Among the many confusing factors swirling around the whole ISIS phenomenon is the role, or roles, of Turkey in the situation. It might be helpful to tick off some of the major salient factors that compete to form Turkish policies towards ISIS under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at this point.
DEALING WITH ASSAD: First, Turkey fell into the same analytic error that most countries and most analysts, including myself did: the assumption that after Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, the Assad regime in Syria, now facing its own Arab Spring uprising, would be the next to fall. It did not happen. Erdoğan had been deeply and personally invested in mentoring Assad as a “younger brother” for nearly a decade, bringing him closer to western and especially EU ties, helping moderate a number of internal Syrian issues. After the uprising began in Syria, Assad then refused to follow Erdoğan’s strong advice about yielding some democratic concessions to the early anti-regime demonstrators in Syria; Erdoğan grew angry, felt he had lost face internationally with his claims to exert influence over Assad, and finally grew determined to overthrow Assad by force. The more difficult the task turned out to be, the more Erdoğan doubled down, determined to get him out using almost any means—now driven by deep personal grudge as well.
PREFERENCE TO SUPPORT DEMOCRATIC CHANGE. In fairness to Erdoğan and Prime Minister Davutoğlu, Turkey had been gravitating towards a regional policy of general support to democratic movements against shaky dictators. It would indeed have been desirable to see Assad go—in principle—and Ankara had supported the previous four uprisings against entrenched dictatorship in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. There is consistency in his expectations—demands now—that Syria follow suit.
THE ROLE OF JIHADI FORCES. The Assad regime turned out to be more deeply entrenched institutionally than many guessed; large portions of its population dislike Assad, but fear even more the uncertainty, chaos and likely Islamist character of a successor regime. No Syrian could want an Iraq meltdown scenario taking place in Syria either. But the longer the anti-Assad struggle went on, the more it attracted ever more radical Jihadi forces—the most radical ones sadly being the most effective anti-Assad forces, as opposed to the feckless and divided ( if more congenial) moderate opposition. Erdoğan, feeling more desperate, became willing to cooperate with ever more radical forces—to the point of no longer rejecting out of hand the activities of pro-al-Qaeda or pro-ISIS forces in the nearby region. Ankara’s policy doesn’t represent outright support for ISIS, but it does demonstrate a willingness to overlook many ISIS activities in order to facilitate Assad’s overturn.
ERDOĞAN’S OWN ISLAMIC AGENDA. Erdoğan comes out of a tradition of Turkish Islamism. His party, the AKP, represents its most moderate face—perhaps indeed the most pragmatic and most successful Islamic political party in the world. The Turkish form of the AKP Islamic tradition can be compared, very roughly, to the Muslim Brotherhood—although the Turkish AKP is vastly more advanced, politically experienced, practical, and sophisticated. Nonetheless, Erdoğan and some others in the AKP, do seem to look with some sympathy on the struggle of Muslim Brotherhood movements in the Arab world as the most promising, moderately grounded Islamist/Islamic political movement out there. The MB is generally open to concepts of democracy, globalization, tolerance and dialog—although in line with their own understanding of these terms, and depending where and when. Thus Erdoğan is predisposed to some sympathy with the Brotherhood. This accounts for his massive falling out with Egypt’s Sisi who is now crushing the Brotherhood as his chief rival, and Saudi Arabia that similarly deems the Brotherhood to be a “terrorist organization.” Erdoğan has been more willing to cut many Islamist opposition movements some degree of slack, such as in Syria. Compared to almost any form of Turkish Islam, ISIS is essentially an extremist movement, well beyond the pale of mainstream Islam and Islamism; the lines have grown blurred, however, due to Erdoğan’s continuing obsession with overthrowing Assad by almost any means at hand.
THE KURDISH FACTOR. Erdoğan and the AKP government over the past decade has done more to accept “the Kurdish reality” and advance dialog with the Turkey’s Kurdish guerrilla movement (PKK) than any party before. There is still great promise here. Turkey has also reached an astonishingly swift accommodation and close working relations with Iraqi Kurdistan and its leaders in forging political, economic and strategic ties with the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government. But the chaos and unrest generated in every major war in the Middle East over the past two decades have generally benefited the regional Kurds first and foremost (except in Iran), creating the space for them to assume more de facto regional sovereignty. But Turkey’s negotiations with the PKK are complex and still underway—encouraging, but far from a done deal.
