Turkey needs to take foreign policy away from the street: Ex-envoy

Conducting foreign policy is not a matter to be decide by the street, according to former Ambassador Volkan Vural. The ruling AKP may have received 50 of the vote, but it has been hampered by pursuing foreign policy goals as if it also has the support of half the world, he says

Turkey's government must cease thinking foreign policy is something to be determined by the whims of the public on the street, according to former Envoy Volkan Vural.

"The AKP may get 50 percent of the votes in Turkey, but do you get 50 percent of the votes from the world? Today the votes Turkey gets from the world is less than 50 percent and even bordering on 10 percent at an optimistic scale," Vural said, noting that Turkey had burned bridges with other regional powers with its policies.

What is your general evaluation for foreign policy in 2015?

The first item on our agenda should be to take the foreign policy out of the street and put it into a shelter or into a home. Foreign policy cannot be conducted on the street; that's what we have been doing for at least two or three years, and it has not paid off. It has brought some popularity in some quarters but overall, it has not yielded any tangible results. It has eroded the credibility of Turkish foreign policy.

What do you mean by taking foreign policy out of the streets?

You cannot conduct foreign policy by addressing it in public; certainly the public has the right to know, but the public should not be decisive in the conduct of foreign policy. We have done this on many fronts; in relations with the EU, there were certain statements bordering on distancing ourselves from the EU process as we rebuked their interest in human rights and the rule of law as interference in our domestic...