Turkey has significantly recalibrated its foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa. After having played a proactive role in the region, for over a year Ankara has gradually softened its assertive foreign policy, as it has grown increasingly aware of the need to defuse tensions, break out of its regional isolation, and mend fences with regional competitors due to international, regional, and domestic shifts. At the international level, the arrival of the Biden administration, which promoted a “diplomacy first” approach in foreign policy, indirectly paved the way for both a de-escalation and readjustment of Middle Eastern countries’ posture in regional affairs. While Middle Eastern countries felt the US’ reduced engagement in the region, they were keen to present themselves as promoters of regional stabilisation and reset their relations. Turkey was no exception, though the task was extremely challenging due to its regional isolation and the number of setbacks that have marred its relations with the United States in recent years.
Regionally, the full restoration of diplomatic and economic relationsbetween Qatar and the Arab Quartet (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt) after a three-and-half-year blockade was the first concrete step within larger, ongoing regional readjustments. Starting from the Gulf, normalisation efforts have gradually drawn in other countries suffering from conflict fatigue following years of confrontation and expensive proxy wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Doha’s rapprochement with Riyadh and — to a lesser extent — Abu Dhabi also opened the way for a downscaling of the competition between the Qatar-Turkey axis and the Quartet that has defined the MENA geopolitical context over the past years. In this evolving scenario, Ankara has also taken steps to gradually recalibrate its military-based foreign policy as well as reset relations with its main Arab competitors. Against this backdrop, the disruption of economic activities and trade due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent need for financial recovery also fuelled incentives to overcome regional disputes and tensions.
Domestically, Turkey’s militarised foreign action along with a longstanding regional isolation proved barely sustainable. In addition, the economic costs of Turkish activism in the region and of larger geopolitical tensions contributed to an already precarious economic situation, mainly related to Ankara’s weak national currency combined with an increasingly high inflation rate that has driven up living costs. As such, pragmatism seems to have prevailed in Turkey’s foreign policy along with an ambition to regain prestige regionally and globally. This, in turn, grounds Ankara’s mediation efforts in the Russia-Ukraine war, whereby it is leveraging its positive relations with both countries whilst trying not to alienate Moscow.
Looking at the MENA region, Ankara’s diplomatic efforts have mainly been directed at Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, with mixed results thus far. Two rounds of talks with Egypt have reopened bilateral contacts after an eight-year-long impasse. However, the long and narrow path to reconciliation seems to make a full restoration of bilateral ties unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Conversely, Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s recent visit to Turkey has inaugurated a new start in bilateral relations, while what was once seen as Turkey’s main regional rival — the United Arab Emirates — turned out to be the first country to normalise ties with Ankara. UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan’s visit to Turkey in November, the first in nearly a decade, set the seal on a rapprochement process that had begun months before. Three months later, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s trip to the UAE confirmed that the renewed partnership was on the right track. Undoubtedly, mutual economic interests were the main driving force behind said reconciliation. While Abu Dhabi is increasingly betting on economic diplomacy to foster its post-pandemic recovery — while also trying to promote itself as a stabilising player in the region — Ankara is looking for new investments and economic partners to sustain its fragile economy. In view of the 2023 parliamentary and presidential elections, President Erdogan knows the electoral support towards him and his AK party largely depends on economic recovery. In this regard, the wealthy Gulf monarchy could provide Turkey with both hard currency and foreign direct investment. In November, dozens of cooperation agreements – including energy, trade, and the environment – were signed. Furthermore, the UAE allocated a $10 billion fund for strategic investments in Turkey. Later in January, a nearly $5 billion swap agreement was signed to support the Turkish central bank’s currency reserves as well as a falling lira amid an acute currency crisis. In 2021, the Turkish lira had indeed depreciated by over 40%, while inflation peaked at 54.4% in February 2022, reaching a twenty-year all-time high.
The Turkey-UAE rapprochement seems to reflect a mutual need to detach economic considerations from geopolitical frictions. In fact, over the past decade the two countries have been on the opposite ends of regional crises, from Syria to Libya. At the same time, Turkey’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood has been a major source of tensions with Abu Dhabi, which considers it an existential threat. However, despite their economic nature, improved relations between Ankara and Abu Dhabi could have ramifications on ongoing regional crises and affect geopolitical developments in the Middle East and North Africa, against a backdrop of Islamic organisations’ decreasing popularity in national domestic politics. Whether it will unfold for better or for worse remains to be seen.
In this evolving context, it is still unclear whether Saudi Arabia will follow in the UAE’s footsteps and kick off a normalisation process with Turkey. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s visit to Riyadh in May 2021 and Saudi Commerce Minister Majid bin Abdullah al-Qasabi’s trip to Istanbul in November raised expectations for their imminent reconciliation following years of strains exacerbated by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in Istanbul’s Saudi consulate in October 2018. Much like with the UAE, economic calculations contribute to defining Turkey’s agenda vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia. However, unlike Abu Dhabi, Erdogan is yet to meet his Saudi counterpart. It may take longer, but it seems that the path has already been traced, though some knots are yet to be untangled. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether Turkey’s reconciliation process with regional countries will mark a return to the ‘zero problems with neighbours’ principle, which characterised the first decade of the AKP’s foreign policy approach. While the neighbours remain the same, their ambitions — and Turkey’s — are quite different.
This is an updated version of a previous article published in December 2022 reflecting recent developments.
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