I offer the following longer terms predictions about the Middle East for 2015.
OK, that’s enough predictive risks for one year…
Photo: The Middle East at Night (NASA, International Space Station, 06/04/12).
This article was first published by Graham E. Fuller and was reprinted here with permission. Copyright Graham E. Fuller.
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Umar FarooqFor more than thirteen years, Turkey has made a slow but steady transition towards a free and democratic society, despite the occasional pang of apprehension among some about where that road might lead. The men at the helm of that transition, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen, began as allies, perhaps the most powerful post-modernist Islamists in world. But now the two are estranged, locked in a downward spiral of distrust that may undo the progress made. At the heart of this estrangement lies a difference over how Turkey should assert its power in the Islamic world.
On December 18, a judge in Istanbul issued an arrest warrant for Gulen, following a week that saw the detention and questioning of dozens of journalists and police officers allegedly linked to the 73- year-old cleric. Gulen lives in Pennsylvania but is thought to lead a movement of millions in Turkey, popularly referred to as the “Hizmet,” or “the Service.” Erdogan has called for Gulen’s extradition, charging that he heads a “parallel state” within the country’s judiciary and bureaucracy.
Turkey has a history of violent crackdowns, but Erdogan claims this one will be clean: “Nobody is being lynched before the process is over,” he said December 20, before launching into a tirade against a statement by European Union that called the recent detentions “incompatible with the freedom of media, which is a core principle of democracy.” But the carrot of EU membership no longer seems important to Erdogan (or to most Turks).
Erdogan now sees the West’s support for Gulen, combined with an apparent indifference towards the military coup in Egypt last year and its reluctance to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as indicators it is not interested in seeing a democratically elected Islamist government in Turkey, or anywhere else.
While tensions between Erdogan and the Gulenists have been mounting for several years, the current crisis heated up last December, when prosecutors announced they would open corruption cases against 53 AK Party allies, including members of Erdogan’s cabinet. Police officers who, according to Erdogan supporters, were loyal to Gulen, had wiretapped hundreds of people’s phones; as well as Erdogan’s own offices. Turkish media had leaked incriminating recordings, providing right-wing and secular opposition parties with powerful ammunition in advance of this year’s presidential elections. The government responded by transferring or sacking hundreds of judges and police, and, in some cases, opening cases of abuse of power against them.
Since then, Turkish media outlets closely tied to the Hizmet have taken an increasingly confrontational stance against Erdogan. Boosted by his victory in August’s presidential election, Erdogan struck back this month, reactivating a three-year-old complaint of slander by Mehmet Doğan, a former Gulen ally who spent 17 months in prison before being exonerated on charges of being a part of al-Qaeda. Dozens of journalists, two top counter-terrorism police officials, and even the writer of a soap opera were hauled to police stations across the country for questioning, not just on the Doğan complaint, but on the wider aims of Hizmet and Gulen as well.
Erdogan and Gulen may both be Islamists, but they have different visions of how and whether Turkey should assert its historical Islamic identity. Erdogan’s popularity stems from his bluntness: “Our minarets are our bayonets, our domes are our helmets, our mosques are our barracks,” recited the then-mayor of Istanbul in 1997, who was successfully prosecuted for “inciting hatred” with those words and soon found himself shuttled off to prison, accompanied by a 2,000 vehicle-convoy of fans.
A self-educated Islamic scholar, Gulen spent much of his youth as a state-appointed imam at mosques in western Turkey. He set up dorms and study centers for pious students from the Turkish countryside who had arrived in cities for study or work. As his popularity increased, Gulen travelled the country, dishing out sermons and advice to crowds of thousands of young Muslims on how their faith could fit into a secular Turkey. During the 1971 military coup, Gulen spent six months in prison for his movement.
In 1999, Gulen found himself unable to return to Turkey after he issued a characteristically guarded statement, directing his followers in public offices to learn the workings of legislative and administrative bodies, but “wait until the conditions become more favorable” to show their Islamist intentions. Gulen’s movement only grew stronger in his absence.
A quarter of private schools in Turkey, as well as hundreds of others across the world, including at least 16 in the United States, are run by the Hizmet movement. Gulen’s political and religious commentary, often distributed by the media outlets currently under scrutiny, is widely read throughout the Muslim world. Hizmet also includes one of Turkey’s most powerful business groups, the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialist (TUSKON), and its own Sharia-compliant bank, Bank Asya.
Under the Justice and Development (AK Party) government, which took power in 2002, the 1999 case against Gulen was tossed out, but the cleric preferred to stay in Pennsylvania, watching Erdogan chart a path towards democracy, built on a wide mandate that probably would not have been possible without his movement’s support.
Buoyed by his success at transforming Istanbul into a cosmopolitan city with infrastructure on par with Europe, Erdogan’s party was swept into power twice with mandates never seen in the country’s history. Opposition parties issued statements lamenting the victory, and a Turkish court even heard a petition to ban the AK Party on grounds that it threatened the country’s secular foundation, but none of that panned out. In 2007, Erdogan stood firm against an implicit coup threat by the military command, sometimes referred to as the “e-coup” or “virtual coup.”