The newfound, vocal, de facto autonomy of the Syrian Kurds as well, now taking advantage of the Syrian civil war, has worried Ankara that perhaps all the Kurds may be now moving too far too fast in what could become a dangerous new Kurdish dynamic harder for Ankara to deal with. In any case, any kind of a pan-Kurdish state is still far down the road, if ever feasible. But Erdoğan is worried about anything that enhances the identity, role, profile and military proficiency of the Syrian Kurdish movement, especially since it will not officially sign on to the anti-Assad struggle. (That movement hates Assad, but also fears an even harsher anti-Kurdish regime under Islamists than it has had under secular Assad.) Ankara’s bottom line through all of this is fear of spreading armed Kurdish activism (such as against ISIS) that only enhances Kurdish armed strength and capabilities that can easily affect Turkey’s own negotiations with its own Kurds. It’s a tough call, and whatever happens, regional Kurds are gaining greater prominence and sense of identity with every passing month…
THE US FACTOR. Many US analysts still worry about Ankara not getting on board with Obama on fighting ISIS–as if relations are newly strained. The fact is, Ankara declared its foreign policy independence from the US a decade ago, in multiple areas. Turkey will never again play the role of “loyal US ally.” It has its own regional and global interests and will pursue them; Washington’s preferences will play only a modest role among the many factors influencing Turkish decision-making. Obama may help/persuade Erdoğan to back off from his reckless willingness to tolerate even the ISIS card to bring down Assad. But Erdoğan may well remain intractable on the Assad issue. That policy, among other things, has served to seriously damage Ankara’s relations with Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. So we should not look forward to much cordial cooperation between Ankara and Washington except to the extent that Washington changes its policies on Palestine, Israel, Iran, and overall military intervention in the region. The two countries essentially do not share a common regional strategic outlook.
These issues roughly summarize the complexity of the Turkish calculus on ISIS. Most important to note though, is that Ankara does not share at all the ISIS view of Islam or regional politics. But Ankara does not regard US military policies in the region as desirable either. Turkey’s best prospects lie in backing off from further support to the armed overthrow of Assad, cutting its losses, thereby improving its strained ties with Iran and Iraq, and in returning to the relatively successful “zero problems with neighbors” that marked the AKP’s first decade in office.
Photo Credit: Ra’ed Qutena/Flickr
This article was first published by Graham E. Fuller on his blog and was reprinted here with permission. Copyright Graham E. Fuller.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
It’s time to ask some tough questions about US policy regarding Egypt. The most pressing being what that policy is, exactly?
I agreed with the easily assailable decision by the Obama administration to refrain from labelling the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup. It still [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
It’s time to ask some tough questions about US policy regarding Egypt. The most pressing being what that policy is, exactly?
I agreed with the easily assailable decision by the Obama administration to refrain from labelling the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup. It still is my belief that doing so might be consistent with US law, but would not be helpful to Egypt. Instead of taking funding away from the military which, since it now directly controls the Egyptian till, would simply divert the lost funds from other places (causing even more distress to an already reeling Egyptian economy) it would be better to use the aid as leverage to push the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) toward an inclusive political process that would include drafting a broadly acceptable constitution and, with all due speed, re-installing a duly elected civilian government.
Yet, despite rhetoric supporting just such an outcome, the United States has done nothing to push for such an Egyptian future. The withholding of four F-16 fighter planes means nothing; the SCAF knows they will get the planes in due course and they have no immediate need for them. Mealy-mouthed statements from US officials calling for “all sides” to show restraint are boilerplate and meaningless, all the more so in the wake of the massive violence last weekend, where scores of Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were slaughtered.
What is the US’ desired outcome? Surely, the Obama administration is not comfortable with the level of violence we are currently seeing in Egypt. And equally surely, however much SCAF might be the familiar partner — the one we know and who can be counted on to cooperate with US policy initiatives — the administration must realize that a renewal of the sort of military dictatorship embodied by Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak cannot be re-installed permanently in Egypt anymore.
