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Two-and-a-Half-Country Union
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This is from my column nearly two years ago:
"The bitter truth is that Turkey
is too oriental for the European Union, too non-Arab for the Arab League,
too non-African for the African Union, too irrelevant for ASEAN and the
Union of South American Nations and too western for the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization ('The
Shanghai Seven?' Feb. 8, 2013)."
Before Prime Minister (then Foreign Minister) Ahmet Davutoğlu failed
to foresee that spring could also blossom on the Arab Street, he was busy
masterminding what looked like a "Middle East Steel and Coal
Union" – with, of course, Turkey as its leader. It was the moment to
feel imperial again!
Borders between the region's Muslim "brothers" would
disappear "a la Schengen." Trade would prosper (indeed, it
did). Sunni Islamists would be the emerging Turkish empire's own
"commonwealth of nations." Systematic doses of Israel-bashing
could always suffice to keep Shia Iran, Shia Hezbollah and Nusayri-ruled
Syria docked at the Turkish bay. The failed state Somalia was easy to win
with stacks of dollars and – part-time – common faith. And the Maghreb
could wait.
"We believe that [world peace] can only be achieved through a
Turkish Islamic Union, where all the countries will be independent in
their [local governance], but they will be under one roof, and Turkey will
be the spiritual leader of this Turkish Islamic Union." Thus wrote a
Turkish journalist in 2012, reflecting the illusions of grandeur more
honestly than what the very important men in Ankara had rather more
subtly in their minds.
Instead, a hostile, violent and extremist neighbor has emerged in
Syria, a neighbor that goes by the name the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL), threatening the Turkish Islamic Union-in-the-making.
(Apparently, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan does not like the acronym ISIL
and prefers "Daesh," the Arabic acronym for the same name that,
sadly, also contains the world "Islamic.")
For the Shia in Lebanon, Mr. Erdoğan is no longer the "rock
star" he was a few years earlier. Too bad, he will remain a
potential enemy even if he declares war with Israel. Libya is too
war-torn and busy to care about any union, Turkish, Islamic, or both.
Egyptians, until last week, were fuming at anything Turkish, including
consumer goods and even soap operas. Last week, they took governmental
action to raise the stakes in their cold war with Mr. Erdoğan's Turkey,
when Cairo announced that it would not renew a three-year transit trade
agreement with Turkey.
The Turkish Islamic Union must now
remain in deep freeze for a few more decades before a new generation of
Turkish Islamists give it another try.
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(The transit trade agreement, signed in 2012 when Mohamed Morsi was in
power, had facilitated Turkish exports to African nations and the Gulf
through Egypt's mainland, via Egyptian ports. It had allowed Turkey to
bypass the Suez Canal and other shipping costs, which Turkish companies
had previously avoided by transporting their merchandize overland through
Syrian ports.)
Ironically, the Egyptian move will leave only one option for the
Turkish trucks: An alternative Ro-Ro Line between Iskenderun and the
Israeli port of Haifa to transport exports to countries on the Arabian
Peninsula and Jordan. So, Israel has become a part-time partner:
Ideological enemy and pragmatic ally.
Echoing Cairo last week, Iran's ambassador to Ankara, Ali Reza
Bigdeli, said Iran would not sell fuel to Turkish trucks due to the way
Ankara responded to a transit fee and fuel row with Tehran. That was not
very "brotherly," but very "Middle Eastern."
On the western near-end of the would-be Turkish Islamic Union,
Ennahda, the first Islamist movement to secure power after the 2011 Arab
Spring revolts, has conceded defeat in elections to its main secular rival,
Nidaa Tounes. The election was a huge setback for Mr. Erdoğan's Tunisian
ideological allies.
The Middle East Steel and Coal Union, the Turks' shrewd idea before
they upgraded it to the Turkish Islamic Union, must now remain in deep
freeze for a few more decades before a new generation of Turkish
Islamists give it another try.
But if Messrs. Erdoğan and Davutoğlu are in a rush to see a great
Turkish-led union of noble nations, they could always thumb their noses
at the Shanghai Six and invent "The Middle East
Two-And-a-Half," bringing together Turkey, Qatar and Hamas.
Burak Bekdil is a columnist for the Istanbul-based daily
Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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