In the aftermath of the shock not so much at having lost the bid for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council but at the embarrassingly large gap in the General Assembly vote for Turkey and the vote for Spain, Turkish public opinion expected a convincing explanation from their government officials. Taking a page out of the handbook of his bosses from the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP), Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoglu suggested that it was all a conspiracy by the forces bent on obstructing Turkey's march towards progress and determined to punish it for its firm and unwavering stances. Many across the various shades of the Turkish political spectrum had entertained the hope that the defeat in the General Assembly vote would jolt decision-makers in Ankara into some form of introspection. Let bygones be bygones. The important thing is to learn the lessons from one's errors, people thought as they waited for their gallant leader to display a modicum of humility, admit to having made some mistakes and lay out the steps that the government would take to bring Turkey back on course. That, of course, was not to be. JDP officials remained as proud and headstrong as ever and adhered to their usual discourse in tone and substance. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu preferred to skirt around the subject altogether as though it had taken place on another planet. Instead, in his speech on Saturday, transmitted live from Amasya at the foothills of towering verdant mountains in northern Anatolia by no less than 10 television stations, Professor Davutoglu pointed his accusing finger at the opposition and, specifically, the Republican People's Party (RPP) which had had the gall to suggest that government leaders should reassess the attitudes and policies that had courted so many troubles for their country. Barely an hour after the prime minister's propaganda exercise to drum up zeal for the “New Turkey” (one of the JDP's mottos), state-run and private television stations interrupted their normal programming in order to broadcast, live, the press conference held in Kabul following talks between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan who had flown to that troubled country in order to conclude a strategic agreement. Not surprisingly, not a single one of the journalists in the Erdogan retinue asked him to comment on the failed bid for a UN Security Council seat. There was never any room for critics aboard the tours of the former Turkish prime minister, now president, at home and abroad. In all events, it is just as well that they kept mum on that awkward subject as they would only have been treated to the usual Erdogan invective regarding the host of conspirators lying in lurk to stall him on his path of leading Turkey to progress, and who harbour only ill for the Islamic world and the great Anatolian country at its centre. Is this not precisely what he said last year on his way back from Buenos Aires after Turkey lost its bid to host the 2020 Olympics? Ironically, even at a time when Erdogan was lashing out against the Security Council his government campaigned far and wide to win back the seat it had once occupied in 2008. Leaders from 14 remote Pacific islands that no one had ever heard of before were invited to Ankara that also showered financial aid on needy African countries. So reports veteran Milliyet columnist Sami Kohen who also noted that Ankara had not entertained the slightest doubt that it would win the seat this year. It had just been praised in a US report on international humanitarian aid published earlier this month and which ranked Turkey as the world's fourth largest donor of humanitarian aid with respect to GDP. With $1.6 billion allocated towards that end, Turkey ranked as one of the most charitable countries in the world. The US ranked first with $4.7 billion, the EU second with $1.9 billion and the UK third having channelled $1.8 billion into humanitarian aid last year. Turkey had a right to feel proud to have found itself among such generous company. However, if a chief aim of its munificence was to secure votes to obtain a Security Council seat then perhaps the money might have been better spent on Turkey's own people. Why did Ankara have to turn to distant Pacific isles for support in the UN? Undoubtedly, one reason, as Kohen also observed, is that Turkey has lost many friends in the Middle East during recent years. Also, some of its attitudes and policies have begun to alienate influential circles in Europe and the US, among which the memory of Erdogan's latest UN address remains fresh. Still, it is important to bear in mind that Spain, Turkey's rival for that coveted Security Council seat, is an EU member and that it has widespread influence in Latin America that was unlikely to be undermined by a Turkish campaign to win the support of other island states in the Caribbean. It is not just that Davutoglu's famous “zero problems” policy failed to pan out with Turkey's neighbours. The actual policies and attitudes of Turkish leaders have so alienated these countries that none were willing to back Ankara in the recent UN vote. Otherwise put, “zero problems” has disintegrated into “zero relations.” Still stunned by their country's international relations defeat abroad, the Turkish public received another shock when they woke up to the news late last week that Turkish prosecutors had called off investigations into the notorious corruption scandals that broke on 17 December last year. The scandals had rocked the ruling JDP government when probes into bribery and graft began to implicate a number of ministers and their sons, not least of whom was Erdogan's son, Bilal Erdogan, and when images of millions of dollars stashed in shoe boxes hidden in closets circulated wildly in the international media. Although parliament had formed a fact-finding committee to follow through on the investigations, the “penal courts of peace” that the Erdogan government introduced earlier this year undermined the committee's work before it could even begin. Now, on Friday, all charges have been dropped against all suspects, casting yet another cloud over Turkey's dwindling reputation in rights and rule of law.
