The planned visit of President Abdullah Gül to Yerevan this Saturday to watch the Turkish-Armenian national football match but also to meet his Armenian counterpart is one such issue. There was not much debate about this in mid-August. When I came back in early September, I found the usual suspects lashing out at this historic act of rapprochement between the Turkish and the Armenian people. Deniz Baykal, the leader of the main opposition -- and main secularonationalist -- People's Republican Party, or CHP, had opposed this quite boldly. He even noted that he would "prefer to “go to Baku instead of Yerevan.”"

Ah, how poetic … I actually don't recall Mr. Baykal going to Baku even once, but what would it make a difference even if he goes there every month? Turkey already has perfect (“"brotherly"”) relations with Azerbaijan, and the problem is that it has none with Armenia.

It was obvious that Mr. Baykal was using cheap nationalist rhetoric, which has repeatedly blocked solving Turkey's problems by promoting an arrogant bravado instead of sanity and reason. The leader of the other nationalist party in Parliament, Devlet Bahçeli of the Nationalist Action Party, or MHP, took a similar line when he opposed the visit. He said, “"Gül should not go before the problems between Armenia and Turkey are solved."” Yet, how in the world will these problems be solved if Turks and Armenians don't talk?

Davutoğlu's Strategy

The other day, I had a chance to listen to professor Ahmet Davutoğlu, the foreign policy advisor to the prime minister, in a session where he met with a group of journalists. He explained that Gül's visit to Yerevan would be the first step to starting a dialogue between these two countries. Since the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, came to power in 2002, it has followed professor Davutoğlu's "“zero problem with neighbors"” policy. That led to the rapprochement with Greece, Bulgaria, Syria and Iraqi Kurds.

Turkey's growing relations with Iran, which was depicted recently as the country's slide to “the "dark side"” by Washington analyst Soner Çağaptay, are indeed a part of that “"zero problem"” policy. Now, if the “football diplomacy” in Yerevan turns out to be constructive, the only remaining problematic neighbor Turkey has will also enter a positive course.

Professor Davutoğlu also commented on the issues relating to the Caucasus. Turkey is concerned about the escalation of conflict in the region, he said, so the Turkish government has tried to mediate between Russia and Georgia since the first day of the recent war between the two countries. The real issue is, though, how to deal with a growingly assertive and intimidating Russia.

Some commentators in Washington, yet again, accused the Turkish government of being wishy-washy against Russia and not following the tough NATO (i.e., American) line. Well, the simple reason is that the world looks a little different when you look at it from Ankara rather than Washington D.C. Turkey has very important trade relations with Russia. Moreover, thanks to an unwise natural gas deal done during the prime ministry of Mesut Yılmaz in 1997, Turkey is largely dependent on Russian natural gas. So although Turkey is not the greatest fan of Russia's imperial ambitions, it has to protect itself from Moscow's wrath by avoiding provoking it. Turkey is, and will always be, on the side of West in its foreign policy -- but on the soft side of the West.

Not the Bush way

Despite the demagoguery of the nationalist opposition, the Turkish government and President Gül seem determined to follow that “soft” policy, according to which disputes will be solved via diplomacy rather than confrontation. In years past, this has at times conflicted with the hard line of the Bush Administration. But today most Americans realize that the latter was the wrong way to go. Bill Clinton recently summed up the situation in the Democratic Congress: “"Our position in the world has been weakened by too much unilateralism and too little cooperation… by a failure to consistently use the power of diplomacy, from the Middle East, to Africa, to Latin America, to Central and Eastern Europe.”"

Quite the contrary, Turkey's position in the world has been strengthened in the past six years, thanks to the power of diplomacy and an open-mindedness that Turkey's nationalists, including the Ankara establishment, has often found upsetting.

Turkey should follow the same path, whereas I hope the Americans change theirs. If they choose Barack Obama as the next president, they will prove that they have already started doing that.