Turkey's rise in the Greater Middle East: peace-building in the periphery

Turkey’s new dynamism in regional affairs is unprecedented for a country whose rallying cry was the inward-looking ‘Peace at Home, Peace in the World’. In September 2008 alone, the following events occurred that demonstrate Turkey’s new dynamism. Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan met with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts in New York on 26 September. Babacan noted that tripartite talks will continue in order to improve political dialogue and create a forum for common understanding. French President Nikolas Sarkozy, who holds the rotating presidency of the EU, highlighted Turkey’s reliability and mediating role in the indirect talks between Syria and Israel in Damascus on 4 September. Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Rangin Spanta informed the international media in early September that a second round of trilateral talks between Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will take place in Turkey in December. While Turkey was seeking a greater involvement in regional peace efforts, Turkey won 151 votes in the UN General Assembly on 17 November 2008 and secured a nonpermanent member seat in the Security Council for the 2009–10 term. The main source of support is Turkey’s successful peace attempts in the Caucasus and the Middle East, and its new openings to Africa and Asia. Turkey’s transformation into a regional peace-maker is the result of a domestic transformation that in turn changed its vision about its neighbourhood and its role in foreign affairs. Turkey’s increasing involvement in the search for solutions to regional problems is a new development. Turkey’s position represents an alternative voice from the periphery for solutions to the decades-long conflicts in a number of problem-prone regions. It is rare to observe strong peace initiatives in the Middle East, the Caucasus and South Asia coming from within the region. The peace-broker role has been played by the USA, European actors and the UN, or sometimes a combination of these actors and regional countries. These countries are at the top of the power echelons of the international system and they have certain interests to preserve the systemic order as it is. In this sense, the usual peace-makers are status quo powers acting pursuant to their projection of power within the international system. For example, US peace attempts were formalized within the framework of US military unilateralism. The imposition of such strong positions creates obstacles to regional politics in different parts of the world, preventing the emergence of solutions from within the regions that are actually facing the problems. Turkey is an interesting case, which challenged the US