Turkish Delight

LONDON

In the changing contours of the Middle East, swept along by the Arab Spring, nothing is perhaps as dramatic as the rise of Turkey. Several factors, domestic and foreign, have coalesced to lift the nation’s standing in the region to new heights. Turkey’s rising trajectory was highlighted by the rock-star reception accorded to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an during his recent tour of the Arab Spring states of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and high-profile meetings during the annual session of the UN General Assembly.

By achieving landslide victories in three successive general elections since 2002 – the latest in June – Erdo?an set a record at home. He has also caught Arabs’ imagination as they struggle for a suitable input in the running of their countries. Many find the Turkish model enticing: the moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party, AKP, in office; a secular constitution; a strong military subservient to the elected civilian authority; and an expanding economy.

Erdo?an boosted his popularity by responding robustly to Israel’s refusal to make a reconciliatory gesture to repair strained relations with Ankara or discontinue its hard line toward the Palestinians. Earlier, in June 2010, he had underlined Ankara’s increasingly independent diplomacy by refusing to toe Washington’s line on imposing further sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program.

The expulsion of Israeli Ambassador Gabby Levy on 2 September by the Erdo?an government marked a new low in Turkey-Israel relations, since the May 2010 assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-flagged vessel in international waters that resulted in the death of nine Turks.

The relationship began deteriorating in February 2006, after the Turkish government hosted a Hamas delegation soon after Hamas had won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Despite its electoral victory, Hamas remains on Israeli and US lists of terrorist organizations.

Erdo?an perceives parallels between his own party and Hamas. His organization was initially treated as a political pariah by Turkey’s military-civilian establishment – and so were its antecedents, Welfare and Virtue parties, later banned for being “too Islamic,” thus violating the Turkish constitution. But as a grassroots organization headed by uncorrupt leaders, the AKP won almost two-thirds of the parliamentary seats in November 2002. Quietly undermining the statist ideology of the republic’s founder, Kemal Ata Turk – where, in the words of a youthful AKP leader, “The state was up here and the people down there” – the AKP has closed the traditional gap between ruler and ruled, enabling its government, among other things, to craft an independent foreign policy.

Israel’s disproportionate military attack on the blockaded Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in December 2008–January 2009 strained Ankara-Tel Aviv relations further. In a stormy scene at the World Economic Forum in Davos that January, Erdo?an walked out of a panel discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres, shouting, “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill.” Overnight Erdo?an became a hero in the Arab world.

This was a zero-sum game, Erdo?an gaining prestige and popularity at the expense of pro-American dictators like Hosni Mubarak.

The Egyptian president resented Erdo?an usurping issues like the Gaza blockade or reconciliation between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which he regarded as exclusively within Egypt’s ambit.

At the inception of anti-Mubarak demonstrations, like his US counterpart, Barack Obama, Erdo?an was hesitant to take a strong stand against the Egyptian leader. But he soon changed tack and made an emotional speech calling for Mubarak’s resignation. After his appeals to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to step down failed, he rallied for NATO to take over command and control of the no-fly zone in Libya.

In the case of Syria, which shares an 885-kilometer border with Turkey, Erdo?an has allowed the disparate Syrian opposition to hold conferences in nearby Antalya and Istanbul, and to establish a coordinating council. At the same time he and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu have urged President Bashar Assad to undertake meaningful political and economic reform.

Erdo?an has identified fully with the Arab Spring. “Democracy and freedom is as basic a right as bread and water for you,” he declared before an enthusiastic crowd in Cairo, sounding more like a Western leader rather than prime minister of a country that’s 99 percent Muslim. “Freedom, democracy and human rights must be a united slogan for the future of our people,” he said in his address to foreign ministers of the 22-member Arab League the next day.

The AKP leader’s advocacy of democracy has eased the way for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Islamic Hizb al Nahda, or Renaissance Party, in Tunisia to participate legally in politics. Electoral success by these parties will lead to governments in Cairo and Tunis likely to ally with Ankara, further bolstering Turkey’s influence.

The continuing anti-regime demonstrations in Syria and the government’s failure to stop them have weakened the influence of Iran, a strategic partner of Syria since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. On the other hand, Mubarak’s fall in Egypt, followed by the subsequent transitional government’s decision to end the policy of cold-shouldering Iran, has benefited Tehran.

Iran was pleased to see the post-Mubarak regime in Cairo reconciling the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas and lifting the Gaza blockade in May, thereby weakening Israel’s hand in two major areas.

With the AKP in power since 2002, Ankara’s ties with Tehran have become tighter commercially and diplomatically. The two neighbours allow visa-free travel for their citizens. Erdo?an was among the first foreign leaders to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after his victory in a disputed 2009 election. Since 2003, Turkey’s trade with the Arab Middle East has increased six-fold.

While neither Turkey nor Iran is Arab, given a choice of friendship, most people in the region would opt for the predominantly Sunni Turkey over Iran, an overwhelmingly Shia country.

Erdo?an has combined his backing for the Arab Spring with his advocacy for Palestine to be accorded the status of a sovereign state by the United Nations. “Recognition of the Palestinian state is not an option but an obligation,” he declared in his speech at the Arab League headquarters.

It’s dawning upon Israeli politicians that the peace treaties their country had signed with Egypt and Jordan, respectively, in 1979 and 1994 were with regimes. These treaties failed to garner popular support in Egypt or Jordan in succeeding decades. With the advent of popular opinion impinging on official policies in the Arab world, Israel faces increased isolation until it accedes to the legitimate demands of the Palestinian people.

In the words of Davuto?lu, “Israel is out of touch with the region and unable to perceive the changes taking place, which makes it impossible for it to have healthy relations with its neighbors.”

Enormous effort is required on the part of most Israeli Jews to comprehend the sea change underway in the Arab world and adjust accordingly. They have failed to notice how Arabs have come to envy the Turks for the ingenious way the latter succeeded in reconciling Islam, democracy and economic expansion. The most likely option for Israelis – politically the easiest in the short term – is to go into a siege mode, summed up by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, “We are now a villa in a jungle.”

Overall there’s hope that a democratic era in the Middle East and North Africa will enable Arabs to develop a new paradigm for relations with the West, based on equality and partnership – a position that Turkey has already achieved.

Dilip Hiro is the author of Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Iran (Overlook-Duckworth, New York and London), and his latest book is After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World (Nation Books, New York and London). Rights:Copyright © 2011 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. YaleGlobal Online