But it is also clear that the United States was not at all comfortable with the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt, or the rise, swept in by the Arab Awakening, of the moderate, anti-Salafist version of political Islam the Brotherhood represented. (Before there is any confusion, I do not believe the West did anything to hasten the downfall of Morsi in Egypt, nor to create the agitation against similar regimes in Tunisia and Turkey. But neither do I believe that Morsi’s failure elicited anything but satisfaction in Washington.)
The question of the US response to the coup in Egypt is not simply about Egypt. It is about the region more broadly. It is about Tunisia, the Gaza Strip, Syria and Turkey. The desire to pivot away from the Middle East, as well as Obama’s disdain for Bush-style “democracy promotion”, meant the US wouldn’t do much about the spread of political Islam. But when Morsi and, now, the Tunisian Ennahda Party, stumbled badly, they certainly didn’t mind.
The Turkish AKP seemed, at first, to have integrated some liberal values, including neo-liberal economics, with Islamist politics, but that too has frayed in 2013. US discomfort with Turkey was certainly sharpened by Turkish support for the Hamas government in Gaza. But it struck harder as Morsi’s Egypt and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s became closer and, using the historic prestige both countries have in the Muslim world, staked out regional leadership roles. There was every possibility that similar Islamist governments could emerge in Jordan and Syria, along with Libya. In time, the Gulf States could also see similar uprisings (as Bahrain already has) that, if successful, might give rise to Islamist governments. The possibility of that sort of regional unity must have given pause to policymakers in Washington, Jerusalem, London, Paris and even Moscow.
So it is not surprising that the US is lobbing rhetoric, rather than substantive pressure, as SCAF seeks to hammer the Brotherhood back into submission; back into an outlaw role. The declaration by SCAF Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that the crackdown on the Brotherhood was part of a renewed “war on terror” was hardly lost on Western observers. Nor was the accompanying action against Hamas in Gaza, which is of a piece with the domestic battle against the Brotherhood. The US may feel that the SCAF is going too far with its tactics and risking long term instability, but they cannot object to the goal of neutralizing the Brotherhood and similar organizations in the region as a political force.
This is all a serious mis-read of the realities in the Middle East. Morsi brought the strife upon himself, with his bungling governance, his transparent attempt at a power grab and ignoring his campaign promises to create an inclusive government an restrain his own party’s Islamist leanings. The June 30 protest was a very real statement of dissatisfaction.
But since June 30, history has been re-written in Egypt. The Brotherhood was somehow cast as having been an illegitimate ruling party all along. Their electoral victory was supposedly a reflection of the fact that they were the only group that was organized and thus took advantage of hastily scheduled elections. This, of course, completely ignores the fact that the Brotherhood was not the only Islamist party to garner significant support. In fact, 368 of the 508 parliamentary seats went to Islamist parties. Only 115 were garnered by the liberals, centrists and leftists combined. The Egyptian people, having been burned by half a century of secular(ish) dictatorship, wanted to try something new. When that didn’t work, they protested and moved in a different direction. It’s called democracy.
And while June 30 certainly represented widespread dissatisfaction with the Morsi government, the numbers quoted have been called into serious doubt, and it is not at all clear that those demonstrating also supported a coup. What is clear is that the Brotherhood still has significant support in Egypt, along with major opposition. Driving them underground and labelling them terrorists is unlikely to produce a stable Egypt. A better tactic would have been to allow popular disenchantment with the Brotherhood to continue to grow and express itself in the ballot box.
In the last analysis, the US is largely standing by and watching rather than using the leverage it has with the SCAF to push for an inclusive political transition. The hope is surely that a stable Egypt will emerge after a death blow has been dealt to political Islam, not only in Egypt but throughout the region. That hope seems a bit too ambitious. The words of Professor Fawaz Gerges seem to encapsulate the larger view well:
The military’s removal of Morsi undermines Egypt’s fragile democratic experiment because there is a real danger that once again the Islamists will be suppressed and excluded from the political space. The writing is already on the wall with the arrest of Morsi and the targeting of scores of Brotherhood leaders. This does not bode well for the democratic transition because there will be no institutionalization of democracy without the Brotherhood, the biggest and oldest mainstream religiously based Islamist movement in the Middle East… As the central Islamist organization established in 1928, the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood’s first experience in power will likely taint the standing and image of its branches and junior ideological partners in Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and even Tunisia and Morocco. Hamas is already reeling from the violent storm in Cairo and the Muslim Brothers in Jordan are feeling the political heat and pressure at home. The Syrian Islamists are disoriented and fear that the tide has turned against them. The liberal-leaning opposition in Tunisia is energized and plans to go on the offensive against Ennahda. Even the mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gulen Movement in Turkey are watching unfolding developments in neighboring Egypt with anxiety and disquiet. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to pen the obituary of the Islamist movement.
