Turkey, Israel, Iran—Winners and Losers from Arab Spring

News Analysis

WASHINGTON—Arab Spring upheavals have not only affected the balance of power in countries where they have occurred, they have also had a strong ripple effect, shaking up the strategic outlook of the region’s dominant countries: Israel, Turkey, and Iran.

Superficially, the Arab upheavals—with dictators being overthrown and popular cries for democracy—may look desirable to the liberal democratic governments of Israel and Turkey, and a blight for Iran—but a closer look reveals that the regional winners and losers may not be so obvious.

Israel

For Israel, the Arab awakenings has created a “dramatic transformation” in the structure of the Middle East peace process, said Robert Malley, program director for Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group (ICG), and a former special assistant to President Bill Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs (1998–2001).

Malley spoke at a Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) sponsored conference on Capitol Hill on Jan. 5 titled, Israel, Turkey & Iran in the Changing Arab World.

Malley said, the Palestinian cause weighs more heavily now due to popular sentiments in the Arab world that Arab leaders ignore at their peril.

Israel’s strategic outlook has historically been one of “pre-empting threats,” said Malley, which has required having a good sense of what the threats are. That approach, however, is harder to apply after the Arab upheavals when the unpredictable and uncertainty of the masses enters the equation. It’s impossible to know what the threat will be in a year’s time, he said.

“It’s one thing for Egypt to develop a certain strategic posture when you have President Mubarak or Gen. Tantawi in power. It’s very different if you have the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Malley.

Israel also has to deal with the reality that public opinion in the Arab countries has a greater role to play than it did before. The question of Palestine resonates more deeply today, Malley said. Any Arab political leader now will not enhance his popularity by reaching out to Israel or by advocating peace with Israel, he said.

The “peace process” between Israel and Palestinians will have to be “reinvented,” he said. The days of strong moderate Arab leaders and a strong U.S. role are called into question, said Malley.

“Who are the Arab leaders that are going to stand with [Palestinian President Mahmud] Abbas in the event of a peace treaty?” Malley asked rhetorically.

Malley said that he sees Israel adopting a “hunker down mentality,” waiting and acting very cautiously. Changes in the Arab countries are viewed in Israel as bad news with the exception of Syria. If Israel does anything bold, it would be against Iran and its nuclear program, he said.

Iran

In recent years, Iran has moved in a different direction from Egypt and other Middle East countries, beginning with its repression of democratic sentiments in 2009. In Iran, “power and influence are increasingly driven by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,” says Karim Sadjadpour, who in the past has interviewed dozens of senior Iranian officials and hundreds of Iranian intellectuals, clerics, among others for ICG.

The real power behind Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s role in the Middle East is decided by Khamenei and the sector of Revolutionary Guards with access to him. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no longer content to sit on the sidelines, and a power battle has ensued between him and the supreme leader, said Sadjadpour at the MEPC conference.

While suppressing democracy at home, Iran in the past has welcomed the representative government movement in the Middle East, as it has served Iran’s own interests well. Elections in Lebanon led to Hezbollah; in Palestine, Hamas won; and in Iraq, Shi’ite interests became dominate. So, Iran assumes, “The average citizen has much more in common with Tehran’s world view than the West view,” said Sadjadpour.

But the actual result has been mixed. Sadjadpour said Iran did not anticipate the Syria uprising. Syria is Iran’s “only consistent ally,” he said. “The loss of the al-Assad regime would be a tremendous blow to Tehran.”

There are already reports that Iran has threatened to withhold funding if Hamas relocates its headquarters from Damascus to Doha, Qatar, revealed Sadjadpour.

Iran’s patronage of Lebanon-based Hezbollah—“the crown jewel of the Iranian revolution”—is going to be very difficult to sustain in the same way, he said. Hezbollah was created with financial backing from Iran in the early 1980s after Israel invaded Lebanon.

Turkey

Turkey is often touted as a role model for the Middle East, and one could argue that Turkey was the big winner of the Arab Spring. It is simultaneously modern, Islamic, and democratic. No one has done that before, says Sadjadpour. It owes its current form to the Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AKP), which was victorious in the election of 2002.

Despite the Islamic origins of the AKP, Turkey’s government is secular. When Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visited Egypt in recent months and argued that Egypt should be a secular country, the position “shocked the Muslim Brotherhood,” said professor Omer Taspinar, speaking at the MEPC conference. Taspinar teaches at the U.S. National War College, and is director of the Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution.

According to Malley, the main reason for Turkey’s ascension in the region is that it “speaks loudly for the Palestine cause,” which is popular among the Arab masses. For example, Erdogan gained popularity points when he walked out of a conference in Davos, Switzerland, in 2009 to protest Israeli President Shimon Peres’s speech defending Israel’s Gaza offensive.

Although Turkey is a member of NATO, and until the Gaza flotilla fallout had military ties with Israel, in the past it has also tried to maintain good relations with its neighbors Iran and Syria. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu proclaimed the “zero problem with neighbors” policy, which aimed to establish a zone of peace and tranquility between neighbors.

Its nonaligned policy led Turkey, joined by Brazil, to vote against new sanctions on Iran in June 2010. Taspinar says that Turkey does not want to give the impression it is following Western foreign policy. Rather, it states that it wants “regional solutions to regional problems,” said Taspinar.

However, the sudden breakdown in Turkey’s relations with Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Israel has forced Turkey to abandon the “no problems” doctrine, said Taspinar. Turkey’s relationship with Iran soured when Turkey, agreed last year to host radars as part of NATO’s missile defense.

Taspinar said one positive remainder of the Turkish approach is its avoidance of the Sunni-Shi’ite divide. Turkey as a secular state disagrees with Saudi Arabia and Iran’s sectarian agendas, and is a voice for peace on this divide that is playing out violently in Iraq and Syria.

All three speakers agreed that post-Mubarak Egypt will recover its top leadership role in the Arab world. Even in its current chaotic state, Egypt has had more influence than Turkey on the Palestinian question. Egypt brokered the prisoner exchange involving Israeli captive Gilad Shalit, after Turkey had tried. The reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah was hammered out in Cairo, although Turkey had tried very hard, Taspinar said.