Erdogan and his allies pushed ahead with reforms widely praised as groundbreaking for Turkey and for the Islamic world, putting the country on firm footing towards meeting conditions for accession to the European Union. In 2007, the Israeli President addressed the Turkish Parliament, heaping praise on Erdogan’s reforms and his peace-making efforts between Tel Aviv and its neighbors. A referendum that year and another in 2010 pushed through constitutional revisions that, among other measures, enhanced labor rights, gender equality, and civilian oversight of a military that had a history of toppling democratic governments. In 2008, the government launched the prosecution of nearly three hundred military officers, journalists, and lawmakers accused of plotting to topple the government and spark a military takeover in what became known as the Ergenekon case.
Throughout these years, Gulen and Erdogan were allies, particularly with respect to efforts to subordinate the military.
But by 2010, each showed signs of growing uncomfortable with his partner.
Having broken with Israel over the 2008 Gaza war and re-oriented Turkish foreign policy toward the Arab Middle East with his “zero problems with neighbours” program, Erdogan was making a name for himself in the Islamic world to the growing annoyance of the more cautious and reserved Gulen.
After Erdogan stood behind the Mavi Marmara and its failed attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, Gulen openly criticized him, insisting that aid should have gone through only with the approval of Israeli authorities. As part of a confidence-building measure with Iran, Hakan Fidan, Erdogan’s head of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), also reportedly leaked the identities of ten Mossad agents operating in Turkey to Iran, prompting additional murmurs of disapproval from Gulen.
According to Erdogan supporters, Gulen directed his network of followers in the media, judiciary, and police to work together to undermine the prime minister and his hold on the AKP.
An allegedly Gulen-linked prosecutor summoned MIT head Fidan to explain 2009-2010 meetings with Kurdish rebels in Oslo, widely believed to be part of the government’s peace process with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which is still listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey.
The AK Party, which enjoys an absolute majority in Parliament, responded by changing the law to bar future such oversight of the intelligence agency and floating the idea of shutting down hundreds of Gulen’s private tutoring centers, a move that would decimate the cleric’s grassroots network in Turkey.
When Erdogan took a divisive stand on the civil war in neighboring Syria, calling for the removal of Assad, by force if necessary, prominent Gulenists publicly dissented.
This January, police allegedly loyal to Gulen raided the offices of an AK Party linked aid agency, İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri (IHH), in Kilis, near the Syrian border, and told journalists they had arrested 28 suspected members of al-Qaeda. The next month, police stopped a convoy of seven trucks belonging to the MIT near the Syrian border and claimed to have found a cache of weapons intended to supply the Islamic State.
These moves mirrored rhetoric from the cleric himself warning of Erdogan’s stance against Assad. When the Turkish parliament passed legislation authorizing military intervention against ISIS in Syria and Iraq in October, Gulen warned it could drag the country into “a new World War I.” Ali Bulac, writing in the Zaman newspaper, which regularly features Gulen’s views on Turkish politics, called the idea of Turkish intervention in Syria “an ambitious and imperialist project.”
To Erdogan, the Hizmet’s actions—warning against intervention in Syria, linking the AK Party to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, or to Iran, and branding it as a troublemaker in the Middle East—was seen as a betrayal by a former ally in the face of mounting pressure and frustration with the Turkish leaders by western leaders, some of whom have long been skeptical of the Turkish leader’s ultimate aims.
At home, opposition groups have adopted the narrative. When tens of thousands protested against Erdogan in Taksim Square in June 2013, Gulen issued a gentle reminder to Erdogan not to let things get out of hand by ignoring the protesters’ demands. A year later, Erdogan decried the opposition’s embrace of the demonstrators who he accused of being “terrorists who smash things up.”
Those kinds of remarks and the willingness to crack down on civil society seen this month have lost Erdogan a large number of secular allies in Turkey and may just isolate him from his remaining friends in the West. While Erdogan became the country’s first directly elected president with 52 percent of the votes in August, his mandate is built on the lowest turnout rate in Turkey’s history, partly due to millions of secular voters who saw no credible alternative.
Parliamentary elections are due in June of next year. If a viable opposition party springs up, one that can cater to seculars, minorities like Kurds, as well as Hizmet members, it could become a serious challenge to the AK Party. Any opposition would have to draw votes from millions of Turks who do not support the traditional nationalist parties, as well as AK Party voters who see no other Islamist alternative.
For now, however, Erdogan appears convinced that he has popular support for his actions, which he describes as a final purging necessary to save Turkey from an international conspiracy. His crackdown has effectively crippled the Gulen network in Turkey: graduates from the Gulen-inspired Fatih University can’t find jobs; newspapers like Zaman have lost advertisers and hundreds of thousands of readers; and Bank Asya, which caters to his TUKSON business network, lost a third of its worth this year.
For more than a decade, Erdogan has worked to establish what he regards as a stable democratic system to Turkey, and now he wants to reap the rewards of his labor by extending influence far beyond its borders. In his mind, Gulen stands in the way.
Umar Farooq is a freelance journalist based in Turkey whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and a number of other outlets. He tweets @UmarFarooq_
]]>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.
]]>Erbil—After a period of frostiness, Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Turkey seem intent on mending the ties, as each of the parties show signs of needing the other.