The US is allowing stability to be sacrificed in the hope that political Islam will be dealt a death blow. It is possible, of course, that its ability to affect SCAF’s behavior is limited, but this seems unlikely. SCAF is dependent on its good relations with the US and Europe; it won’t simply ignore significant pressure from Washington. More likely, that pressure is as absent in private as it obviously is in public. The US will probably pay a long-term price for such a short-sighted strategy. Par for the course in the Middle East. One can only hope that the recent efforts by the European Union, including a visit to Morsi by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, bodes some sort of change in Western policy with Egypt.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The Turkish government and its leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have only themselves to blame for both the widening protests gripping Turkey, and the negative, sometimes distorted, global perception of what they’re doing to their people. The heavy-handed response to what was an isolated demonstration has blown [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The Turkish government and its leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have only themselves to blame for both the widening protests gripping Turkey, and the negative, sometimes distorted, global perception of what they’re doing to their people. The heavy-handed response to what was an isolated demonstration has blown the cork off a pressurized situation in Turkey. The attempted media blackout has only served to magnify global disgust and raised a simplistic view of a very complex dynamic.
The protest that sparked all of the upheaval was a small one. In a sign of the real, underlying issues, the Turkish police reacted to the sit-in at Gezi Park with a large show of force, which prompted expanding and spreading demonstrations. Almost immediately, Turkish activists took to social media, because, miraculously, the protests were completely invisible on most of the major networks in Turkey (as well as, shamefully, some of the international ones). Turkey isn’t Syria, and it’s doubtful that the media blackout — even within the country — was all that effective. You see, Mr. Prime Minister, there is this thing called the internet…
The comparisons to the “Arab Awakening” are somewhat exaggerated, but the dynamic in Turkey is significant for precisely that reason. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) are legitimately in power. Erdogan is not a dictator, he has been elected three times in free and fair elections, and he’s won a bigger plurality each time. Erdogan and the AKP have, in the past, pushed reforms forward and managed a very solid economic recovery.
But in the past couple of years, more and more Turks, particularly those among the “other half” of Turkey that didn’t vote for the AKP in the last election, have grown more nervous. Three broad issues — growing authoritarianism from Erdogan, Turkey’s increasingly partisan role as a regional leader and the heightened influence of religion in Turkish law — have been on a rolling boil in recent years and overflowed in the past week. The Gezi Park protest was merely the triggering point.
Turkey has long struggles with serious shortcomings on significant human rights issues. It is to the AKP’s credit that for much of its first two terms in power, it made strides with a number of them. Notably, upon their initial election, the AKP eased some restrictions on the Kurdish language and culture, and capitalized on the existing cease-fire to ease some of the tensions, although they have gradually risen anew ever since. The AKP brought in neo-liberal economic policies, and in this case they have worked to strengthen an economy that was in severe crisis not long ago. On the other hand, the press, never free, has been increasingly harassed recently.
The hugely excessive police response to the Gezi Park demonstration and subsequent protests cannot be disconnected from the arrogant and tone-deaf response to these events from Erdogan himself. Dismissing the protesters as thugs, radicals and “foreigners” served only to display the very root of the problem with Erdogan. After three successful elections, he believes he has a mandate to lead the country where he sees fit, and need not concern himself with the many millions of Turks who see things differently.
The Syrian uprising is another worrisome issue for many in Turkey. No doubt most would agree that Turkey has a legitimate interest in the outcome in Syria, but so do many states. The question is: what should it do in response to that interest? Many Turks are unhappy with their government’s involvement in the Syrian civil war, and many are particularly concerned about what it means for Turkey’s regional policy. The AKP has a lot in common with the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the region, and has been supporting that piece of the Syrian rebel force. Thus, for many Turks, Turkish involvement in Syria has not just been about unseating Bashar al-Assad or protecting Turkey’s border, but advancing a regional agenda that, while certainly less worrisome than other religious ideologies fighting for supremacy in the Arab world, is not well aligned with Turkish values of secularism. This also casts a pall on what many Turks have been pleased to see as Turkey’s enhanced status in the region.
