Problem Solving

BY GUNDUZ AKTAN
RADIKAL- Our failure to solve the Armenian issue is considered as the failure of our foreign policy. People made the same comment about the Cyprus issue as well. Actually our Iraq policy, our relations with the US, our EU bid and Aegean issues can be mentioned in the same context. It’s true that our foreign policy’s problem-solving capacity isn’t high. However, we can’t separate this issue from our failure to solve problems, because we were the last to bring down our inflation, and such problems as traffic, taxes, roads and utilities, etc. still haven’t been solved. Obviously, the fact that we entered democracy early had a role in the failure to solve these problems. Political parties chose not to deal with such problems which cannot be solved without disturbing the public. They were afraid of losing support in elections. As a result, almost all of the public made unlawfulness a normal way of life and the problems became permanent.
Political powers, not used to solving problems in domestic politics, started to wait for the problems in foreign policy to solve themselves. What’s more, foreign policy has its own problems. As each problem is a conflict with two sides, a solution doesn’t only depend on us. If our rival resists solving the problem in our favor, then the conflict continues for a long period of time. In other words, a ‘win-win’ solution becomes impossible. In addition, economic interests don’t prevent political conflicts. Maybe it’s sad, but politics supercedes the economy in foreign policy. In conflicts with countries having one problem, it’s more difficult for countries having multiple problems to protect their interests. For example, Turkey has a number of vital strategic problems, whereas Greek Cypriots only think of swallowing the island and Armenians think of making us accept the so-called genocide. It can’t be denied that the most important weakness of our foreign policy comes from ourselves. Turkish foreign policy of the last 50 years always belittled its own power and considered others superior. We couldn’t understand that we can accomplish nothing in foreign policy without taking risks, and it was difficult for us to seek help from others. Our foreign policy also has two other obstacles. Following World War II, Turkey was in the Western world, but the West couldn’t overcome historical prejudices and didn’t consider Turkey a Western country. Following the Cold War and during our EU membership process, this situation became clearer. If the West had been fair, would the Armenian issue be treated this way? Meanwhile, many ‘liberal intellectuals’ in Turkey claim that Turkey should do everything requested by the West in order to become Western. Western countries use these intellectuals’ lack of identity. The number of academics dealing with foreign policy problems was very small. In addition, the number of lawyers and historians in the fields of genocide, terrorism and the rules of war is insufficient. As a nation, we also want conflicts to be solved immediately. We can’t feel enmity over long periods. We shouldn’t forget that solving conflicts in a short period of time requires making concessions.