But the Kurds appear more cautious this time around, leery of moving too close to Ankara lest they alienate the new Iraqi government in Baghdad with which they signed a breakthrough oil deal Tuesday.
The agreement, which will give Baghdad greater control over oil produced in Kurdistan and Kurdish-occupied Kirkuk in exchange for the KRG’s receipt of a bigger share of the central government’s budget, may signal an effort to reduce Erbil’s heavy reliance on Turkey.
The warmth between Iraqi Kurds and Turkey was a rather strange affair to begin with. It emerged unexpectedly and evolved dramatically since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
Whereas Turkey is a major player in the Middle East and Eurasia regions, Iraqi Kurdistan is not even an independent state. The imbalance of power between the two parties made their development of a “strategic” relationship particularly remarkable.
Given the deep historical animosity in Ankara towards all things Kurdish, the change of heart on its leaders’ part also seemed almost miraculous, even if highly lucrative to Turkish construction companies in particular.
But those ties suffered a major blow in August when the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) marched toward Kurdish-held territories in Iraq.
With IS threatening Kurdistan’s capital city, Erbil, Turkey did little to assist the Kurds. Many in Kurdistan and beyond were baffled; it was a case of “a friend in need is a friend indeed” gone wrong.
The overwhelming sense in Erbil was that Turkey had abandoned Iraqi Kurds in the middle of a life-and-death crisis. KRG President Masoud Barzani, Ankara’s closest ally, felt moved to publicly thank Iran, Turkey’s regional rival, for rushing arms and other supplies to Kurdish peshmerga fighters in their hour of need.
In their efforts to simultaneously develop an understanding and save face, some senior KRG officials defended Ankara, insisting that its hands were tied by the fact that more than 40 staff members in its consulate in the Iraqi city of Mosul, including the consul, had been taken hostage by IS. Other officials were more critical, slamming Ankara for not having acted decisively in KRG’s support.
The that the country was experiencing elections where the ambitious then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was running for the newly enhanced office of president was also invoked as a reason for his reluctance to enter into war with such a ruthless group.
It also appeared to observers here that Erdogan did not want to do anything that could strengthen his archenemy, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, even if that meant effectively siding with the Sunni jihadists.
But last month’s visit to Iraq by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appears to have helped repair the relationship with the Kurds in the north. Davutoglu turned on his personal charm to reassure his hosts, even visiting a mountainous area where Turkish special forces are now training members of the Kurdish peshmerga.
The question of how long it takes for the relationship to bounce back to the point where it was six months ago is anyone’s guess.
It’s clear, however, that despite the recent slide in relations, both sides need each other.
As a land-locked territory, Kurds will be looking for an alternative that they can use to counter pressure from the central Iraqi government.
Focused on laying the foundation for a high degree of economic and political autonomy—if not independence—from Baghdad, the Kurds’ strategic ambition is to be able to control and ideally sell their oil and gas to international clients. And geography also dictates that the most obvious and economically efficient route runs through Turkey, with or without Baghdad’s blessing.
As for Ankara, Iraqi Kurdistan is now its only friend in an otherwise hostile region.
Once upon a time, not long ago, politicians in Ankara boasted of the success of their “zero-problems-with-neighbors” policy that had reshuffled regional politics and turned some of Turkey’s long-standing foes in the region, including Syria, into friends. But that era is now gone.
Ankara has come to see Iraqi Kurdistan as a potential major supplier of its own energy needs and has generally sided with the KRG in its disputes with Baghdad.
Kurdish leaders have been criticized for putting most of their eggs in Ankara’s basket.
The last time Kurds invested so much of their trust in a neighboring country was during the 1960s and 1970s when they were supported by the Shah of Iran who used them to exert pressure on Baghdad. This produced disastrous results when the Shah abruptly abandoned Kurds in return for territorial concessions by the Iraqi government in the Shatt al-Arab River separating southern Iran from Iraq.
Turkey’s indifference and passivity in August when all of Iraqi Kurdistan came under existential threat by the IS jihadists reminded many here of the consequences of placing too much trust in their neighbors. The hoary proverb that “Kurds have no friends but the mountains” suddenly regained its currency.
IS’s siege of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani—just one kilometre from the Turkish frontier—compounded that distrust, not only for Iraqi Kurds, but for Kurds throughout the region, including in Turkey itself.
Indeed, Turkey’s refusal to assist Kurdish fighters against IS’s brutal onslaught has made it harder for the KRG to initiate a reconciliation.
Although Ankara has now changed its position—under heavy US pressure—and is now permitting peshmerga forces to provide limited assistance and re-inforcements for Kobani’s defenders, the process of mending fences is still moving rather slowly.
While that process has now begun, it remains unclear how far both sides will go.
Will it be again a case of Ankara and Erbil jointly versus Baghdad, or will Erbil play the game differently this time, aiming for balance between the two capitals?
Indeed, the much-lauded oil deal struck Tuesday between Baghdad and the KRG may indicate a preference for the latter strategy, particularly in light of their mutual interest in both confronting the IS and compensating for losses in revenue resulting from the steep plunge in oil prices.
Still, given the history of deals sealed and then broken that have long characterized relations between the Kurds and Baghdad, nothing can be taken for granted.
