http://lobelog.com/how-can-turkey-overcome-its-foreign-policy-mess/#more-33142

How Can Turkey Overcome Its Foreign Policy Mess?

by Graham E. Fuller
What does Turkey need to do to overcome its present foreign policy fiasco, one of the worst in modern Turkish history?
The irony of all this is that those directly responsible for this mess—the team of Recep Tayip Erdogan (now president) and Ahmet Davutoglu, (former foreign minister and now prime minister)—is exactly the team that one decade had made extraordinary steps in creating a new, creative and successful foreign policy. What went wrong? And how can Ankara now climb back out of the deep hole that it has dug for itself?  
The answer is simple: Erdogan and Davutoglu  should return to their original successful principles of a decade ago, now recklessly abandoned.
The overwhelmingly most urgent task is for Ankara to get out of Syria.
Turkey’s Syrian policy has done more to destroy Turkey’s international position than any other single factor. But let’s be clear: Ankara is not primarily responsible for the present disaster in Syria. Syrian president Bashar al-Asad is. But Erdogan has hugely exacerbated the problem, encouraged radical jihadist elements fighting in Syria, helped stir up sectarian passions, and mishandled the Syrian Kurds. All these policies have  damaged relations with countries that really matter for Turkey: Iran, Iraq, Russia, China, the US, the EU, Kurdish communities, and of course relations with Syria itself.
Instead Ankara has opened a dubious, dangerous, and futureless coalition with Saudi Arabia. And it has created a damaging confrontation with Russia in which Turkey is already the loser.
What should Ankara now do? http://lobelog.com/how-can-turkey-overcome-its-foreign-policy-mess/#more-33142