The effects of strategic containment attempts in the middle east on turkish foreign policy: The example of Syria

In Foreign Policy, strategic decision-making requires backward planning after the destination is chosen first. In Public Administration, this process is called 'policy formulation'. The accomplishment of a design, the fulfillment of which is considered possible within the framework of power, time, and space, depends not only on the decisiveness of political will, but also on a healthy geopolitical analysis of probable impacts caused by foreign dynamics. "Strategic Architecture", as the construction process of design, is a corporate production. As result of the substantial changeover of the "Center" and "Periphery" together with an internal structural transformation process that can be observed in Turkey since 2002, a new foreign policy initiative for cultural geography was initiated in parallel with traditional peripheral values. However, efforts to establish regional partnerships and collaborations got replaced by hostile attitudes. Subsequent developments turning from regional to global problems caused the failure of other powers' projects such as Russia and notably China's New Silk Road Project, altered the competitive conditions of gas exportation projects aiming at gas transmissions from East Mediterranean natural gas beds to Europe, and created an atmosphere that would make the destructed countries resign themselves to the severe conditions of global finance centers in the near future. In consequence, a larger number of actors started to intervene in decision-making processes of foreign policy. Usually, serious presumption errors in strategic planning, serious loss of power during the process, or a neglected aspect of space may lead to radical changes in the "situation" within only a couple of years, which is indeed a very short time in matters of strategic actions. When designing the picture of a particular region that will eventually be harmonized with the global final situation, various aspect combinations of power spectra tend to gravitate towards emerging territorial fault lines. Global developments as well as power centers have begun to shift towards the Asia-Pacific region, and in turn, cost factors and symmetric responses to chronic capitalist crises have started to gain strength. Conventional military force practices as asymmetric response to economic and social power either failed or delivered insufficient results. Thus, the search for so-called "holistic" solutions began. The happenings in Syria and Egypt might point to a holistic development, depending on the point of view of those feeling discomfort. Economic zone arrangements or "Regionalization" policies, which constitute the background of Governance as the dominant paradigm of economic globalization in terms of Public Administration, have been the trigger of "Ethnicization", resulting in regional-ethnical-denominational pillarizations, along with shocks in geopolitical tectonics. The expected togetherness of differences during the process of globalization contradicted with the evolution it has gone through in parallel with both the "marginalization" process among civilizations and the "fragmentation" process, to prevent civilizations establish internal constellations that will result in competitive blocks, may seem contradictive somehow, and thus unveiled the Geopolitical Concept. This paper analyzes the creation process of the "other", which the hegemony needs in order to reproduce itself in the Middle East and the Islamic Geography while preventing/encircling the emergence of anti-hegemonic formations, the tools that are utilized to that end, as well as the shaping of public opinion to get them prepared for conflict, on the basis of critical geopolitical analysis with respect to the impacts thereof on Turkish Foreign Policies; with special emphasis on China's increasing influence and interest in the region and its aspects subject to containment. The presence of China in countries, which it gives weight to such as Syria, is creating the effect of a lightning conductor. The incidents in Syria will not only reveal the borders of both the geopolitical power and foreign policies of Turkey, but also describe the direction of other powers' intentions for the region. While Turkey's new foreign policy paradigm is constructed on the redefinition of identity on the basis of cultural and historical stakeholdership, in conjunction with internal and external restructuring, an ironic coincidence is established between this paradigm and the proposition of criticizing circles who argue that the hegemony, which needs the "other" to reproduce itself, has entered a stage where the "other" is geopolitically recreated during the creation process of geopolitical identity, and that this is a pre-established design. In this case, Turkey can be seen in one of two probable positions: it either makes efforts to achieve development through the establishment of its own geopolitical set, or it is a mere instrument in the hands of other great powers' geopolitical and geostrategic sets. This paper analyzes how Turkey's matrix of foreign political discourses, actions and values is shaped within the scope of regional geopolitics, as well as the factors that have an impact on this process. Contrary to the asymmetric approach of the West, the symmetry between principle-based discourse and set of values and the general tendency to stand behind this symmetry have turned the Turkish struggle for independence into a role model. However, the current "values" system of the Middle East differs between the public (periphery) and the ruling class (center). The move of peripheral values towards the center cannot be expected in the short term. The incidents in Syria have distorted the symmetry which Turkey had reconstructed in terms of the country's foreign political discourse. Along with that, the multiculturalism initiative put pressure on the government by increasing the number of actors who make internal interventions to decision-making processes of foreign policy. Thus, revealing the limitedness of geopolitical power as result of regional problems turning global. The purpose of this paper is to discover the reasons that lie behind foreign political developments through critical geopolitical analysis. Keywords: Geopolitical Design, Middle-Eastern Geopolitics, Critical Geopolitical Analysis, Political Geography Survey, Foreign Political Asymmetry.