Photo: KRG President Masoud Barzani at the official opening of the Erbil International Airport and Turkish Consulate in 2011. Credit: Official KRG Photo
Mohammed A. Salih is a journalist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. He has written for almost a decade about Kurdish and Iraqi affairs for local and international media.
]]>by Derek Davison
Turkey, nominally a member of America’s new anti-ISIS coalition (well, maybe), has for some time now been refusing to allow Kurdish reinforcements and weapons to cross its Syrian border into the besieged city of Kobani. Due to its resistance to even allowing assistance to cross into Kobani, Turkey has faced large Kurdish protests in several cities, to which it has responded in occasionally brutal fashion. Yesterday, Turkey escalated this Kurdish crisis by shelling positions connected to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern part of the country, supposedly in response to a PKK attack on an army outpost in Hakkari. The PKK is affiliated with the Syrian People’s Protection Units (YPG), the group currently trying to defend Kobani from Daesh (ISIS or ISIL). For a country that seemed on the verge of joining an anti-ISIS coalition just a few days ago, the decision to bomb Kurds, rather than Daesh, is naturally raising some eyebrows.
The PKK shelling comes only about a day after Turkey publicly denied that it has given the US permission to use its Incirlik air base to launch sorties against Daesh and al-Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nusra targets in Syria, which directly contradicts earlier US reports. Talks are ongoing with respect to the use of Incirlik, with new President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government still insisting, more or less, that it won’t seriously get involved in Syria unless the coalition turns its real focus to getting rid of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey is its own nation with its own national priorities, and it has never been shy about the fact that its number one priority is making sure its Kurdish population doesn’t get any funny ideas about independence.
Turkey’s real rooting interest in Syria is against the YPG and other Syrian Kurds. The fact that Iraqi Kurds have achieved significant autonomy from Baghdad is worrying enough to Ankara; if Syria’s Kurds achieve a similar level of autonomy, the Turks believe that their Kurdish population will try to follow suit. Assad is thus their main target, not Sunni extremists like Daesh, because Assad has been allied with Syria’s Kurds throughout the country’s more than three-year-long civil war, and has been ceding increased autonomy to them. For added measure, the Turks argue that, while they’re as opposed to Daesh and similar groups as anybody, those groups can’t be removed from Syria until Assad is ousted, since the Syrian dictator has been propping up extremists all this time as a counterweight to more moderate opposition groups. The Turks have a point here, or would have had one if this were 2012 or 2013, but now it seems that Daesh is standing up pretty well on its own and is an immediate enough threat to Iraq that diverting coalition resources to unseating Assad could actually be counterproductive to the goal of degrading Daesh.
So the question of the day for America’s foreign policy establishment, particularly the neoconservative elements within it (who already oppose Erdogan’s government over its alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood and its tense relations with Israel), seems to be: “what can America do about Turkey?” It’s never considered sufficient to say, “well, that other country’s national interests just don’t coincide with America’s, and I guess we’ll have to adjust for that.” No, any failure on the part of another supposedly sovereign nation to recognize that America Is Exceptional And The Indispensable Nation is An Insult and Must Be Dealt With Harshly.
Turkey is a “non-ally” and America should move its regional military bases into Kurdish Iraq, says the Wall Street Journal, presumably because the Turks are refusing to commit their army to fighting a war on America’s behalf. US officials are reportedly angry because Turkey “want[s] the U.S. to come in and take care of the problem,” except, you know, the US is the one for whom “it” (Daesh) is apparently a problem, not the Turks. From the serious reactionaries we’re even hearing calls to “kick Turkey out of NATO,” a course of action for which NATO seems to have no precedent or procedure, and that, like most reactionary policy ideas, would create maximum disruption while accomplishing nothing constructive. Say NATO does kick Turkey out—what then? Do the Turks suddenly see the error of their ways and make amends? Why would they do that? What if NATO divides on the question of expelling Turkey? Is there any possible outcome of pursuing Turkey’s expulsion from NATO that would have a positive impact on the fight against ISIS?
The fact that Turkey would apparently rather let Daesh slaughter and enslave the Kurdish defenders of Kobani than do anything that might benefit long-term Kurdish political aims may be immoral, unconscionable, even indefensible on a humanitarian level, and it’s fine to condemn Turkey on those grounds, but as a pure calculation of national interest, what Turkey is doing shouldn’t surprise anybody. It’s not as though America hasn’t greatly wronged the Kurds in the past, when it was in US interests to do so. It’s also worth noting that the UK and Germany have also opted out of direct military involvement in Syria, but nobody seems to be talking about expelling them from NATO or moving American military hardware to other countries in Europe.
It may be that Turkey will still come around to America’s position on Daesh, or at least closer to it; recent Kurdish protests aside, Ankara’s Syria policy has been consistently unpopular within Turkey, and PKK threats to break-off peace talks with the government over its inaction in Kobani may yet force Erdogan’s hand. But if Erdogan is swayed, it will be because of domestic politics, not American pressure or threats.
]]>by Derek Davison
An explosion at a coal mine in Turkey on May 13 has generated an outpouring of public anger and concern over the Turkish government’s mine safety record. The response of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his aides to that outpouring may be doing significant damage to his hopes [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
An explosion at a coal mine in Turkey on May 13 has generated an outpouring of public anger and concern over the Turkish government’s mine safety record. The response of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his aides to that outpouring may be doing significant damage to his hopes of being elected president in elections scheduled for August 10.
