Turkey, Middle Powers, and the New Humanitarianism

Turkey, Middle Powers, and the New Humanitarianism Bruce GILLEY* Abstract This article traces the evolution of Turkey’s humanitarian diplomacy as an example of the new humanitarianism associated with emerging countries. It discusses both the promise as well as the challenges of the new humanitarianism. It then introduces the idea of “middle power activism” in international affairs as one way to understand Turkey’s behavior. This lens is then used to identify the aspects of Turkey’s behavior that are more likely to endure as contributions to global humanitarian affairs. It identifies state-centered humanitarian aid, regional approaches, and the supplementing of humanitarian aid with political and economic goals as aspects of the Turkish approach likely to endure and to appeal to other emerging actors. Key Words Humanitarianism, humanitarian diplomacy, emerging powers, middle powers. * Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in Public Policy, Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University, Urban Center, 6th Floor, Portland, OR, 97202 USA E-mail: PERCEPTIONS, Spring 2015, Volume XX, Number 1, pp. 37-58. Introduction The emergence of Turkey as a major actor in humanitarian diplomacy and assistance raises new and important questions for both Turkey and humanitarianism. This paper will consider how the Turkish engagement with humanitarianism can be understood as a form of “middle power activism” in international affairs. The middle power approach serves as a useful framework to explain Turkey’s behavior and to predict the emergence of a “new humanitarianism” that is resulting from the efforts of Turkey and other middle powers such as South Korea. The paper begins with a narrative review of Turkey’s humanitarian diplomacy and assistance and the controversial issues it has raised. This is followed by a consideration of humanitarianism and the current issues it faces as a result of the emergence of non-Western states as prominent actors in the field. The middle power lens is then introduced as a means of sorting out several unresolved questions about the new humanitarianism. Theoretical and policy implications follow. 37 Bruce Gilley The turning point in Turkey’s rise as a global humanitarian superpower came in 2011 when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decided to launch a major assistance mission to wartorn Somalia after a visit to the country in August with his wife and six cabinet members. Turkey’s Humanitarian Diplomacy The sudden emergence of Turkey “from dwarf to giant”1 in international humanitarian assistance has raised a host of new issues. In 2013, Turkey gave US$ 1.6 billion in official humanitarian aid, making it the third largest donor after the U.S. and UK. This giving has been accompanied by parallel diplomatic efforts to create humanitarian space and by an expansion of non-official giving. Between 2007 and 2012, the Turkish Red Crescent provided humanitarian aid to 70 countries, delivering US$ 2.5 billion worth of humanitarian aid in 2012 alone. Much of this aid has involved assistance to the more than 1.6 million refugees from Syria living in Turkey by early 2015, either in camps or in urban areas. If inkind contributions for the Syria crisis are included, Turkey’s humanitarian 38 assistance would likely double. But the Syria crisis only accelerated a trend in Turkey’s rising humanitarian status that had been taking shape since the end of the Cold War. In the aftermath of the US-led war in Afghanistan in particular, Turkey launched the İstanbul Initiative to provide a combination of humanitarian aid and infrastructure rebuilding to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Most of the early assistance was centered on the subsequent regional crises in the Middle East, especially in Pakistan, Iraq, and Libya. Turkey’s NGOs became active in Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt during and after their political revolutions, providing humanitarian assistance and assisting migrant populations. The turning point in Turkey’s rise as a global humanitarian superpower came in 2011 when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decided to launch a major assistance mission to war-torn Somalia after a visit to the country in August with his wife and six cabinet members. The visit, intended to highlight the plight of drought victims, ended a 20 year period where no major foreign leader had visited the capital. The one-day visit was prosaic at the time- the airplane carrying the businessmen, journalists, and NGOs damaged its wing on landing while the government barred the local press from attending- but has since loomed larger in Turkey’s own historical imagination as the emblem of its new humanitarianism. Turkey, Middle Powers, and the New Humanitarianism The effective mobilization of government, university, NGO, and private sector partners in Somalia allowed a nation-building exercise without force. “With its unrivaled on-the-ground rebuilding effort and generous scholarship program, Turkey is using Somalia as the first great display of “virtuous power,” wrote Harte.2 The Somalia initiative attracted wide attention because it eschewed pure humanitarianism and instead embraced business ties, peacebuilding initiatives, education, infrastructure and development aid, and even military aid. Turkey has cited the Somalia example as a model for its engagement with Africa.3 it was interested in humanitarianism beyond its own region or nearby Muslim populations. Erdoğan despatched his deputy prime minister, Beşir Atalay, and the president of the Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD), Fuat Oktay, to the Philippines to coordinate Turkey’s relief works on the ground. Turkey even gave US$ 200,000 in 2014 for the construction of a water tank to serve an elementary school on an Indian reservation in Oregon in the United States. In 2016, Turkey will host the first UN World Humanitarian Summit, which Davutoğlu has described it as “the most important international summit ever held in Turkey.”4 Humanitarian diplomacy and assistance is a policy instrument involving the use of non-coercive organization (communication, negotiation, advocacy, mobilization, persuasion, etc.) and material provision by external actors with the intention of assisting vulnerable populations with basic human needs in target countries. Historical Drivers Beyond the Middle East and Africa, Turkey has taken actions that spread its footprint even wider. The Philippines typhoon of 2013 provided an early opportunity for Ankara to show that Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, European powers variously negotiated and intervened in the Ottoman Empire in the name of the saving humans (mainly Christians).5 Arguably, the whole idea of humanitarian diplomacy and, if necessary, intervention, arose in European relations with the Ottomans. Turkey itself also dealt with the humanitarian implications of Caucasus migrants of the 1860s and 1870s and then the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. In additi (...truncated)