WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama will meet Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan at the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week and urge him to repair relations with Israel to mend a damaging split between two key U.S. allies in the region.
White House National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes told reporters that Obama also anticipated a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the president’s three-day U.N. visit which starts late Monday.
“We have encouraged Israel and Turkey, two close friends of the United States, to work to bridge their differences, so we’ll have an opportunity to discuss those issues,” Rhodes told a news briefing.
Washington has watched with concern as Turkey’s relations with Israel began to unravel in late 2008, after Erdogan voiced outrage at an Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip, ruled by the Palestinian Islamist Hamas group.
Turkey reacted angrily this month to Netanyahu’s refusal to apologize for an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed nine Turkish citizens in May 2010.
After the release of a U.N. report on the flotilla, which aimed to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, Erdogan’s government expelled Israel’s envoy, froze military cooperation and warned that the Turkish navy could escort future aid flotillas — raising the prospect of confrontation between NATO-member Turkey and the Jewish state.
Erdogan kept up a stream of harsh rhetoric on Israel, using a tour of Arab states this week to support a Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations and dismissing Israel as a spoiled client of the West.
The two countries previously had worked closely together on military cooperation and intelligence sharing, as both had sought reliable partners in a volatile neighborhood.
The meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly is expected to give Obama and Erdogan the chance to compare notes on Israel as well as the broader political turmoil across the Arab world and especially in Syria, Turkey’s immediate neighbor.
“Turkey has been a close partner of ours on issues related to the Arab spring and I anticipate the two leaders will talk about events in Syria, where we share great concerns with the Turks about the actions of (Syrian) President (Bashar al-) Assad,” Rhodes said.
(Reporting by Alister Bull; Writing by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Vicki Allen)
via Obama to discuss Israel with Turkey’s Erdogan | Reuters.
Here’s a tip for Lee Bollinger, the Columbia University president: If you want to hobnob with the most outrageous guest in town for next week’s UN extravaganza, get hip and call the Turkish mission — because Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmedinejad may no longer be your man. The up-and-comer is Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
They’re rivals in another important sense: Both non-Arab Mideasterners dream of resurrecting glorious empires of yore; both are using hostility to Israel to win regional favor — and both are jockeying for position in Syria, now the region’s weakest link.
Democratically elected and popular, since his pro-market policies have turned Turkey into an economic powerhouse — Erdogan is eclipsing Ahmadinejad — reviled for mismanagement, economic decline and cruel oppression. (But beware the declining power: Mideasterners often turn to adventurism when they’re pressured at home — and Iran is closing in on an atomic-missile capability.)
Erdogan this week launched a triumphant Mideast tour, preaching to adoring crowds in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya about the evils of Israel and the West. He also threatened a naval confrontation with Israel, scaring American, European and NATO officials, all of whom are begging Ankara to chill out a bit.
Meanwhile, the attention-starved Ahmadinejad made a grand “concession” to America, gallantly announcing that he’d free the two US hostages (Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal) long held on flimsy espionage charges — then had to lock horns with Tehran’s judiciary, which no longer fears his authority, in an effort to make good on his promise.
But the Iran-Turkey power game spreads far beyond such gestures. The most important arena of confrontation is Syria.
Iran has long propped up President Bashar al-Assad, but has started to distance itself from his rule. Tehran needs Syria too much — especially as a conduit to Hezbollah, its proxy army in Lebanon. Relying solely on the Assads is too risky a bet, so the mullahs are preparing for the morning after.
As Tehran watcher Meir Javedanfar wrote this week, if Assad falls and a civil war ensues — the now-ruling minority Allawites against the majority Sunnis — “Iran is extremely unlikely to play the part of spectator.”
Neither is Turkey. Its southern border is bustling with activity as businessmen, troops and opportunity seekers prepare for the day Syria becomes a Turkish protectorate.
Yet Erdogan after some tough recent statements against Assad, his former ally, is zigzagging again.
On his first appearance in Cairo this week, Erdogan all but ignored the Syria situation. Even worse, anti-regime Syrian activists accuse Ankara of handing over former Syrian Army Lt. Col. Hussein al-Harmoush to Damascus.