The mine, which is located in the town of Soma, roughly 120 km northeast of Izmir, exploded Tuesday, likely due to an electrical fault, killing and trapping hundreds of mine workers underground. Initial estimates that 17 miners were killed and up to 300 were trapped by the explosion have been updated; more recent figures put the death toll at 282, with another 150 miners still unaccounted for. If those figures hold up, the Soma explosion would surpass a 1992 gas explosion in Zonguldak (on the Black Sea) that killed almost 270 people, which had been Turkey’s deadliest mining accident to date. Mining accidents are a frequent occurrence in Turkey; the country’s Mine Workers Union counted 25,655 accidents in Turkish mines from 2000-2009, which killed 63 and injured 26,324.
For Erdogan, less than three months away from the presidential election, the fallout from the disaster itself may be eclipsed by the series of missteps that have characterized his government’s response. Crowds of protesters in the larger cities were attacked, as last year’s Taksim Square protesters had been attacked, by government forces wielding tear gas and water cannons. His visit to Soma was punctuated by remarks that were seen as insensitive, in which he attempted to rebut criticism of Turkey’s privatization program by saying that coal mining accidents are “normal” and by comparing Tuesday’s explosion to coal mining accidents in 19th century Britain and mid-20th century China and Japan. Erdogan commented that “workers get into the profession [mining] knowing that these kinds of incidents may occur.”
Even more damaging for Erdogan’s image is a recently published photograph of his deputy chief of staff, Yusuf Yerkel, appearing to kick a protester who had already been restrained by police. Witnesses claimed Yerkel kicked the man “three or four times.” The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) seized on a report that Erdogan himself punched a protester in a supermarket in Soma, but the video purporting to show the incident is indeterminate. The CHP has also accused Erdogan of ignoring a request its legislators made in late April to conduct an investigation into safety conditions at the Soma mine, which if true (and it appears to be) could further damage Erdogan’s public standing. The escalating political tension is being blamed for a decline in the value of the Turkish Lira, which had been gaining value but looked to be headed for a significant drop by Thursday.
The reaction of the public and Turkey’s unions to the Soma accident has been swift. Several trade unions across the country held a one day strike on May 15 to protest mine privatization, which they blame for lowered safety standards and more dangerous working conditions for mine workers (the Soma mine was privatized in 2005). Protesters took to the streets of some of Turkey’s largest cities on May 14 and again on May 15, including an estimated 20,000 people in Izmir as well as thousands who marched on the Turkish Labor Ministry in Ankara and crowds that attempted to march into Taksim Square in Istanbul, where the large anti-government “Gezi Park” protests were held last year. When Erdogan himself visited Soma on May 14, he was greeted by a crowd of people kicking his car and shouting words like “thief” and “murderer.” Elsewhere in the town, protesters stormed local government offices, chanting “Erdogan must resign!”
Turkey’s unique position as a NATO member and as the bridge between Europe and the Middle East makes it a critical US ally, and its internal politics have tremendous significance for American foreign policy. US-Turkey relations have been steadily worsening. US President Barack Obama had consulted Erdogan frequently on Middle East matters, particularly during the “Arab Spring” uprisings in 2011, but he was mildly critical of Erdogan’s violent response to the Gezi Park protests in July of 2013, and the two have not communicated much since. Erdogan has suggested that US-based “groups” were partly behind the Gezi Park movement, a statement that the US State Department recently dismissed as “ridiculous.” The US has, however, has been reluctant to criticize Erdogan too heavily, preferring stability in its relations with Turkey at a time of ongoing crises in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, and sensitive nuclear talks with Iran.
But even on regional matters, Turkey and the US are moving apart. In particular, the two governments are at odds over Syria, where Erdogan has been willing to support any opposition to Bashar al-Assad, allegedly including the Al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front (although there are signs that Turkey is reevaluating this policy), while the US has been firmly opposed to providing aid that could benefit the more extreme elements of the fragmented Syrian opposition. Erdogan, a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, has also been critical of America’s refusal to condemn the July 2013 Egyptian coup that toppled its elected Brotherhood government. Recent allegations that some of Erodgan’s closest allies have been involved in a money laundering program that has funneled billions of dollars to Iran in violation of international sanctions are also causing tension in the US-Turkey relationship.
While recent opinion polling is hard to come by, the results of last month’s municipal elections, a clear victory for Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, seem to indicate that Erdogan retains considerable popular support. It is unlikely that the Soma incident and the miscues that have followed will be enough to derail his presidential campaign, but any sign of electoral weakness on Erdogan’s part could have major ramifications for US policy throughout the region.
]]>by Derek Davison
Over the next few months, citizens in several Middle Eastern countries will take to the polls in a series of elections that will have a good deal to say about the direction the region’s politics will take. From Turkey, to Syria, to Iraq, to Egypt, there is [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
Over the next few months, citizens in several Middle Eastern countries will take to the polls in a series of elections that will have a good deal to say about the direction the region’s politics will take. From Turkey, to Syria, to Iraq, to Egypt, there is a danger that these elections will ratify a resurgent authoritarian tendency that has developed, in part, as a reaction to the so-called “Arab Spring” movement.
