while naysayers argue the referendum has lost its legitimacy due to blatant violations of the election law, including accepting unsealed ballots as valid.

"It looks as if the uncertainty and instability caused by the referendum will prevent these critical talks from being used in Turkey's favor," Dilek remarked.

In the view of Yakis, Erdogan's visits may help alleviate Turkey's isolation, but it will take a long time for the country to come out of it entirely.

Logoglu, a former CHP deputy, is more pessimistic and suspects that Erdogan may be using the foreign tour to recoup his fading political strength at home.

For Yakis, what Turkey must do is to try to find common ground with its interlocutors rather than to try to persuade the entire international community of its own version of the events taking place in its immediate neighborhood.

"Turkey has to acknowledge that other stakeholders in the Middle East are entitled to perceive the events from a different perspective," he said. Endit