Turkey loses friends in the Middle East

It looks like the unkindest cut of all. After years in which the march of Turkish soap operas across the Middle East has been hailed as proof of Ankara’s soft power in the Middle East, someone wants to pull the plug.

The post-coup government in Egypt, which is barely on talking terms with Turkey, appears to be encouraging a boycott of Turkish soaps, a move that not only hits a showpiece cultural export but comes at a time when Ankara is confronting a host of problems in the Middle East.

The glory days of August 2011, when prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was greeted by thousands of sympathisers at Cairo airport, seem very far away. Indeed the upheaval in the Arab world, which once seemed set to bolster Turkey’s influence, is turning into a serious headache on issues ranging from soap operas to shootings.

According to Egypt’s state-controlled Ahram news service, the Egyptian Radio and Television Union has postponed the broadcast of several Turkish serials, while the Egyptian Cinema Syndicate says the boycott call has attracted the attention of both state and public companies.

The push to deliver a blow to Turkey’s most publicly visible presence in the Arab world is just the latest sign of the rupture between Egypt’s post-coup rulers and Ankara, one of the strongest backers of former President Mohamed Morsi.

This week, Mr Erdogan denounced those who “refuse to call a military coup a military coup” and who “ignore oppression and massacres in Egypt” – a reference to the west but also perhaps to some Arab states.

And indeed Turkey’s problems in the region are not confined to Egypt – far from it. Ankara is at odds with Saudi Arabia, which has greeted the Cairo coup with enthusiasm. It still has very difficult relations with Iran, and has become mired in what looks for all the world like a proxy war in Syria, where Tehran in seeking to shore up President Bashar al-Assad, while Ankara is campaigning for his ouster.

Then there is Syria itself, where there is real chaos on the 900km long border with Turkey. Ankara officially still has an open door policy for Syrian refugees fleeing from the Assad regime. But with 200,000 now in Turkish camps – at a cost of more than $1bn – and an additional 300,000 elsewhere in Turkey, the door is effectively closed.

Against this backdrop, surreal and alarming events are occurring on the border. At the end of July, on two successive days, Turkey used tear gas to repel thousands of “smugglers” – about 1,000 on the first occasion; 1,500-2000 on the second. This week, there was another incident, involving 3,000 people and an exchange of fire in which 18 Turkish soldiers were wounded. The incidents remain murky and do seem to involve the attempted smuggling of oil – but also hundreds of people who simply wanted to get across the border.

Meanwhile, four Turkish people have been killed in recent weeks in the border town of Ceylanpinar, due to stray shots from the Syrian side. They were likely to have been victims of fighting between the PYD, a Syrian sister organisation to Turkey’s banned PKK, and Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organisation linked to al-Qaeda. Many local Kurds insist Turkey is backing the jihadists. Ankara replies it is “equidistant” between the two sides, although officials acknowledge that arms supply for al-Nusra are probably crossing the border.

The issue may be beginning to haunt Turkey. In a phone conversation this week, instigated at Mr Erdogan’s request, the prime minister tried to impress Turkey’s point of view on Egypt on President Barack Obama. But the first issue noted by the White House press release was “the danger of foreign extremists in Syria” – an apparent reference to al-Nusra, about which the US has been much more alarmed than Turkey.

As the Arab spring turns messy and as Turkey finds relations with old allies increasingly difficult, losing soap opera rights may be the least of its problems.