Prime Minister Edi Rama today attended the TRT World Forum, a platform distinguished for the quality discussions on the regional and global agendas, bringing together high-level global academics, journalists and politicians in Istanbul, Turkey, each year.
The event is an opportunity for academics, journalists, politicians and members of civil society to grapple with the challenges of our time and contribute to advancing peace, security and prosperity throughout the world.
“Mapping the Future: Uncertainties, Realities and Opportunities” was the topic of this year’s forum, where Prime Minister Edi Rama delivered a speech:
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Ladies and gentlemen!
-We would like to welcome to the stage a very distinguished friend, the Prime Minister of Albania, his Excellency Edi Rama
Prime Minister Edi Rama: It is always a very special feeling to be back in Istanbul and frankly I can’t envisage a more vibrant place where one could speak about the return of geopolitics today.
This has partly to do with the fact that Türkiye has multi-faceted foreign policy and a strategic outlook. It has a deep understanding of the Middle East and the Mediterranean as much as it is engaged with the Central Asia and the Black Sea region. But it has also to do with Türkiye’s role in the Russia-Ukraine war as a textbook example middle power activism.
As a brilliant mind Ivan Krastev has put it: “President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been averse to Cold War alliances, ingeniously crafting a chameleon-like ambition to be the bride at every wedding and the baby at every Christening. True to form, Ankara has downplayed its identity as a NATO member and U.S. ally in exchange for the role of the mediator between Moscow and Kyiv.
The war in Ukraine has been a watershed moment for the European and Western security community. In the span of a few months, even weeks, we saw the transformation of an estranged neighbour on the doorstep of Europe into the aggressor of a European country.
In fact, the signs have been there since the invasion of Crimea that must have been a non-negotiable red line for both the EU and the NATO and for us all in the West.
Instead, we kept living on the illusion that such a major transgression would only lead to a continuous frozen conflict with no real and imminent consequences to the Western security. But these illusions were shattered with the Russian aggression on February 24 this year.
Let me share with you my conviction that the assault on Ukraine is not just about Ukraine. It is an assault on the whole Euro-Atlantic community.
Energy price crisis and the war inflation are the weapons aiming to bring the rest of Europe down at its knees and to change the security architecture of our continent.
The Western Balkans where I come from is the region imbued with very specific vulnerabilities and exposed in particular ways to the challenges emanating from most recent geopolitical competition, the new types of security threats and from the conflict in Ukraine in particular.
Unlike the rest of Europe, we in the Western Balkans have countries where over 70% of the population still believe that Russia is not an aggressor and that Putin is not guilty, but the leader who can be trusted to bring security in Europe and to change the balance of power in our continent.
We have countries, namely Serbia or the Republica Srpska too, that has a very strong influence on Bosnia and Herzegovina itself, for which the non-alignment with the Euro-Atlantic values is part of their national identity and national orientation, and in the meantime the alignment with the Euro-Atlantic values as part of the national identity is the case for Albania and Kosova especially.
But this is also the case with North Macedonia and, somehow, with Montenegro. And this is precisely because all of these very important differences that it is so important for the region to have a strategic partner like Türkiye in the diplomatic, political and economic front.
It is also very important to say it clearly and loudly to all our European and American friends that in the Southeast Europe and in the Western Balkans in particular, Türkiye is not a third power, Türkiye is not a “foreign” in our part of Europe, because much of our history of state formation, as well as our integration in the Euro-Atlantic community is embedded with the path and this history of Türkiye.
Türkiye is a regional power and for our region, namely the Western Balkans, is a determining one. The truth is that the European international system, which has laid the basis for the 20th century international system, has failed to incorporate two very different actors of the continent, Türkiye on one side and Russia on the other side.
In the current geopolitical context, Türkiye has shown that it is a very special and, I would say, an irreplaceable contributor to the European and global security through its flexible and pragmatic approach, and by cultivating a plethora of strong and good partnerships.
Türkiye has indeed served and can serve, as we are witnessing in nowadays, as a broker of many disputes related to traditional security, as well as the newer security challenges in the area of energy, food supplies and migration.
Let me take you back for a single moment, to that very determining moment in Europe’s history when Türkiye managed single-handedly the migration crisis caused by the Syrian war in 2016 and onwards.
The honour of Europe wouldn’t have been saved without Angela Merkel.
It was her who stood for welcoming the emigrants in Germany at that big crisis. But without Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the walls of Europe wouldn’t have stood.
Türkiye is key to the Europe’s stability and if we were to imagine for one moment the other way around, just imagine how terribly Europe would fall without its back door being safeguarded exactly by Türkiye and exactly thanks to your President.
The inability of Europe to work with those who are different – and I put different among parentheses – from the standard core model of Europe member states has hindered in fact an inclusive model of the European security. In order to engage with Türkiye in a more meaningful and significant way, the EU needs to shift its own thinking being thinking of partners and neighbours only through the enlargement prism, because as a result what we are witnessing is that the EU has been left with a limited sense of its own strategic independence, centred around normative models of rules, norms and governance. And in this context, I must say that the new European Political Community initiative is very welcomed. This is an idea born in 18th century thanks to a Frenchman, who envisaged peace for Europe only through a big platform of unity and cooperation among all the countries, including the countries that back then were under the Ottoman Empire and including Russia.
Fresh impetus has been given to this idea that has surfaced and disappeared constantly by establishing an inclusive platform for all European countries, despite their outlook on the world affairs or their foreign policy, to sit at the same table and discuss pan-European issues like energy, security, food security, connectivity, traditional security, new threats like cyber security. And in the framework of this platform, we must also start to think, now rather than later, of how Russia will be once the war in Ukraine is over and once Ukraine’s territorial integrity is indisputable.
To conclude, I would first like express gratitude for the honour!
It is really a privilege to address this forum and it is a privilege to speak before your President. In the meantime, I wouldn’t say this is the return of the geopolitics, as the geopolitics has been here with us all the time. It was us, especially the part of us in the European Union, who forgot how to think strategically and to create mechanisms to prevent what was coming and many of us didn’t see.
Let me say it all that in this regard, Türkiye under the leadership of President Erdogan is setting a different tone, is giving a different way to reflect on how to deal with one another and is serving as a roadmap on how in the meantime be fully principled, you don’t negotiate things like territorial integrity, you don’t open paths to quick superficial fixing, but, on the other hand you never forget that at the end of the day the power is about the people and in all the efforts of your President to make sure that as the war drags on billions of people are not under the threat of hunger, is the true face of Türkiye and Turkish leadership, thinking at the end of every day how politics serves the ordinary people, those who are not granted the chance to appear in front of the cameras and those who are not provided the chance to be heard.
Thank you very much!
