The two leading chairmen of the opposition’s “table for six” have been targeting the Turkish government’s foreign policy using the same language. Ali Babacan, who leads the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), issued a 12-point guide on foreign policy. His first point was to warn the government against “personalizing foreign policy” – which means that the government should “leave foreign policy to the diplomats.”
Obviously, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, could not afford to be overshadowed. Evaluating the trilateral memorandum with Sweden and Finland and the U.S. House of Representatives move to restrict the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, the main opposition leader targeted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s interpreter by calling her “our hijabi girl.” Kılıçdaroğlu, too, argues that Erdoğan sidelines the diplomatic corps and “personalizes foreign policy out of fear.”
Hardly anyone finds it surprising that the opposition targets Erdoğan’s foreign policy increasingly aggressively. The opposition leaders believe that the electorate views the government’s national security and foreign policy performance positively. As such, they want to undermine that perception. They deem such action necessary to ensure that the voters can view the opposition as a viable alternative. Moreover, the opposition hopes to create a preventive discourse, assuming that Erdoğan will harness foreign policy and national security issues ahead of next year’s election.
That is why the opposition leaders have already launched an attack against leader-to-leader diplomacy – the backbone of Erdoğan’s many diplomatic achievements. Hence the all-too-familiar argument: “Do not personalize diplomacy.”
For the record, that term encapsulates the most common accusation made against the Turkish president, at home and abroad, over the last decade. Indeed, the allegations of “authoritarianism” and “dictatorship” are also rooted in the claim that Erdoğan has “highlighted himself” by “weakening official institutions.”
Nowadays, Babacan and Kılıçdaroğlu tap into that same argument to criticize the government’s foreign policy. Make no mistake: Erdoğan managed to rise through the ranks because he dared to act like a leader at critical junctions throughout his political career. What distinguished the Turkish leader on the night of July 15 or with regard to military operations in Syria, the pursuit of energy reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean, NATO’s enlargement and the effort to transport Ukrainian grains to the world, among other things, was his leadership capacity.
Erdoğan’s leader-to-leader diplomacy comes into play when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other official institutions reach their respective limits. To be clear, diplomats manage all those processes anyway. In the final analysis, the Turkish president gets his counterparts to sign off on the proposals of Turkey’s diplomatic corps rather than undermine them.
A case in point was the designation of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) and the YPG as organizations that threaten security in NATO’s documents and language. Certain points, which were rejected at a meeting among diplomats, were ultimately incorporated into the text when Erdoğan drew a “red line” at the quadripartite meeting. It is no secret that Kılıçdaroğlu has no diplomatic experience. Babacan, however, should have known how Turkey’s experienced leader made the lives of Turkish diplomats easier.
Unlike Babacan, Kılıçdaroğlu pursues as a supposedly “anti-Western” agenda in his critique of the government’s foreign policy. Whenever Turkey’s security interest are at stake, the main opposition leader keeps quiet for a while, refusing to support the government even on national issues. Once the issue is resolved or reaches a certain point, however, Kılıçdaroğlu promptly accuses Erdoğan of “making concessions to the West.”
That is exactly what the CHP chairman did regarding the F-16 fighter jets. He made the following statement to criticize Erdoğan, instead of the U.S. House of Representatives: “They should just stop complaining about the ‘foreign powers’. The West is no enemy of the Erdoğan regime. The West adores and backs such leaders, about which they know plenty and whom they hold in the palm of its hand.”
How could one analyze that statement, which the main opposition leader made on the sixth anniversary of the July 15 resistance? That is quite a claim to make, provided that the Western media target Erdoğan with the CHP’s own rhetoric! How could Kılıçdaroğlu make such an absurd statement just as the Western governments take things slow in many areas, where they must work with Turkey, so that they don’t “help” Erdoğan ahead of next year’s election? Has he forgotten how Erdoğan confronted those same governments, against the advice of his opponents, to further Turkey’s national interests?
The opposition leaders used to complain that Erdoğan had “decoupled” Turkey from the West. Having realized that such accusations have zero impact, they now argue that the Turkish president makes too many concessions to the West. I have no problem claiming that Kılıçdaroğlu contributed more than anyone to the idea that the opposition could say anything – even if it weren’t coherent or true — to criticize the government. Meanwhile, his critique of the West, which he uses to target Erdoğan, does not fit into a broader national or other ideological agenda.
That is exactly why the Western governments do not take seriously the opposition leaders seated around the “table for six.”
