Actually solved quite elegantly: A declaration is formulated from which the brawlers can read what they like. Both sides see each other confirmed, they save face, the conflict is off the table. We are talking about the diplomatic dispute between Turkey and the governments of ten Western countries. Their ambassadors had publicly campaigned for the imprisoned cultural patron Osman Kavala, demanding justice for him.
The diplomats were persons of importance: the ambassadors of the USA, Germany, France and seven other, largely influential states. As diplomatically unwise as this public criticism was, the cow was now taken from the ice with an actually completely meaningless declaration that was distributed as a mobile phone tweet.
So a peace agreement via Twitter. The governments of the states concerned have not admitted any errors, given a sober reading of the dry text – a single sentence. Not to mention that they apologized to Turkey. You have given a rush: your diplomats are following the rules of the game agreed in the “Vienna Agreement”.
Each side can read what they want from the declaration
At the same time, those responsible in the foreign ministries concerned – experienced Turkish diplomats were certainly also unofficially involved – formulated the text in such a way that the head of state Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can read from the sentence what he wanted to announce to his people from the start: Turkey lets itself be Nobody should be fooled, thanks to their oh-so-strong president.
Erdoğan has good nerves, he often and likes to take risks. He did his game this time too. He can now hope to have gained points again with his voters in terms of domestic politics. Because lately they are threatening to go off the flag in increasing numbers. Domestic politics, that was what it was all about.
The governments of the ten countries concerned, however, first and foremost the Americans, the Germans and the French, were only able to convince in the final act. You avoided the worst, the unwanted break with Turkey as a NATO state, as a player in the Near and Middle East, as an important neighbor of the EU.
The time for a solution is very short
Is that why everything is fine again? No. The Kavala case will come back on the table in a few weeks. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2019 that the patron of culture and civil society supporter who was imprisoned without a court ruling must be released. Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe, it has to obey the judgment. If this does not happen by December, Ankara is threatened with expulsion from the council. Then Turkey would really be decoupled from Europe and the west of the world.
Time to find a solution is running out. Optimists may hope that the diplomatic peace agreement contains an unofficial agreement: At the end of November, negotiations in the Kavala process will continue, and there are opportunities, including release. Something like this would not be the first time, see the case of the German journalist Deniz Yücel, who was imprisoned in Turkey for a year.
But that is not guaranteed in the case of Kavala. On the contrary, the idiosyncratic action of the ten ambassadors and the subsequent public bickering may have made the solution unnecessarily difficult.