The increasing influence of religion has manifested itself in recent new laws restricting the sale of alcohol and public displays of affection. One of the points of pride for the AKP has been its ability to blend the strong secular tradition in Turkey with the rising influence of Islam in the country, but these laws have rekindled fears about Erdogan, who was imprisoned in his younger days because of his Islamist views.
Ultimately, all of this feeds into concerns about the upcoming presidential election, scheduled for 2014. Erdogan is hoping to amend the constitution to create a strong presidency that would replace the central position of the prime minister. And, of course, he very much hopes to be that president, a position he could hold for the subsequent decade. It is no wonder that so many in Turkey are concerned about Erdogan’s ambitions and willingness to cede power.
For all of these fears and matters of concern, though, it is important to keep in mind that Turkey is not Syria, nor is it Egypt or Libya. Erdogan is an elected leader, and he has gotten a lot of support in those elections. Whether he still has that support today, though, is a matter of some speculation.
At Al-Monitor, Barbara Slavin ascribes a lot of what has happened in Turkey to Erdogan overstaying his welcome in office. There is certainly a lot of truth in that point. It certainly explains the hubris of Erdogan’s reaction to the protests, the excessive force with which the protests were met from the outset and his attempts to marginalize such large swaths of the Turkish population.
But in some ways, Erdogan and the AKP are victims of their own success. Turkey under Erdogan has been praised by many (myself included) for the progress it made in integrating a large Islamist community with an overriding, and overwhelmingly popular, secular government. Turkey was being pointed to as the model for new governments in the Arab Awakening by some (many of whom, it’s fair to note, were in the US and Europe). As a result, Erdogan seems to have become convinced that it’s his economically and socially conservative base, and his party’s inclination toward a greater role for Islam in Turkish law, that should simply have its way because, after all, those with different ideas keep losing.
Hence these protests. Like those seen in recent years all over the world, including the United States, the groups are diffusive and diverse and there is no structured leadership. The demands are the same as well: more justice, more democracy. But the eagerness to label this as a “Turkish Awakening” misses the fact that Turkey, with all its very deep flaws, is a democracy. Erdogan is a legitimately elected leader, and he can still be voted out. Indeed, he may well have destroyed much of his own legitimacy with his reaction to these demonstrations and thereby endangered his own political future.
Turks are defending and trying to expand their democracy. Erdogan may well have become a threat to that democracy, but he has not destroyed it. The protesters want their press to be free, they want minorities to be fairly treated, they want the secularism that the government has been based on for years to endure (even while accommodating the large Islamist movement) and they want to make sure that even if a party wins a large plurality of the vote, everyone else’s interests won’t become meaningless.
There is more here as well: an objection to the excesses of Erdogan’s neo-liberal policies, even while most Turks understand that the AKP has done a lot of good for the country’s economy. Add to that the continuing march toward democracy from a government that was once a religious empire and later a secular but unstable government that had far too many features of fascism, some of which still remain and are being used by Erdogan (once a victim of that very discrimination); these include the government’s intimidation of the press as well as the misuse of anti-terrorism laws and the harsh discrimination faced by the Kurds, Alevis and many leftists.
Turkey is facing the problems of its past mixed with ongoing growing pains of its very real democracy. The country should be supported, and the goals of the protests need to be recognized as noble ones. The government needs to be rebuked sufficiently to deter it from its violent and anti-democratic course. But Turkey should not be confused with Syria.
Photo: Protesters gather in Taksim Square in Istanbul, not far from Gezi Park, where protests were sparked last week against the government’s most recent urban redevelopment project. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours
]]>via IPS News
The governing programme of Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood has been disappointing. His commitment to genuine democracy has been faltering, and his efforts at inclusion and political tolerance have been wanting.
Morsi’s actions against the Egyptian comedian Basim Yousif belie his initial statements supporting [...]]]>
Morsi’s actions against the Egyptian comedian Basim Yousif belie his initial statements supporting tolerance, inclusion, and freedom of expression. Humor is the backbone of a mature democracy; muzzling the voices of dissent is an omen of a budding dictatorship.
