Turkey's Failed Grand Design for the Middle East
|
|
|
Share:  
|
  Be the first of your
friends to like this.
|
Turkish
president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (right) and Tunisian Islamist Rachid
Ghannouchi at the feet of Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the
1990s.
|
In many ways, the
recent crisis between Qatar and its Gulf and other Muslim
"friends" marked, among other things, the last nail in the
coffin of Turkey's "grand Middle Eastern design." Once again,
Turkey's leaders were trapped by their own ideological shallowness into
betting on a losing horse.
Very important
Turks in dark suits saw the start of the Arab Spring as a golden
opportunity to realize their neo-Ottoman ambitions. In Tunisia, their
Islamist brothers in arms, the Ennahdha Party, would come to power and
annihilate the "secular infidels." Rachid Ghannouchi,
Ennahdha's chief ideologue, never hid his admiration for Turkish
president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's stealth Islamization by popular vote.
Erdoğan received
one rock-star welcome after another on his visits to Beirut and Egypt. He
failed, however, to detect that Lebanese Muslims' devotion to him was
merely praise for his outspoken hatred of Israel. He also failed to
predict the turn of political events in Egypt, investing all his
political resources in the Muslim Brotherhood. In Iraq, he calculated
that with some western backing, he could end the Shiite rule in Baghdad
and build a Sunni regime instead. In Gaza, Hamas was, and still is,
Erdoğan's ideological next of kin.
|
Qatar is Erdoğan's main ideological
partner in the region.
|
In Syria, the
non-Sunni [Alawi] president, Bashar al-Assad, is Erdoğan's worst regional
nemesis. Erdoğan's expectation, it appears, was that Assad would be
toppled and replaced by a coalition of Sunni jihadists. Eventually, a
pro-Sunni belt in the Middle East would take shape, totally subservient
to the emerging Turkish empire and to its emerging caliph, Erdoğan.
Such was
Erdoğan's grand design for the region. Qatar was not simply the
"lubricant" of Turkey's fragile economy but also Erdoğan's main
ideological partner.
The story is not
progressing according to that script, however. Hezbollah in Lebanon
decided Erdoğan was simply "too Sunni" for their tastes,
notwithstanding his virulent anti-Israeli rhetoric and ideology. In
Tunisia, Ennahdha, to Erdoğan's disappointment, signed a historic
compromise with the country's secular bloc instead of fighting to
annihilate it. The Brotherhood in Egypt lost not only power but also
legitimacy as international pressure mounted in recognition of the
group's links with violence. In Baghdad, the rulers are still Shiite and
controlled by Tehran. In Syria, Assad remains in power, backed by Iran
and Russia, and Erdoğan's jihadist comrades are almost entirely devoid of
strategic importance. Moreover, an emerging Kurdish belt in northern
Syria has become a Turkish nightmare. Hamas, like the Brotherhood, is
getting squeezed day by day, both regionally and internationally.
Erdoğan's ambition to end the naval blockade of Gaza is already a
long-forgotten promise. And now Qatar is in trouble, along with Erdoğan
himself.
|
President Trump declared Qatar 'a
high-level sponsor of terrorism.'
|
It is not just
Erdoğan's other friends in the Gulf and the Muslim world that are now
strangling Qatar through a punishing isolation. Erdoğan must also contend
with US President Donald Trump, who declared that Qatar – Turkey's
staunchest ally – "had been a high-level sponsor of terrorism."
Erdoğan, still a
firm believer in ideology as foreign policy, is not getting any closer to
reality. Immediately after the Gulf and other Muslim sanctions were
placed on Qatar, the Turkish president signed two treaties with the Gulf
state: one to send troops to a joint Turkish-Qatari military base in
Qatar, and the other to provide Turkish training for Qatari gendarmerie
units. Turkey, along with Iran, also quickly moved to send food stocks to
Qatar in an attempt to ease the sanctions.
Erdoğan said the
sanctions were wrong; that Ankara would continue to improve its already
good relations with Doha; and that "we will never abandon our Qatari
brothers." With a caliph's self-confidence, he ordered that the
crisis be resolved before the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan
(i.e., the end of June). As to Qatar's connection to terror, what
connection? Erdoğan says he has never seen Qatar supporting terrorism.
This declaration is reminiscent of his past statement that he "went
to Sudan and did not see any genocide there," made in support of his
"good friend" Omar Bashir, who was wanted by the International
Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity and genocide.
The cast of the
Gulf drama reveals ideological kinships. As part of their anti-Qatar
campaign, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt
accused 59 individuals and 12 charity organizations of terror links. One
of the accused is Youssef al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian chairman of the
International Union of Muslim Scholars. Who is Qaradawi?
In 2004, Qaradawi
said, "There is no dialogue between us [Jews and Muslims] except by
the sword and the rifle." In 2005, he issued a fatwa permitting the
killing of Jewish fetuses. And in 2013, when millions of secular Turks
took to the streets to protest Erdoğan's Islamist policies, Qaradawi
rushed to Erdoğan's aid by declaring that the "Turkish protesters
were acting against Allah's will."
Once again,
Erdoğan's Turkey stands on the wrong corner at the wrong moment. Some of
his men fear Turkey may be next in line for international sanctions for
standing in solidarity with what Washington views as a high-level sponsor
of terror. This may be unlikely, but Erdoğan is ignoring two potential
dangers. First, he is operating on the flawed assumption that business as
usual will resume no matter how the Gulf crisis ends, and that the
Turkish-Qatari alliance will be up and running according to the same
ideals. Second, he believes the West is too weak to sanction Turkey
either politically or economically, so it has little to fear on that
front.
|
A less Turkey-friendly Qatar may well
emerge from the Gulf crisis.
|
He is wrong on
both counts. Doha may not be the same place after the Gulf Arabs find a
way out of their crisis. A less Turkey-friendly Qatar may well emerge.
Turkey's two staunchest ideological allies, the Brotherhood and Hamas,
will likely be further pruned in their own corners of the Arab world,
with non-Arab Turkey possibly remaining their only vocal supporter. And
the impending "slap" Ankara is ignoring may come not from
Washington but from Erdoğan's Muslim friends in the Gulf.
Shortly before
the Qatar campaign, Turkey's defense bureaucracy was curious as to why
the Saudis kept delaying a ceremony for a $2 billion contract for the
sale of four Turkish frigates to the Kingdom in what would have become
Turkey's largest-ever single defense industry export. Now they have an
idea why. That deal, if scrapped, may be just one of the starters on a
rich menu.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based political
analyst and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment