Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sent messages two days ago in every direction, locally, regionally and internationally, in what could represent a turning point in Turkish politics, at least in terms of the way Turkey deals with heated issues in the region. And when Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announces reducing diplomatic representation with Israel and suspending military agreements with it, he is announcing at the same time that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP – Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) has permanently settled the issue of the decision-making frame of reference in Turkey, and that the army's Supreme Council which supervised those agreements, oversaw their implementation and clung to them, is no longer formulating Turkish military strategy, and that strategy has rather become subjected to the political decision-making coming out of state institutions. This is perhaps what President Abdullah Gül meant when he asserted that things had changed, pointing to the fact that Turkish civilian state institutions are now setting policy, not the military institution. It has therefore become possible – despite the Turkish army's need for Israeli technical knowledge, especially with the unmanned drones it uses in its fight against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK – Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) entrenched in the mountains – to make the decision to stop such military cooperation for political needs. And this could be applied to other issues on which the military institution may have traditional stances that contradict the political direction taken by the government. Moreover, by reducing representation with Israel, Turkey sends a clear message to the United States, which is working for the broadest cooperation between its two allies in the region. The content of such a message is that Turkey's national interest takes precedence over the needs of American policy, and that, when such an interest comes in contradiction with such needs, Ankara will not hesitate to take the stance that suits it, even if this were to lead to friction with Washington. In other words, Turkey will not hesitate to make use of political deterrence in order to see its demands met by Israel, which refused to apologize for its attack on the Freedom Flotilla. At the same time, Turkey has settled the matter of where it belongs in the balance of international strategies by announcing that it would host the radar system for NATO's missile shield. Indeed, it unequivocally confirmed its affiliation to this alliance and the fact that its strategic interest is connected to it. This confirms that the tension in its relationship with Israel falls within the framework of political estimation, not of enmity that cannot be resolved, with what this entails in terms of future consequences in case any change were to take place in the Hebrew state's policies. Turkey agreed to this measure taken by NATO, despite the resentment shown by Moscow, which has waged an exceptional diplomatic campaign to prevent it in Eastern Europe, as it considers it to represent a hostile step towards it. Ankara would have thus restored the role it had played during the Cold War, making of itself an essential link within NATO's defenses, not just in confronting Russian missiles, but also in confronting Iranian missiles, the main pretext for setting up the missile shield in Europe. And it seems that what is most important is Turkey's message to Iran in hosting the NATO radars, a message which represents a turning point in the way Turkey deals with the issues of the region. Indeed, it is well known that Ankara has sought, along with Brazil, to find a settlement with the West on the Iranian nuclear issue, hosting two meetings over this issue. And regardless of the results yielded by these past efforts, they had represented the Turkish desire to avoid escalation and confrontation. Yet merely by fortifying itself against potential Iranian long-range missiles, Ankara is asserting that it is preparing for the possibility of such a confrontation, and that it has chosen the side it would stand on in the event of its outbreak. There are also those who see in fortifying itself against Iranian missiles considerations of Ankara's connected to the repercussions of the situation in Syria and the possibilities such a situation entails, in light of relations between Tehran and Damascus. Indeed, further deterioration domestically in Syria, through the continued violent repression of the protest movement and of the opposition, will reflect in widening disagreements between Ankara and Damascus. And if Tehran were to take the step of exerting any kind of pressure to the benefit of its Syrian ally, Ankara would be strategically fortified against any step of this kind. Thus it seems that Ankara, which in the previous phase promoted the theory of “zero problems” through cooperation and containing disputes, seeks today to show that it is also capable of responding to challenges to its interests and its policies through measures of deterrence.
