October 18, 2011 12:59 AM
By Dilip Hiro
The Daily Star
In the changing contours of the Middle East, swept along by the Arab Spring, nothing has perhaps been as dramatic as the rise of Turkey. Several factors, both 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 Erdogan during his recent tour of the Arab Spring states of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and his high-profile meetings during the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly.
By achieving landslide victories in three successive general elections since 2002 – the latest in June of this year – has Erdogan set a record at home in Turkey. 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, with the moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party, known as AKP, in office; a secular constitution in place; a strong military that is subservient to the elected civilian authority; and an economy that has been expanding.
Erdogan has boosted his popularity by responding robustly to Israel’s refusal to make a reconciliatory gesture to repair its strained relations with Ankara or to discontinue its hard-line policy toward the Palestinians. Earlier, in June 2010, the Turkish prime minister 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 Sept. 2 by the Erdogan government marked a new low in Turkish-Israeli relations, since the assault in May 2010 by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-flagged vessel that was located in international waters. The assault resulted in the death of nine Turks.
In reality, the relationship began deteriorating in February 2006, after the Turkish government hosted a Hamas delegation soon after the Islamist movement had won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Despite its electoral victory, Hamas remains on Israeli and United States lists of terrorist organizations.
Erdogan perceives parallels between his own party and Hamas. His organization was initially treated as a political pariah by Turkey’s military-civilian establishment. So too were the AKP’s antecedents, namely the Welfare and Virtue parties, which were later banned for being “too Islamic,” in that way violating the secular Turkish constitution.
But as a grassroots organization headed by uncorrupt leaders, the AKP won almost two-thirds of Turkey’s parliamentary seats in the elections of November 2002. Quietly undermining the statist ideology of the republic’s founder, Kemal Ataturk – where, in the words of a youthful AKP leader, “The state was up here and the people down there” – the AKP has managed to close the traditional gap between ruler and ruled. This has enabled the Erdogan 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 Turkish-Israeli relations further. In a stormy scene at the World Economic Forum in Davos that January, Erdogan walked out of a panel discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres, shouting, “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill.” Overnight Erdogan became a hero in the Arab world .
This was a zero-sum game, Erdogan gaining prestige and popularity at the expense of pro-American dictators like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak resented Erdogan’s usurpation of issues like the Gaza blockade or reconciliation between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and the Hamas movement, which he regarded as steps that were exclusively within Egypt’s ambit.
At the start of the anti-Mubarak demonstrations in Cairo, and like his counterpart in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama, Erdogan was hesitant to take a strong stand against the Egyptian leader. However, he soon changed tack and made an emotional speech calling for Mubarak to resign.
A similar situation happened in Libya. After his appeals to the Libyan leader, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, to step down had failed, he rallied to the idea that NATO would take over command and control of the no-fly zone that had been imposed by the United Nations Security Council over Libya.
In the case of Syria, which shares an 885-kilometer border with Turkey, Erdogan has also adopted a multifaceted policy. The Turkish authorities have allowed members of the disparate Syrian opposition to hold conferences in nearby Antalya and Istanbul, and, most recently, to establish a coordinating council known as the Syrian National Council. At the same time both Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spent a considerable amount of time urging President Bashar Assad to undertake meaningful political and economic reform.
Erdogan 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. In this he sounded more like a Western leader rather than prime minister of a country that is 99 percent Muslim. “Freedom, democracy and human rights must be a united slogan for the future of our people,” Erdogan 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 Islamist Ennahda, or Renaissance Party, in Tunisia to participate legally in politics. If these parties can manage electoral successes in future elections, this will lead to governments in Cairo and Tunis that are likely to ally with Ankara. Such a development would further bolster Turkey’s regional influence.
The continuing anti-regime demonstrations in Syria and the failure of the regime of President Bashar Assad to stop them have weakened the influence of Iran, which has been a strategic partner of Syria since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. On the other hand, Hosni 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 engineer a reconciliation between the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas movements some months ago. It was also pleased to see Cairo lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip in May, thereby weakening Israel’s hand on two major political fronts. At the same time, with the AKP in power since 2002, Ankara’s ties with Tehran have become tighter both commercially and diplomatically. The two neighbors allow visa-free travel for their citizens. Erdogan was among the first foreign leaders to congratulate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after his victory in the disputed 2009 Iranian parliamentary elections. And since 2003, Turkey’s trade with the Arab Middle East has increased by a factor of six.
While neither Turkey nor Iran is an Arab country, given a choice of friendship, most people in the Arab world would opt for the predominantly Sunni Turkey over Iran, which is an overwhelmingly Shiite country.
Erdogan has combined his backing for the Arab Spring with his advocacy for Palestine. This was most recently illustrated by his support for according Palestine the status of a sovereign state by the United Nations. “Recognition of the Palestinian state is not an option but an obligation,” the Turkish prime minister declared in his speech at the Arab League headquarters while on his visit to Egypt.
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. On the other hand, these treaties failed to garner popular support in Egypt or Jordan in succeeding decades. In the wake of the Arab upheavals, with the advent of popular opinion impinging on official policies in the Arab world, Israel faces increased isolation. This will continue until it accedes to the legitimate demands of the Palestinian people. In the words of Ahmet Davutoglu, “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 that is currently under way in the Arab world, and that obliges them to adjust accordingly. They have failed to notice how Arabs have come to envy the Turks for the ingenious way in which the latter have succeeded in reconciling Islam, democracy and economic expansion. The most likely option for Israel – 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 new democratic era in the Middle East and North Africa will enable Arabs to develop a new paradigm for relations with the West. This paradigm would be 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). This commentary is reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online (www.yaleglobal.yale.edu), Copyright © 2011, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Yale University.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on October 18, 2011, on page 7.
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