These actions unfortunately confirm the suspicions of many Arab secularists, liberals, and non-Muslim Brotherhood citizens that once the MB reaches power through elections, they would scuttle democracy and replace it with their version of theocratic rule or divine hukm.
Morsi’s intolerance of secularists, women, Christians, and even liberal judges is generating fears in Egypt and elsewhere that the country has replaced the secular Mubarak dictatorship with a theocratic autocracy. Morsi’s rule does not allow a diversity of views, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s interpretation of the role of religion in the state has emerged as the guiding principle for governing Egypt.
This disturbing phenomenon does not bode well for political Islam, especially as Islamic political parties become majorities in Arab and Muslim governments.
My former government colleagues and I have argued for years that as part of government, Islamic political parties would focus on “bread and butter” issues and relegate their religious ideology to the backburner. We believed their policy concerns would trump their ideology.
As minority government partners in Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Yemen, Malaysia, and Indonesia, Islamic parties focused on legislation that responded to the needs of their constituents, bargained with other parties to pass needed legislation regulating commerce, transportation, power, energy, food prices, and other issues of concern to their citizens.
They generally were not elected or re-elected because of their Islamic credentials and did not use their Islamic ideology to govern. They promoted moderate platforms during their election campaign and generally have governed as responsible factions in their respective parliaments.
As we briefed senior policymakers, we highlighted the difference between mainstream political parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots in Jordan, Palestine, Morocco, and elsewhere, and extremist Islamic groups, which did not believe in man-made democracy and inclusive government.
At the time, all of those parties were in the minority. We also judged that when some of those parties become a majority, they would uphold the same democratic, inclusive tendencies.
The Turkish Justice and Development Party or AKP, which became the first Sunni majority governing party in the region, emerged as the poster child of our briefings. It governed democratically, defended Turkish secularism, and encouraged inclusion in the economic and political life of Turkey. Despite its Islamic roots, AKP supported the democratic notion of separating religion from politics.
Many had hoped the Muslim Brotherhood would bring a similar governing model to Egypt. In fact, that was the promise that President Morsi made upon his election as president. He consolidated his power the first one hundred days, but since then he’s begun to consolidate his control in undemocratic ways based on a constitution that he helped push through hastily and without much public discussion.
How can Morsi recapture democracy and move Egypt in the right direction?
First, rescind the sham constitution and replace it with a constitution that reflects the diverse political ideologies in Egyptian society.
Second, include secularists, women, Christians, and non-MB leaders in high positions in government and promote a national programme of tolerance toward these groups and punish those who engage in sectarian and gender hate crimes.
Third, hold open, free elections for the next parliament, with much simpler and straightforward voting procedures and without stacking the decks in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Fourth, create a major fund to support young men and women in start-up initiatives in technology and entrepreneurship to develop businesses and create jobs. The young generation must have tangible incentives to have a stake in society in order to help build a prosperous future.
Fifth, convene a series of high-level meetings of leaders – men and women – from across Egyptian society from the business, banking, and tourism community, the professions, civil society, academia, and the high tech industry, with different political, social, and religious ideologies to discuss the immediate future of Egypt and develop specific strategies of how to get there.
The Muslim Brotherhood has no monopoly on the future vision of Egypt. If Morsi is to be the president of all of Egypt, he must take concrete steps to alleviate his citizens’ concerns about his leadership, create jobs for the youth, and partner with leaders of different ideological stripes to build a more democratic Egypt.
Egypt is endowed with a rich culture and a diverse social fabric and could not possibly prosper under a theocracy. Putting the country on the right path will be Morsi’s greatest legacy.
Photo: Protesters battle police in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on the second anniversary of Egypt’s January 25 revolution. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.
]]>So it is with Elliott Abrams‘ latest [...]]]>
So it is with Elliott Abrams‘ latest op-ed on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages, entitled “Dictators, Democracies and Wikileaks” in which, among other things, he informs us that “dictators and authoritarians don’t tell their people the truths they tell us” and that “their public speeches are meant to manipulate, not to inform.”
“Their approach is striking: Tell the truth to foreigners but not to your own population,” [he goes on].
“So in Yemen, for example, we see President Ali Abdullah Saleh discussing action against al Qaeda and insisting, ‘We’ll continue to say the bombs are ours and not yours.”
