On November 7, GMF Berlin as part of its EU/G8 series, held a workshop together with GMF Ankara which examined Turkey's foreign policy orientation in light of recent domestic and regional developments on the evening of the EU Commission's progress report on Turkey. The workshop "Is Turkey Drifting - And Where Is It Heading?" was hosted at the Berlin representation of the state of Northrhine-Westphalia (a third of Germany's nearly 3 million-strong Turkish population lives in the NRW region).

The first panel, on the domestic scene in Turkey, was moderated by Erkan Arikan of NRW's state-owned radio/tv station Westdeutscher Rundfunk, and featured Esra Özyurek, a Turkish anthropologist currently living and working in California, and a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and Ibrahim Kalin, Director General of the Ankara-based Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research.

Özyurek argued that Turkey is drifting away from Europe. She maintained, however, that Turkish business associations and a small number of secular, liberal political activists continue to be supportive of the EU integration process and are desperate to see the negotiations continue. Ibrahim Kalin asked whether the drift was just a reaction to the EU's behaviour, or a sign of deeper changes in Turkish politics, and made it clear in his subsequent remarks that he leans towards the latter view. He added that he thought this was part of a global rise in insecurity and the proliferation of conspiracy theories. The Turks' frustration with Europe is very real, but the changes in Turkish society and politics are equally real.

The second panel focused on Turkey's foreign policy scene and was moderated by Karsten Voigt, Coordinator for German-American Cooperation at the German Foreign office. Guest speakers were Soli Özel, columnist for the Sabah Daily, and Jan Senkyr, Resident Representative of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Turkey.

Voigt (who is also the head of the Turkey group in the Social Democratic Party leadership) opened the session by pointing out that Germans tend to forget that Turkey, too, was a frontline state during the cold war.  He said that Europeans need to try harder to understand Turkey's foreign policy concerns - particularly with regard to the rise of Shiism in the region. Both Özel and Senkyr then argued that Turkish foreign policy is not drifting significantly.

Özel argued that while the EU needs to understand that Turkey is a foreign policy asset for them, conversely Turks must learn to think more in European terms, to present themselves in the context of European issues. Senkyr was less pessimistic and thought negotiations would continue. He concurred that no substantial shift in Turkish foreign policy has occurred and, despite recent tensions in Ankara's relations with Washington and Brussels, Turkey remains a close ally of the western world. However, he said that a US strike on Iran, if it occurred, might have a dramatic impact on Turkish foreign policy.          

Cem Özdemir, Member of the European Parliament and former GMF Transatlantic Fellow, was the keynote speaker at the final dinner. Özdemir challenged the US and the EU to bring their weight to bear in order to resolve the Cyprus crisis, and challenged Turkish politicians to work harder on persuading European and Turkish public opinion.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Turkey's foreign policy environment has changed drastically. Apart from dealing with the Kurdish problem in its Southeast, Turkey has had to grapple with the fact that its once stable regional neighborhoods in the Balkans, the Black Sea/Caucasus as well as the Middle East have now become major areas of conflict. While Turkey was defending the southern borders of the NATO alliance for decades, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were communist. Turkey has had an association agreement with the EU since 1963, but still feels held away at arms' length today despite the beginning of accession negotiations in October 2005. Turkey's neighbor Iran is trying to develop a nuclear capability, while Iraq is in the midst of a civil war and Lebanon has been the theatre of a war to which Turkish soldiers are expected to contribute to provide the peace. Erdogan's moderate Islamist government is increasingly steering Turkey into an independent foreign policy orientation. Will Turkey continue to be a reliable partner of the West in the region nevertheless — or is Turkey at the beginning of a process that will draw it further into the vortex of Middle Eastern divisions and lead it to seek new partnerships with countries such as Russia and Iran?