The most obvious example of this phenomenon is in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarianism has remained constant despite the ongoing civil war it has sparked. Assad recently declared his intention to stand for reelection in June. In an interesting but certainly symbolic gesture, this year’s vote will be contested, as opposed to previous presidential elections in 2000 and 2007 that were conducted as referenda in which Assad’s name was the only one on the ballot. There is little reason to believe that this election will be any more legitimate than those were, and in many ways it will be much worse. The vote will only be permitted in areas of the country that are under government control, and there is no indication that the millions of Syrians who have been displaced by the war will be able to cast ballots. UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has argued that elections will only further hamper efforts to reach a negotiated settlement in the three-year old conflict, though progress toward such a settlement has been imperceptible.
Turks have already voted once this year in municipal elections, where Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party won a clear, albeit not overwhelming victory. Erdogan is expected to run in August’s presidential election, where he is the presumptive favorite. Since ordering a violent crackdown on the Gezi Park protesters (whose protest movement is still active) last summer, Erdogan has been governing with an increasingly authoritarian bent by limiting press freedoms, increasing his direct control over Turkey’s judiciary, quashing a corruption probe that targeted his aides, and even banning social media inside Turkey. Although Turkey’s constitution establishes a parliamentary system with limited presidential authority and Erdogan tried and failed to change the constitution to increase that authority in 2012, he has pledged to use “all [his] constitutional powers” if he becomes president, which suggests he will assert the authority of the presidency as far as he can within constitutional bounds.
For Americans, the resurgence of authoritarianism in Iraq may be the most difficult pill to swallow, given the blood and treasure the United States expended, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives it took, in a war that resulted in the only tangible result (since pre-war threats of Iraqi nuclear weapons turned out to be completely empty) of the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But since he was elected Prime Minister in 2006, Nuri al-Maliki has increasingly consolidated his authority over the Iraqi state, particularly by oppressing Iraq’s Sunni population, whose recent uprising has given Maliki an excuse to accelerate his accumulation of power. Maliki has governed in fear of a Baathist revival among the Sunnis, and has manipulated the state security apparatus to consolidate his hold on power even as the security situation in Iraq has collapsed, and while Iraqi infrastructure continues to crumble, Maliki’s attention seems to be focused solely on retaining power. The results of Iraq’s April 30 parliamentary elections are not yet known, and there is a chance that Maliki will have to make some concessions in order to form a coalition government, but the likeliest outcome is that Maliki’s State of Law Coalition will come away victorious and he will retain the premiership with a free hand.
In Egypt, the resurgence of authoritarianism hasn’t waited for Field Marshal-turned-civilian Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s likely election in May. It began, arguably, with the coup that removed former President Mohamed Morsi from power, but certainly revealed itself in August of last year, when Egypt’s interim government launched a violent crackdown against protesters and Muslim Brotherhood figures. That crackdown claimed 638 lives in a single day (August 14, 2013), with almost 4,000 injured, and has led to over 3,000 deaths in total (the majority in clashes between protesters and security forces), with another 17,000 injured and nearly 19,000 Egyptians imprisoned. The government declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in December, a move with obvious ramifications in terms of stamping out political opposition and one that experts have warned could become a “self-fulfilling prophecy” by driving Brotherhood members toward terrorism as their only remaining means of opposition. Last month, an Egyptian judge sentenced 529 people, most or all of them Brotherhood supporters, to death over an attack on Egyptian police in August. This month, that same judge commuted all but 37 of the death sentences to 25-year prison terms — and then sentenced an additional 683 men to death. There is a possibility that the upcoming campaign will somehow put Egypt on a path toward democratic reform, but it seems more likely that Sisi’s election will cement Egypt’s complete return to authoritarian repression.
Each of these cases illustrates the limits and challenges facing US foreign policy in the region. The US’ unwillingness to take a strong stance on Egyptian repression was made clear when it refused to admit that the coup which removed Morsi from power was, in fact, a coup, because doing so would have triggered automatic cuts in US aid. Now, while it condemns the death sentences handed to hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters as “unconscionable,” America continues to send military aid to Egypt (though not without Congressional opposition) because its security priorities (fighting Sinai terrorism, maintaining close Egypt-Israel ties, and ensuring that the Suez Canal remains open) require it. Turkey is a NATO ally whose collaboration is important to American policy on Syria, Iran, and even Russia, so there is little that Americas can do to rein in Erdogan even as the White House criticizes his more repressive policies. It’s been apparent for some time now that the US has little leverage with which to hasten Assad’s ouster, and given the makeup of the Syrian opposition, it’s not clear that a post-Assad Syria would actually be preferable from an American viewpoint, though millions of Syrians would disagree. Finally, as far as Maliki is concerned, it seems that Washington is content to remain relatively quiet as Maliki consolidates his power, as long as he keeps up the fight against jihadist forces like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which have used the discord among Iraqi Sunnis to expand their regional influence.
