A couple of years ago I took tea with a man called Ahmet Davutoglu in a Piccadilly hotel. Back then he was foreign policy adviser to Turkey’s prime minister. Now he’s foreign minister and probably the most important and pro-active Turk in the role in almost two decades.
After last week’s attack by Israeli commandos on a Turkish ship off Gaza – and after Turkey’s refusal to endorse new UN sanctions against Iran – I have been thinking back to that cup of tea a great deal.
What I recall most is the gleam in Mr Davutoglu’s eye as he set out his rather feverish vision of Turkish foreign policy.
Isolationist the vision was not. Quite the opposite. It was a vision of incessant activity, of bridge-building on all fronts.
Traditionally Turkey has seen itself as surrounded by enemies; the Greeks (naturally) and the Persians (ancient empires both); the Arabs conquered by the Ottomans and (worse) the Kurds; the Armenians (don’t mention the “G” word) and former republics of the Soviet Iron Curtain.
Yet under Davutoglu, Turkey’s answer to this series of potential foreign policy car crashes has been an extraordinarily bold degree of engagement. He spoke to me at length about shuttling between Israeli and Syrian delegations secretly holed up in separate hotels in Istanbul, as Turkey tried to broker a settlement over the Golan Heights.
Prime Minister Erdogan’s triumphant visit to Athens last month had “Davutoglu” written all over it. As did talks with the Armenians about reopening that border. Iraqi Kurdish leaders are back as guests in Ankara, and relations with the Syrians have been transformed.
Some of this diplomacy has run into the ground. Some of it has felt like displacement activity for a country which has not given up its European aspirations but which has grown weary of the monotony of knocking on Europe’s tightly shut door.
Mr Davutoglu, with that gleam in his eye, put it to me rather differently.
His theory was that once Europe realised how important his country was, it would have no choice but to let Turkey in. Troy happens to be in Asia Minor on the Turkish coast, and ever since our meeting I have thought of Turkey’s busy foreign policy as a Trojan Horse – a cunning method of breaching Europe’s walls.
It hasn’t worked out that way. The French and the Germans remain unconvinced. The only people who really seem to appreciate the importance of the Turks are not in Europe, but in Washington DC.
Listen to Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, speaking in London yesterday: “I personally think that if there is anything to the notion that Turkey is, if you will, moving eastward, it is, in my view, in no small part because it was pushed, and pushed by some in Europe refusing to give Turkey the kind of organic link to the West that Turkey sought.”
I don’t think that Turkey is moving eastwards in any particularly worrying sense.
Ankara’s attempt to broker a nuclear deal with Iran also involved Brazil. It speaks to me more of a new economic world order challenging the authority of the old UN Security Council powers, than of any dangerous pro-Iranian alliance. In fact, as the Iranian crisis continues and international relations threaten to break down, Turkey’s hotline to its Iranian neighbour could prove very, very useful.
And I don’t think Europe’s cold shoulder explains Turkey’s current fury with Israel. That fury was caused by the Israelis themselves.
Last year’s Gaza war was the tipping point for a Muslim country which understandably cannot stand the suffering it is witnessing. Then last week nine Turkish citizens died in an attempt to bring attention to it all. The Turks have been trying to act as Middle East negotiators for years – not just to burnish their diplomatic credentials, but because the EU, the UN and above all the US have so conspicuously failed.
The irony is that the Turks and the Israelis have so much in common. A siege mentality; dangerous neighbours. Though the Israelis have much more to fear.
Yet while Ahmet Davutoglu and his fellow Turkish leaders have tried with considerable success to overcome their fears, the Israelis seem defined and confined by theirs.