Gaza crisis spurs Turkish diplomacy

ISTANBUL

Israel’s Gaza offensive may have benefits for Turkey, bolstering its diplomatic profile in what some commentators call “neo-Ottomanism” and a Turkish newspaper hailed as a “golden age” for Turkish diplomacy.

On New Year’s Eve, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a tour of the region. He visited Syria, Jordan and Egypt before concluding his trip Saturday in Saudi Arabia.

The four-nation tour included key Arab actors with a stake in the Gaza crisis as well as a side meeting between a trusted Erdogan aide and exiled Hamas spiritual leader Khaled Meshal in Damascus.

Mr. Erdogan has cultivated ties with Hamas since 2006 when a high-ranking Hamas delegation’s visit to Istanbul angered Turkey’s allies in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Since the Israeli offensive in Gaza began Dec. 27, Mr. Erdogan has spoken on the phone with Hamas’ political leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, and has kept in touch with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

While the crisis has underlined the wide range of Turkey’s contacts, critics say, it may be driven more by domestic opinion infuriated by the mounting death toll in Gaza.

“The trip is a gesture directed more for internal consumption with his domestic constituency and has little chance of success,” said Cengiz Candar, a prominent political commentator who is credited with coining the term “neo-Ottomanism.”

The term refers to Turkish aspirations for influence in the Arab countries that were once part of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey’s unique contacts with all the major players in the region, as well as its membership in NATO, have positioned it to mediate the area’s endemic conflicts.

Turkey has benefited, in particular, from regional disillusionment with Cairo over Egypt’s refusal to open its border with Gaza to allow an exodus of Gazans who want to flee the fighting.

Turkey has greatly expanded its diplomacy in the Middle East under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), an organization with Islamist roots.

This marks a sea change from the decades that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire early last century, when the new secular republic shunned ties with regional powers and resolutely faced West.

Government opponents still hold up Iran as a nightmare scenario of what Turkey might become if it sheds its secular constitution.

Still, Mr. Ahmadinejad was welcomed this summer on an official visit and was allowed to defy protocol by not paying respects at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder. Mr. Ataturk founded a militant secular state in which expressions of religion such as women wearing head scarves are sharply restricted in public life.

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