Need to nurture ties with Turkey Thursday, 08 April 2010 00:00

Turkey’s relations with the Arab world has, of late, seen remarkable convergence at various levels — political, economic, artistic and cultural. Political developments and economic logic have, no doubt, played a major role in creating the congenial atmosphere for promoting cooperation between Turkey and Arab countries. Economic motives, in particular, have been a fuel to fostering trust between the two sides in the face of historical differences.

This new relationship became more pronounced with the presence of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Arab Summit in Libya and Turkey’s stance on the Palestinian issue, which proved a turning point for Ankara’s cooperation with Arab countries. Turkey’s relations with Israel have been on the slide for sometime. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last year, the Turkish prime minister engaged in a verbal duel with Israeli President Shimon Peres that grabbed world headlines.

It is interesting to note that Turkey was the first Muslim-majority state to recognise Israel in 1949. In the 1990s, military alliance and strategic security and agricultural cooperation between the two were booming, while there was a high degree of tension between Turkey and Arab states like Iraq and Syria. The Justice and Development Party’s victory in the 2002 parliamentary elections was a turning point for Turkish policy towards the Arab world. The popular government soon found that differences with Iraq and Syria did not serve Ankara well and gave Western and regional powers an advantage at its cost. The Justice and Development Party government took the politically risky initiative of reaching out to the Arab world and taking a more active role in trying to solve some of the intractable but pressing issues in the region.

This evolving Turkish-Arab relations reflect positively on both sides, with all countries in the region wanting to deepen ties with Ankara. A very positive role in mending Turkish-Arab relations is being played by popular media, especially TV serials. For two years now, major TV stations in the Arab world have been broadcasting a Turkish series dubbed in Arabic. The producers of the biggest TV series about the Ottomans and Sultan Abdul Hamid, to be aired this Ramadan, are Qatari entrepreneurs. Turkey, last week, opened a new Arabic television station, with the event being attended by the Heir Apparent H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani who was on an official visit to Turkey this week.

Culture, arts and the media have a key role in bettering ties between the peoples of Turkey and the Arab world, but Arab governments need do more to strengthen relations with Turkey.