Opposition Warns AKP for Foreign Policy

The main opposition has hit out hard at the government’s foreign policy, calling it “inconsistent” and “unprincipled” and warning that continuing down the same path will alienate Turkey from the rest of the world.

“This path is very dangerous. These policies may bring Turkey into a dead end,” former Ambassador Faruk Loğoğlu, a foreign-policy advisor to the head of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in a recent interview.

“Shouting at everyone could make a splash in Turkish domestic politics and turn into votes at home, but it will make Turkey lose in the end,” Loğoğlu said, in an apparent reference to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s address last week at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Erdoğan’s tough responses there to questions posed by European politicians had repercussions both at home and abroad, sending shockwaves through the European body and being reflected in the Turkish media as a second “one minute” moment, in reference to his outburst toward Israeli President Shimon Peres at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos.

“Today all countries implement foreign policy in order to establish good relations, not to offend one another,” said Loğoğlu, who served as Turkish ambassador to Washington from 2001 to 2005 and is running for Parliament as a CHP deputy in the June 12 general election.

The use of such rhetoric in foreign policy could create a backlash even in the Arab world, where Erdoğan often enjoys popularity, and cause Turkey to lose its dignity, Loğoğlu said. He added that a Turkey that parts ways with both the Arab world and the West would become isolated.

“The ruling Justice and Development Party [AKP] policies are lacking in consistency and principles, while the CHP policies are based upon the [Turkish] Republic’s fundamental principles such as the rule of law, democracy and human rights,” said Loğoğlu.

If elected, the main opposition pledges to implement foreign policy that is result-oriented, serious and calm, creating a Turkey that does not fight but gains everyone’s friendship and whose words are heeded, he said.

Loğoğlu also criticized Erdoğan’s objective of making Turkey into a leader. “You cannot make a country a leader. If you try to do so, that would be wrong. That country’s policies make it a leader,” he said.

The former ambassador was nominated by CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as a deputy candidate on the top of the party’s list for Adana, the Mediterranean Turkish province that is the veteran diplomat’s hometown.

“I consider the office of parliamentarian as an instrument to serve the Turkish people,” Loğoğlu said. “There are two goals: contributing to a solution to Turkey’s problems based on the CHP’s vision and projects and making Adana into an industry and tourism center like it was in the 1960s and the 1970s.”

April 18, 2011
SOURCE: Hürriyet Daily News