Turkey seeks friends all over the world

Turkey’s shift to a multidimensional foreign policy has been reflected in its involvement in several global and regional organizations with the aim of securing its interests.

This quest coincides with Ankara’s increased dissatisfaction with the West, so its engagement policy could be read as an attempt to balance Turkey’s relations with Western organizations such as the EU and NATO.

Turkey’s complicated relations with those two organizations in the past decade have prompted Turkish policymakers to craft a new vision of their place in the world — a vision reflected in their statements of “winking eyes” to other regional organizations that are looking to expand, and introduce alternative global governance amid the perceived failure of Western systems to produce tangible solutions to global problems. Turkey’s talks with other regional institutions focus on addressing the challenges facing humanity andproblems related to global governance, such as migration, climate change, poverty, and terrorism.

Ankara has vowed on several occasions to continue its efforts to strengthen cooperation with other countries and relations with their regional institutions. This was obvious when Purnima Anand, president of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) International Forum of emerging economies, revealed that Turkey was preparing to apply for membership. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a guest at the organization’s summit in Johannesburg in 2018, when he said: “I wish they would take the necessary steps to let us in.”

In August, Erdogan said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had invited him to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan in September. Although Erdogan has on several occasions expressedhis intentions to use that organization as a counterbalance to the West, Turkey has never taken part in itsmeetings. If Erdogan did so now, it would send a clear message to the West, because among the group’s main goals is to establish a new international political and economic order.

Last week Turkey was granted observer member status by the Andean Community, a leading economic integration organization of which Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia are members. Economic and commercial cooperation is the driving force behind Turkey’s engagement with the Latin America and Caribbean region.

In April, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu visited Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela in a seven-day Latin America tour. Touting growing ties with Latin America, Çavuşoğlu underlined the importance Turkey places on relations with these countries. “The fact that we did not cancel this visit, which was planned prior to the Ukraine war, despite the many problems in our region, is a mark of the importance we place on this region,” he said.

Several agreements were signed, with economic cooperation the top priority. Turkey has two important companies bidding for the contracts to build eight corvettes for the Colombian Navy. Colombia is the second-largest trade partner of Turkey in Latin America, after Brazil. Ankara has also boosted the number of its embassies in Latin American countries from six to 18, and trade with the region has ballooned from about $1 billion to $15 billion.

Turkey’s engagement with several regional organizations does not necessarily mean it is turning its back onthe West, but it is obvious that Ankara aims to diversify its economic and security opportunities with various partners for the sake of its national interests.

• Sinem Cengiz is a Turkish political analyst who specializes in Turkey’s relations with the Middle East. Twitter: @SinemCngz