Harmoush fled Syria months ago and was making tough anti-regime statements from the relative safety of a Turk-protected refugee camp near Syria’s border. Yesterday, Syria announced his detention in Damascus. (Ankara denies sending Harmoush, or any Syrian, back “against their will.”)
Is Turkey with Assad or against him? Is it backing the pro-democracy rebels or just the Islamists? The answer is that — like Tehran — Ankara’s playing all sides against the middle.
Incidentally, so does Saudi Arabia: Riyadh is hoping to use its petrodollars to prop up a powerful political ally in post-Assad Syria. But money isn’t enough. In Syria, as in the rest of the Arab Mideast, the dominant powers are once more non-Arabs: The Persians and the Turks.
Conspicuously missing from this high-stakes Syrian poker table are America and the Europeans — still hiding behind feckless diplomacy and meaningless moralistic statements.
To his great credit, Robert Ford, the US ambassador to Syria, is constantly siding with pro-democracy forces. But that won’t buy us a seat at a table where everyone else antes up with real resources.
And the Mideast region is too volatile to leave to the graces of the increasingly dangerous Turks and Persians.
ISTANBUL—Turkey is showing signs of trading its vaunted “zero problems with neighbors” foreign policy for a more muscular approach to its bid to become the leading power in the Middle East and North Africa.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and members of his new cabinet visiting the mausoleum of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, in July.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and members of his new cabinet visiting the mausoleum of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, in July.
The shift, analysts and diplomats say, could trigger clashes with Israel and force Washington to choose between its closest allies in the region.
In recent weeks the policy change has been on display as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to deploy his country’s navy in a dispute with Israel, approved a major aerial bombing campaign against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and pressed Egypt to let him make a politically provocative visit to Hamas-run Gaza.
A Turkish cabinet minister also threatened that Turkey would use its navy to prevent Cyprus and Israel from developing offshore natural gas fields without the involvement of Turkish-backed Northern Cyprus.
On Monday, Mr. Erdogan departs for high-profile visits to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya—three core battlegrounds in the wave of popular revolutions that have swept the Arab world in the past year.
Turkey isn’t shifting from soft power to hard, says Ibrahim Kalin, senior adviser to Mr. Erdogan, but is using “smart power” by turning to force where necessary. “The soft power is still there,” he says.
The Arab Spring forced Turkey to retool its foreign policy, analysts and diplomats say, after the revolutions rocked the regimes of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Libya’s Col. Moammar Gadhafi—partners in Turkey’s “zero problems” approach—and for a time put Ankara in conflict with popular Arab sentiment.
Mr. Assad’s crackdown also drove Ankara into more direct competition with Syrian ally Iran, whose regime Turkey had courted assiduously. Last week, Ankara agreed to host the forward radar for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization missile-defense system directed at Iran.
While the Obama administration has expressed alarm over the confrontational approach to Israel, U.S. officials said they have been coordinating closely with Turkey in responding to political upheavals in Arab countries—and Washington views Ankara as central to any efforts to stabilize the Mideast.
Turkish officials see the Arab upheavals of 2011 as playing to Turkey’s strengths as a model Muslim democracy. They say their “zero problems” policy remains in tune with the Arab Spring, because it shares the same values as the protesters.
The officials now feel ready to press those advantages with Mr. Erdogan’s trip next week. “We have made it clear we never had any kind of imperial intentions, but there is demand from the Arab street,” Mr. Kalin said in a phone interview on Thursday.
How much Turkish leadership Arab leaders will accept remains an open question. Mr. Erdogan pushed hard, for example, to secure Egyptian permission to cross its border into Gaza, where he would likely receive a hero’s welcome for his vocal opposition to Israeli policy. Egypt so far appears to have refused permission for the trip.
So far there is little sign that Israel will bow to threats and meet Turkey’s demand that it should apologize for the deaths of nine people in the seizure of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara ship in May 2010.