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by Derek Davison
After a campaign involving a corruption investigation and nation-wide bans on social media, and an election day marred by deadly violence, Sunday’s municipal elections in Turkey resulted in what appears to have been a clear victory for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
After a campaign involving a corruption investigation and nation-wide bans on social media, and an election day marred by deadly violence, Sunday’s municipal elections in Turkey resulted in what appears to have been a clear victory for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). The outcome is expected to boost Erdogan’s stature leading up to August’s presidential election, in which he is expected to run, and it seems to have encouraged him to continue the draconian measures he has employed to counter internal opposition.
Erdogan has been under fire over his response to the Gezi Park protests that began last summer, and what is seen as his increasingly authoritarian governing approach. Initially focused on the decision to pave over an Istanbul park, the protests were violently cracked down upon, which helped widen them into a general opposition movement against Erdogan’s government. Turkish press freedoms have been severely curtailed, while the government has moved to tighten its control over the judiciary. More recently, Erdogan has been challenged by a corruption investigation, in particular over an alleged scheme to bypass international sanctions against Iran that involved top officials in the Turkish government and banking industry. Erdogan responded to the scandal by firing dozens of police officials who had been pursuing the investigation, and then by attempting to block access to Twitter and YouTube nationwide, after sensitive documents and recordings related to the investigation were leaked to the public via the social media sites.
Yet Sunday’s election results demonstrate that Erdogan still has popular support, especially given that Erdogan was heavily involved in the campaign despite not being on the ballot himself. The AKP came to power in 2002 promising to improve Turkey’s economy and to remove harsh and unpopular restrictions on religion in public life; their considerable success on both counts helps to explain their continued popularity. While there were scattered reports of voting irregularities, particularly in Ankara where the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) declared its plans to appeal the results, there is little reason to doubt AKP’s victory, although press restrictions certainly color the outcome.
Despite calls for national reconciliation, Erdogan‘s victory speech strongly hinted that he views AKP’s electoral success as a mandate to pursue additional harsh measures against his opponents. He declared that “the nation has foiled insidious plans and immoral traps,” and suggested that his opponents might “flee” in the face of forthcoming criminal charges against them. In the past Erdogan has argued that a vast international conspiracy involving the CIA, Western media, international bankers, and “the Jewish diaspora” is behind the opposition to his government. But his primary targets are the Turkish “deep state” and the so-called “Gulen movement.”
The “deep state” is the predominantly military “shadow government” that has existed since Turkey was founded in 1923 and has worked behind the scenes to destabilize or remove perceived threats to Turkey’s secular order, including elected governments that were seen as too religious. The Turkish military has led three coups against elected governments over the history of the Turkish republic, and exerted considerable influence over several others. The AKP came to power with the intention of reducing the influence of the deep state, and Erdogan has used the possibility of Turkey’s entry into the European Union (whose conditions for admission include guarantees of democracy and the rule of law) to keep the army from interfering in politics. However he has prosecuted several high-ranking military officers on suspicion of scheming to overthrow the civilian government, most recently last August when several active and retired generals, journalists, and academics were sentenced to life in prison for an alleged coup plot.
The Gulen movement is a group, also known as “Hikmet,” founded by former Imam Fethullah Gulen, whose teachings have attracted millions of followers in the Islamic World and particularly in Turkey (Gulen himself lives in self-imposed exile in the United States). Gulen’s followers initially allied themselves with Erdogan and the AKP against the deep state, but the two groups have fallen out of favor with one another. Gulen is thought to have several followers among Turkey’s police and judicial ranks, and Erdogan has accused them (and, by extension, Gulen himself) of manufacturing the corruption investigation to destabilize the government, a charge that Gulen denies. Meanwhile, Gulen has been highly critical of Erdogan’s governing style, accusing him of employing “authoritarian measures…to govern Turkey,” and of building a “cult of personality…around himself.”
Erdogan’s attempt to ban social media may have finally severed his relationship with Turkey’s current president, fellow AKP leader Abdullah Gul. Gul had been a close Erdogan ally, who served as Turkey’s prime minister from 2002-2003 when Erdogan was banned from participating in Turkish politics, and then as Erdoğan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister before assuming the presidency in 2007. However, during the height of the Gezi Park protests Gul emerged as a voice of opposition to the police crackdown, and more recently he opposed Erdogan’s Twitter ban and directly challenged Erdogan’s assertions that an international conspiracy is behind the allegations against his government. Gul has said nothing about his plans, but he is eligible for a second term in office, and while there has been talk of him assuming the role of prime minister while Erdogan becomes president (with expanded powers), the possibility of AKP’s two most prominent figures running against each other cannot be ruled out.
The coming presidential election will be the first popular presidential election in Turkey’s history. The results of Sunday’s election suggest that Erdogan would be the presumptive front-runner even against the also-popular Gul. However, if Gul runs he may benefit from having distanced himself from Erdogan’s more extreme recent actions. Any further developments in the corruption case against Erdogan could also impact the upcoming election, but at this point it seems unlikely that Erdogan will allow that investigation to continue.
]]>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 surprise accord reached by the U.S. and Russia in Moscow Tuesday to try to convene an international conference to resolve the two-year-old civil war in Syria as soon as the end of this month has been greeted with equal measures of hope and scepticism.
If nothing [...]]]>
via IPS News
The surprise accord reached by the U.S. and Russia in Moscow Tuesday to try to convene an international conference to resolve the two-year-old civil war in Syria as soon as the end of this month has been greeted with equal measures of hope and scepticism.
