One year on, failed coup takes toll on Turkey’s foreign policy

ISTANBUL: The consequences of the failed July 15 coup in Turkey increased Ankara’s international isolation, exposing shortcomings in the government’s sometimes overambitious foreign policy, analysts say.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member and European Union membership hopeful Turkey had expected an outpouring of solidarity after the coup attempt one year ago, aimed at ousting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which Ankara blamed on USbased preacher Fethullah Gulen.

But ties with Brussels were bruised and Turkey’s long-running EU membership bid had set back as the EU reacted with alarm to the post-coup purge that had seen tens of thousands arrested.

The US presidency of Donald Trump had also given no hope that Turkey had seen the end of the rancour that marked ties between Washington and Ankara under Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf risks wrecking Turkey’s efforts to keep a tight strategic alliance with Qatar without upsetting Saudi Arabia.

“Turkey has been somewhat isolated diplomatically since the July 2016 failed coup, both because Nato partners were taken by surprise and because the subsequent purge went far beyond anything that could be expected,” said Marc Pierini, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.

“The crisis between Saudi Arabia and its allies and Qatar only adds to the problems Turkey is facing on the diplomatic front.”

Ankara’s precarious position is

a far cry from what it enjoyed a decade ago, when Erdogan was seen as an essential mediator in almost every crisis.

For former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey was a centre of the Islamic world and deserved influence from Bosnia to Arabia — in lands Constantinople controlled under the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey had high hopes that the Arab Spring would bring into power Sunni Muslim governments under Turkish influence.

But the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and failure to unseat Syria’s Bashar al-Assad put paid to these goals.

“The picture today is a very different one,” said Kemal Kirisci of the Brookings Institution.

“It is characterised by the everincreasing disputes that Turkey is having with countries in its neighbourhood and beyond.”

Turkey has sought to join the EU for the last half century, in an agonisingly slow process where Ankara had watched on enviously as post-Communist states joined the bloc with far less fuss.

Erdogan has sometimes made Brussels seem like an enemy than partner, with attacks bubbling with venom in the run-up to an April 16 referendum on enhancing his powers. AFP