Nor does Cyprus appear to be rushing to compromise in reunification talks, while Syria’s President Assad has so far rebuffed pressure to reform from Ankara, as well as from other capitals. Israel sees Turkey’s campaign for an end to the blockade of Gaza as part of a strategic decision to gain prominence in the Muslim world at the expense of their old strategic alliance.In Iran, ex-justice minister Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi complained that Turkey is promoting “liberal Islam.”
The policy shift doesn’t have universal appeal at home, either. Turkey’s main opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu caused a storm of protest from government officials on Wednesday when he said Turkey’s foreign policy had turned from one of zero problems to “zero gains.”
For now though, surveys suggest Mr. Erdogan is the most popular leader in the Middle East.
In Egypt, a new zeal for revolutionary change has cast Mr. Erdogan’s more confrontational attitude toward Israel and his moderate approach toward political Islam as a model for the democratic experiment. Activists are reportedly planning a welcome party to greet Mr. Erdogan’s arrival.
Egyptian foreign-policy institutions are less likely to look to Turkish regional leadership with the same enthusiasm, said an official in Egypt’s ministry of foreign affairs. “Egypt is not in the business of following,” he said.
Mr. Erdogan, in a speech at Cairo University on Monday, will set out Turkey’s vision for the region’s future, one defined by “not occupation, not authoritarianism, not dictatorship,” said Mr. Kalin.
Mr. Erdogan will also sign bilateral energy and other economic agreements, attend a high-level joint political-security council, meet representatives of the prodemocracy movement and address a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers, according to Mr. Kalin.
Yet Mr. Erdogan’s outreach to the Arab world comes with a visibly tougher approach to foreign policy. That includes a series of warnings to Cyprus and Israel in recent days against drilling offshore for natural gas without the involvement of Turkish-backed Northern Cyprus.
“That’s what naval forces are for,” Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s Europe minister told the Sunday’s Zaman newspaper.
“In this game of brinksmanship accidents can happen, not least because parts of the Israeli government are prone to high risk-taking,” says Professor Ilter Turan, professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Bilgi University.
Mr. Turan sees the Turkish government’s more aggressive stance as part of a wider confidence that is the result of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s sweeping re-election in June.
In a sign of that confidence, Ankara—once careful to court the European Union—this summer threatened to freeze relations with the bloc over Cyprus reunification talks.
Then, in August, Turkey’s once all-powerful generals effectively admitted defeat in a power struggle with the government; a new slate of top commanders appears to have accepted civilian control, boosting government confidence.
It isn’t clear how far Turkey will go. For example, while Ankara has threatened to send out naval patrols, it has yet to do so. The assault on bases of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, is only the first in several years and hasn’t expanded into a land campaign.
According to Henri Barkey, Turkey specialist and professor of international relations at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, Turkey is using the latest conflict with Israel in “a bid to recover lost prestige in the Arab world” after the Arab Spring. At the same time, he said, Ankara is bidding for regional leadership and challenging the U.S. to choose between its two closest regional allies.
“It’s a very high stakes approach, but they are also very confident,” he said.
—Joshua Mitnick in Tel Aviv, Matt Bradley in Cairo and Jay Solomon in Washington contributed to this article.
ISTANBUL // When the young Recep Tayyip Erdogan sold snacks on the streets of Kasimpasa, a tough neighbourhood in Istanbul, as a child to support his lower middle-class family no one would have guessed that this boy would grow up to become one of the most powerful prime ministers in Turkey’s history and one of the most influential leaders in the Middle East.
Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, centre, surrounded by his bodyguards, leaves after his meeting with Grand Sheik of Al Azhar Ahmed el Tayyib in Cairo yesterday. Nasser Nasser / AP Photo
Mr Erdogan, who is 57 today, fought his way to the top against many odds, spending time in prison and in the political wilderness, and surviving what prosecutors in trials said were plots by the military. However, he has always bounced back, thanks to an extraordinary mixture of political talent, self-confidence, Muslim piety and realism.
When the Turkish prime minister arrived in Egypt late on Monday, the first stop of a tour through three countries of the Arab Spring, he was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd, shouting slogans that called Mr Erdogan the “saviour of Islam”.