If nothing else, the agreement apparently persuaded at least one key party, the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, to put off his previously reported intention to resign in the very near future.
“This is the first hopeful news concerning that unhappy country in a very long time,” he said in a statement issued by his office Wednesday. “The statements made in Moscow constitute a very significant first step forward. It is nevertheless only a first step,” he added.
Analysts here, however, said that even with Tuesday’s accord, getting the two principal parties to the table would be extremely difficult under current circumstances.
“The more you learn about Syria, the more you realise how intractable the conflict is, and thus the more attractive a political solution appears to be,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. “But you also realise the odds of putting one together are very long.”
The joint decision to revive the long-dormant Geneva Communique, which laid out the core elements of a political solution to the conflict war after a meeting of the U.N.-sponsored Action Group for Syria last June, was reached after deliberations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The communique called for an immediate cease-fire, the creation of a transitional government mutually agreed by representatives of both the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and his opposition, and the holding of new parliamentary and presidential elections.
But the process never got underway, in part because of the opposition’s demand – tacitly and sometimes explicitly backed by Washington — that Assad step down as a pre-condition for any negotiation and Moscow’s firm rejection of that position.
But the administration of President Barack Obama appears to have narrowed its difference on that score with Moscow.
At the time, many U.S. analysts, particularly those on the hawkish side of the spectrum, believed that the balance of power on the ground was moving in the opposition’s direction, and that it was simply a matter of time – months, if not weeks — until the regime crumbled.
But after months of bloody stalemate, it appears that the government’s forces have recently regained the initiative by systematically retaking control of strategically located towns and cities.
“If that’s true, the administration may have assessments to that effect in hand and feels it’s worth a try to see if the opposition can be compelled to engage while it still holds a reasonably strong hand,” according to Wayne White, a former top Mideast analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Indeed, Kerry appears to have accepted Moscow’s position that Assad does not have to step down in order for negotiations to get underway.
“(I)t’s impossible for me as an individual to understand how Syria could possibly be governed in the future by the man who has committed the things we know that have taken place,” he said during a press conference with Lavrov after the meeting.
“But…I’m not going to decide that tonight, and I’m not going to decide that in the end, because the Geneva Communique says that the transitional government has to be chosen by mutual consent by the parties …the current regime and the opposition.”
For his part, Lavrov, without mentioning Assad by name, said he was “not interested in the fate of certain persons”.
While Damascus remained silent Wednesday about the prospects for a negotiation, some opposition leaders rejected the initiative, while others expressed deep scepticism.
“Syrians: be careful of squandering your revolution in international conference halls,” warned Moaz al-Khatib, a former leader of the Arab League-recognised National Opposition Coalition (NOC).
At the same time, Col. Qassim Saadeddine, a spokesman for the rebel Supreme Military Council (SMC), the U.S. backed group through which Washington is currently funnelling intelligence and “non-lethal” military aid to fighters in the field, told Reuters that he didn’t believe “there is a political solution left for Syria. …We will not sit with the regime for dialogue.”
Whether that was the opposition’s final word remains to be seen, according to analysts here who noted that Amb. Robert Ford, who accompanied Kerry in Moscow, was on his way to Istanbul to talk with opposition representatives, apparently in hopes of bringing them around to a more positive response.
U.S. officials said they were hoping that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, the rebels’ main regional backers, would also cooperate in helping to persuade opposition figures to come to the table.
Two weeks ago, Obama hosted Qatar’s emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, at the White House, when he reportedly stressed the importance of a political solution in Syria and called on his guest to cease providing military assistance to the more-radical Islamist factions in the opposition. He will also be meeting here with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the most important regional player, later this month to more closely align the two countries’ parties.
All of this comes amidst growing pressure here on Obama to escalate U.S. intervention in the crisis, particularly in the wake of still-unconfirmed reports that Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons against rebel forces and growing fears that the war’s continuation threatens to destabilise neighbouring countries, particularly Lebanon and Iraq, as well as Jordan which is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the more than 500,000 Syrian refugees who have flooded into the country.
Support is building in Congress for legislation calling on Obama to provide lethal military aid and training to the rebels, an option that the administration has said it is actively considering on its own if the chemical weapons charges are confirmed.
Obama has previously resisted increasing Washington’s military backing for the opposition and has tried to confine U.S. aid to humanitarian assistance, more than 500 million dollars of which has been provided to date.
Re-invigorating a diplomatic process for resolving the conflict thus looks increasingly attractive to the administration, although most analysts believe prospects for any immediate progress are dim.
“The chance of a diplomatic breakthrough coming out of the projected conference is at best modest,” according to Paul Pillar, a retired CIA veteran who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia.
“But it represents a more realistic hope for bringing a modicum of peace and stability to Syria in the foreseeable future than does stoking the civil war with more outside involvement in the military conflict. The fact that the United States and Russia could agree on any of this is a breakthrough of sorts,” he wrote in an email to IPS.
Landis agreed. “Whether the situation (for a successful negotiation) is ripe today is still debatable, because Assad still thinks he can win, and the opposition, with hundreds of militias, is too fragmented to negotiate,” he told IPS.
“But you have to get the international community open-minded to this kind of dialogue, and down the line, that may happen.”
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