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International Symposium on CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN NORTH AFRICA, TURKEY & IRAN , Ankara, Turkey, 20 - 22 April 2017, pp.33-42
Having served as a
Foreign Minister of Turkey in a regionally unbalanced period of the Middle
East, Ismail Cem led a policy that was based on regional balance and that also
took religious concerns and personal prudence into consideration. Relations
with Iran were no exception of this policy, even there were more to say. This
paper, focusing on the period of Ismail Cem as the minister of Turkish Republic
that shaped Turkish foreign policy at the end of the 20th century, examines
this term and the developments within. Starting with a short historical
background of about 70 years since Ataturk and Reza Shah, and including
developments following the Baghdad Pact of 1950s as well as the foundation of
CENTO and similar organizations, this paper gives a framework of conventional
Turkish foreign policy, based on peaceful coexistence and mutual interests with
neighboring countries.
Following this, the
ministry under Cem will be introduced in a descriptive way, as far as Turkish
foreign policy concerned. After this general framework of Cem’s ministry, our
paper’s next focus will be Turkish-Iranian relations during this period. As
these relations were seemed to have a regional balance during this period, more
steps could have been taken in normalizing the mutual relations. For sure,
Cem’s personal efforts helped this, similar to his efforts in normalizing
Turco-Greek relations then. These efforts will be examined in details within
the frame of our paper. Especially not only diplomatic but also economic
relations of Iran and Turkey during this period will be covered in our paper.
This paper argues that the personal as well as diplomatic abilities of Cem not
only shaped the relations in a positive way during his period, but also these
abilities led to an understanding that despite all the developments leading the
deterioration of Turco-Iranian relations, both countries’ compulsory steps for
a balancing and win-win relation with each other. Especially, the following
governments of Turkey have experienced this fact sometimes in a bitter way. Our
paper, will further examine details of this continuity as well as changes of
Turkish foreign policy during and after Ismail Cem’s foreign ministry.
Developments of the new century, such as the September 11, conflicts based on
energy as well as religious hatred or sectarian movements, changing positions
and policies of regional and international actors had an impact on
Turkish-Iranian relations and this paper would cover all these with an aim of
comparison of Cem’s period and the following government.
This paper will also try to evaluate Turkish-Iranian
relations during Cem’s period especially focusing on how much religion or faith
based features of two countries had affected the mutual relations. This attempt
of understanding will compare Cem’s period with Turkish foreign policy before
him. This examination also will continue with the comparison of this period
with the Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments. By this way, the
writer of this paper hopes to give a better understanding of whether or not
there is a continuation or change of conventional Turkish foreign policy in
regards of relations with Iran. And this attempt may give one, an idea of
Turkey and Iran as two important regional actors that might have more to say in
international politics in the coming future.
Key Words: Normalization, Mutual interests, Regional balance, Prudence, Religion