At home, Mr Erdogan’s religiosity has not been universally welcomed. Secularists in the military, the judiciary and the opposition have accused him of having a secret agenda aimed at turning the western-style republic into a Muslim theocracy. It is a charge that Mr Erdogan has been fighting against for most of his political career, which took off when he became the mayor of Istanbul in 1994. Four years later, he lost his post as mayor and was sent to prison for a speech that was seen by the judiciary as an incitement to religious hatred.
But Mr Erdogan has always balanced his religious roots with a healthy dose of hard-nosed realism. When he set up his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, in 2001, he turned always from Turkey’s more radical religious circles in favour of a centrist approach that echoed Christian Democratic parties in Europe. That strategic move enabled the AKP to attract moderate voters in droves, resulting in the party’s first election victory in 2002. It has won two other general elections since then.
In his foreign policy, Mr Erdogan has steered Turkey towards its long-time goal of becoming a member of the European Union, but his enthusiasm cooled markedly as he was confronted with an increasing unwillingness by EU countries to take Turkey in. Meanwhile, Turkey boosted its role in the Middle East. Mr Erdogan’s personal popularity in the region soared when, in late 2008, he strongly condemned Israel for its military intervention in Gaza.
Today, Mr Erdogan regards Turkey, a western-style democracy with a Muslim population and a booming economy, as a natural regional leader. Caught off guard by the Arab Spring, his government has changed course in recent months, from cooperation with repressive regimes such as the one in Syria to support for popular uprisings in the region.
“We will become much more active in regional and global affairs,” Mr Erdogan told supporters after the latest election victory of the AKP, which raked in almost 50 per cent of the vote on June 12.
Mr Erdogan’s decision to visit Egypt, Tunisia and Libya was designed to cement Turkey’s political role and to boost Turkish economic interests in the region at the same time. Almost 300 Turkish businessmen accompanied him on the visit to Cairo.
tseibert@thenational.ae
via The rise of Recep Erdogan, from street snack seller to Middle East Muslim champion – The National.
Turkey said Thursday that it would escort aid ships to Gaza and would not allow a repetition of last year’s Israeli raid that killed nine Turks. “Turkish warships, in the first place, are authorized to protect our ships that carry humanitarian aid to Gaza,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, said in an interview on Al Jazeera television. “From now on, we will not let these ships be attacked by Israel, as happened with the Freedom Flotilla.” He also said that Turkey had taken steps to stop Israel from unilaterally exploiting natural resources in the Mediterranean. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, said, “This is a statement well worth not commenting on.”
Istanbul, Sept 5 (BNA) His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa today held talks with the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul which focused on bilateral relations existing between the two countries and means of further bolstering cooperation and joint coordination related to various issues of mutual interests.
Both His Majesty the King and the Turkish Prime Minister affirmed the development and progress of bilateral cooperation between the Kingdom of Bahrain and Turkey in various fields that includes political, economic and commercial that achieves the joint interests of the two countries.
Moreover, both also expressed their satisfaction with the existing relations and the level they had reached.
Meanwhile, the two sides reviewed joint cooperation and the importance of continuing cooperation and joint coordination that would in turn lead towards reinforcing cooperation opportunities and joint efforts.
His Majesty expressed his appreciation for the efforts exerted by the Turkish President Abdullah Gul towards reinforcing cooperation with the Kingdom of Bahrain hailing with that the vital role played by Turkey on the regional level in achieving peace and supporting security and stability.
He also stressed that Turkey formed a main constituent for balance and stability in the region. During the meeting both sides also exchanged view points related to various issues both on the regional, Arab and international arena.
For his part Erdogan extended his thanks and appreciation to His Majesty the King on his keenness towards further developing ties between the two countries.
He also lauded the achievements of the Kingdom of Bahrain through the reform project of His Majesty the King and expressing his appreciation on his visit that forms a new phase in the Bahraini-Turkish relations.
h.s.
via Bahrain News Agency | HM the King holds talks with Turkish Prime Minister.
