That is why it was a surprise for me to see more than 100 people at a conference on Turkey here last Tuesday. Those who know Washington also know that dozens of conferences and meetings are held here every day and very few of them have such a big turnout. What made this one so attractive, I believe, was not just that it was hosted by the prestigious Brookings Institution at the Washington Center of University of California. Nor was it is the successful organization by SETA, the Ankara-based think tank, which brought experts on Turkey, including this humble columnist, in for three successive panels. Aside from all this, it was the keynote speaker, Dr. Ahmet Davutoğlu, who made the conference unique and those who came to listen to him probably saw that his fame was not undeserved.

Architect of "neo-Ottomanism"

If you do not know Dr. Davutoğlu, I think you should. Since the Justice and Development Party’s, or AKP, incumbency in 2002, he has officially been “the chief foreign policy advisor to the Prime Minister.” This practically means that he has masterminded Turkish foreign policy in the past six years. No wonder Mark Parris, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, director of the "Turkey 2007" project at Brookings and chair of Tuesday’s conference, introduced him as “Turkey’s Kissinger.”

Like Henry Kissinger, indeed, Dr. Davutoğlu was a bright academic before moving into active policy-making. His 2001 book, titled “Strategic Depth,” sought to chart a new course for Turkish foreign policy. For a long time, he argued, Turkey denied its Ottoman past and cultural ties with neighbors. Hence Ankara isolated itself from its surroundings and followed only reactionary policies. There is still a world out there for Turkey to discover and engage with, he proposed, but it first needed to reform its mind.

That reform came with the AKP government. Ömer Taşpınar, Mark Parris’ colleague at Brookings who made a comprehensive critique on Turkey’s Kurdish policy at last Tuesday’s event, called this a transition from “Kemalism” to “neo-Ottomanism.” The latter vision defined a Turkey at peace with its Muslim identity and with “a sense of grandeur and self-confidence.”

Despite his personal modesty, Dr. Davutoğlu has been at the center of that self-confidence. He was the one who formulated the policies that would help Turkey solve its problems with its neighbors, become a negotiator between Israel and Syria, and even start a rapprochement with Iraqi Kurds, the “bête noire” of the Kemalist establishment.

In his speech, Davutoğlu outlined this new vision and explained how Turkey can indeed be an important actor in global affairs. He did this by first telling a personal story. Years ago, he went to Malaysia for a few semesters to teach political science at a university. “The textbook that I chose without giving much thought to it was George Sabine’s ‘A History of Political Theory,’” he said. “Then I walked into the class and I saw that all students were either Malay, Chinese, Hindu, or Indonesian. They all came from ancient civilizations. But Sabine’s book started from the Greeks, moved to the Romans, then to feudalism, Renaissance, Enlightenment and so on. It was as if there was history of thought beyond the history of Europe. I could not teach that to those kids.”

According to Davutoğlu, that self-centered outlook of the West has influenced not only its academia but also its politics. Perhaps this was understandable for a while, because the West indeed was the main engine of history, “But at an age in which China is becoming the world’s most productive economy,” the 49-year-old professor said, “you cannot run the world with a totally Western paradigm.” What we need, according to him, was to build “a participatory global political order.”

Torn But Blessed

But how? According to Davutoğlu, countries that stand between different civilizations have something to offer. Turkey, of course, is a good example. “Huntington defined Turkey as a torn country,” he recalled “and saw this as a disadvantage.” But for Davutoğlu, the condition of being “torn” between East and West was in fact Turkey’s advantage. Thanks to this, Turkey could speak the language of both civilizations. It could talk to both Damascus and Jerusalem, Tehran and Washington. Turkey, in this vision, would be an effective arbiter and peacemaker in the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans.

From the first day, this new neo-Ottoman vision of Dr. Davutoğlu and the AKP government has been met with suspicion. Firstly, secularist Turks who despised these newcomers for domestic reasons started to sell the idea that they were the “Taliban in disguise.” They argued that Turkey was slowly drifting to the “dark side,” that of Iran, Syria and Hamas, and it should be “saved” even at the expense of democracy. Some Westerners, especially those already prone to believing such alarmism, were influenced by this propaganda. Even fair and objective commentators had doubts when Turkey started a rapprochement with Syria in 2004.

One of those in the latter group was Steve Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations, who actually reads Turkish politics very well. “I have to admit that I was concerned about Ankara’s relation with Damascus back then,” he said honestly, “But now I see that the intention behind it was good.”

Yes, the intentions are good, and promising. The new neo-Ottoman vision that Dr. Davutoğlu envisioned is redefining Turkey as a “soft power” that inspires stability, economic development and democracy in the region. That is precisely the contribution the West, and actually the whole world, needs.