MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Dmitry Babich) - On Monday the presidents of three influential Muslim states, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan, gathered for a summit in Istanbul. This top-level meeting is another testimony to Turkey's ambition to take a lead in the Islamic world. Given that Russia is Turkey's second largest partner after the European Union with a $25 billion annual trade turnover, Ankara's success may boost Moscow's weight on the international stage.
Monday was marked by two more events from Turkey, which only improve Ankara's chances. On that day Mevlut Cavusoglu was elected president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and the population of Turkey reached 72 million people, which is half of Russia's population.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul's meeting with his Pakistani and Afghan counterparts Asif Ali Zardari and Hamid Karzai is held in the run-up to the London conference on Afghanistan. It is no chance that Istanbul has become the venue for a comprehensive discussion aimed at finding alternative sources of income for Afghan farmers. So far they have earned their living producing heroin, trafficked to Western Europe through Russia.
This is not the first time Turkey organizes a meeting of the Afghan and Pakistani leaders, whose relations have been strained. In addition, Ankara has been coordinating the efforts of Muslim states to render assistance to Kabul.
Ankara wouldn't measure up to this role but for its improved financial capabilities. At their meeting, Presidents Gul and Zardari initiated the restoration of the Islamabad - Istanbul railroad, which will pass through Teheran, a project requiring $20 billion in investment.
Turkey is one of the few states able to stay on good terms with the West, Russia and Iran. In the past two years Turkish diplomats managed to prove that a government can develop cooperation on all directions. Ankara has interacted with the West without risking trouble for its relations with other civilized states. A NATO member and a U.S. ally, last year Turkey successfully negotiated visa-free regulations with Syria, the country that Washington calls the sponsor of international terrorism and viewed as its most probable military target after Iraq.
However, Ankara did not accomplish its objectives effortlessly. In the late 1990s it threatened Syria with war demanding that Damask expels Kurdish militants' leader Abdullah Ocalan. He fled to Russia but was secretly forced to leave it by the then Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. The main Kurdish guerilla headed for Italy and then Africa to be eventually arrested and sentenced in Turkey.
This event marked the beginning of Turkey's diplomatic success, based on its ability to integrate into the western world without offending its Muslim neighbors or Russia and without rallying with the proponents of Moscow's isolation from global energy and financial flows.
During Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's visit to Turkey last year, the parties negotiated laying the South Stream pipeline along the Black Sea bed through Turkey's exclusive zone. At the same time, Ankara agreed to join the alternative pipeline project Nabucco, funded by the United States and the EU. Therefore Ankara met the expectations of Moscow, Washington and Brussels, proving that the choice between the West and Russia, imposed on Eurasian countries by several western ideologists, is not the only alternative.
More to the point, if Russia really pursued the "divide and rule" policy in the Caucasus, which the West often accuses it of, Turkey would hardly improve its relations with its long-standing opponent Armenia. Although Yerevan remains Moscow's ally, Russia did not impede the thaw in the relationship between the two adversaries. Even though they have not established diplomatic relations yet, in October Yerevan and Ankara exchanged protocols showing willingness to restore these relations and to open borders.
But as usual it is impossible to please everyone and in the past several months new critics of Turkey have emerged. Surprising on the face of it, this role was assumed by Azerbaijan, which called on allied Turkey to take into account the Azeri losses in Nagorno-Karabakh before restoring relations with Armenia. Observers believe that Ankara is unlikely to agree to restore friendship with Yerevan unless Armenia repatriates Azeri refugees to at least several regions bordering on Nagorno-Karabakh and included into the buffer zone which Armenia established after its victory in the war in the 1990s. Nevertheless, the process has commenced and even Russia's "best friends," such as American and European Sovietologists, don't dare accuse Moscow of slowing it down.
Another critic of Turkey is Israel. Its motives are clear-cut: Israel is offended by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's sympathy for the Palestinian victims of the Israeli Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. However, without this sympathy, which the Turkish leader expressed emotionally in the presence of the Israeli leader Shimon Peres, Turkey could not lay claim to the Muslim leadership. So the game is worth the candle.
"I have the impression that Erdogan's criticism of our operation in the Gaza is aimed at solving his home policy problems," believes Israeli Ambassador in Moscow Anna Azari. "However, the recent visit of our defense chief to Turkey was very successful, and I think relations will bounce back soon," she added.
The western media emphasize that the fearful forecasts made in 2002, when the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party came to power, have not come true. The success of the party and its leadership has been one of the few positive results in international relations in the 2000s.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