This quotation, of course, is taken from the cable describing a meeting between Saleh and Gen. David Petraeus during which one of Saleh’s aides jokes that he had just lied to parliament about U.S. airstrikes against alleged al Qaeda targets in Yemeni territory. Abrams, now Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, goes on to contrast this kind of mendacity on the part of “dictators and authoritarians” with the honesty of democratic governments:
“Cables reporting on U.S.-German, U.S.-French, or U.S.-Canadian consultations are different — those governments say to their parliaments what they say to us.”
So, then, how would Abrams himself judge the Reagan administration — and, specifically, his own performance in it — when he applies this standard to the Iran-Contra affair?
Abrams, of course, was indicted by the special prosecutor for intentionally deceiving [i.e. lying to] Congress about the Reagan administration’s and his personal role in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras in violation of U.S. law. He eventually pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses (including withholding information from Congress) in order to avoid a trial and a possible prison term. As the prosecutor’s report makes clear, Abrams, who was assistant secretary of Inter-American Affairs at the time, lied throughout the hearings, insisting that he had no knowledge of the NSC and CIA programs to support the Contras when, in fact, he was one of the three principal members (with Oliver North and Alan Fiers) of the so-called Restricted Inter-Agency Group (RIG) that oversaw Central America policy during the Contra war and had been explicitly ordered by his boss, Secretary of State George Shultz, to closely monitor North’s activities. In his guilty plea, he also admitted that he withheld from Congress the fact that he had personally solicited $10 million in aid for the Contras from the Sultan of Brunei. In other words, like President Saleh and his jovial aide, Abrams told the Sultan — who would undoubtedly fall into the dictator/authoritarian category that he now pontificates about — what he refused to tell the United States Congress or his “own population.”
Of course, one could go on and on about Abrams’ mendacity during his service under Reagan; first as assistant secretary for international organizations (1981), then as assistant secretary of human rights and humanitarian affairs (1981-85), and finally as assistant secretary for Inter-American Affairs (1985-89). So low was his credibility with senators — on both sides of the aisle — that his biggest fans on the George W. Bush administration (notably Dick Cheney) knew from the outset that he could never be confirmed to any post. So they sent him to the National Security Council — first as Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations (2001-2002); then as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs (2002-2009) and Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy (2005-2009) — where he would never be required to testify before Congress.
One other anomaly struck me about Abrams’ most recent op-ed, aside from his highly questionable assertion — presumably from his old friends in Battalion 316 whose atrocities he helped to cover up in the 1980′s — about the “Honduran people’s unified desire to throw out” ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. I refer to his praise for former U.S. Ambassador James Jeffrey’s analysis of Turkey’s new foreign policy as “sharp and well-written.” That seems very strange, indeed, given what Abrams himself has written about the direction Turkey is taking under the AKP government and President Erdogan. Here’s Abrams in the Weekly Standard last June immediately after the flotilla incident:
“[I]t’s obvious that our formerly reliable NATO ally has become a staunch supporter of the radical camp [in the Middle East]. …Turkey’s U.N. Security Council vote against the newest round of sanctions this past week put it in Iran’s camp against Europe, the United States, Russia, and China. That’s quite a realignment for a NATO ally.
“…Turks may tire of Erdogan’s speeches and return a government that seeks a true balance between East and West rather than a headlong dive into alliances with Iran and Syria.”
Now here’s what Jeffrey wrote in his summary of Erdogan’s foreign policy a few months before:
“Does all this mean that [Turkey] is becoming more focused on the Islamist world and its Muslim tradition in its foreign policy? Absolutely. Does it mean that it is ‘abandoning’ or wants to abandon its traditional Western orientation and willingness to cooperate with us? Absolutely not.”
There seems to be a yawning gap between Abrams’ conviction that Turkey has joined the “radical camp” led by Iran and Jeffrey’s “sharp” analysis that such a charge is absolute nonsense.
That’s the thing with many neo-conservatives like Abrams: it’s hard to know when they are deliberately deceptive (call it takiya), when they are engaged in agitprop, or when they are doing serious analysis (of which many of them, including Abrams, are quite capable). It’s kind of like figuring out what “dictators and authoritarians” really mean when they talk to “us.”
]]>