Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Syria, Egypt Reveal Erdogan’s ‘Hidden Agenda’
By Nicola Nasser*
The eruption of the Syrian conflict early in 2011 heralded
the demise of Turkey
What Sreeram Chaulia, the Dean of the Jindal School of
International Affairs in India
But in a more in-depth insight it is unfolding as neo-Ottomanism
that is pragmatically using “Islamization,” both of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s legacy internally and Turkey ’s
foreign policy regionally, as a tool to revive the Ottoman
Empire that once was.
Invoking his country’s former imperial
grandeur, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu had written: “As in the sixteenth
century … we will once again make the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle
East, together with Turkey
Quoted by Hillel Fradkin and Lewis Libby, writing in last
March/April edition of www.worldaffairsjournal.org,
the goal of Erdogan’s AKP ruling party for 2023,
as proclaimed by its recent Fourth General Congress, is: “A great nation, a great power.” Erdogan urged the youth
of Turkey to look not only
to 2023, but to 2071 as well when Turkey
“2071 will mark one thousand years since
the Battle of Manzikert,” when the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine
Empire and heralded the advent of the Ottoman one, according to Fradkin and Libby.
Some six months ago, Davotoglu felt so
confident and optimistic to assess that “it was now finally possible to revise the order imposed” by
the British – French Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 to divide the Arab legacy of
the Ottoman Empire between them.
Davotoglu knows very well that Pan-Arabs
have been ever since struggling unsuccessfully so far to unite as a nation and
discard the legacy of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, but not to recur to the Ottoman status quo
ante, but he knows as well that Islamist political movements like the Muslim Brotherhood
International (MBI) and the Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami
(Islamic Party of Liberation) were originally founded in Egypt and Palestine
respectively in response to the collapse of the Ottoman Islamic caliphate.
However, Erdogan’s Islamist credentials cannot be excluded
as simply a sham; his background, his practices in office since 2002 as well as
his regional policies since the eruption of the Syrian conflict less than three
years ago all reveal that he does believe in his version of Islam per se as the
right tool to pursue his Ottoman not so-“hidden agenda.”
Erdogan obviously is seeking to recruit Muslims as merely
“soldiers” who will fight not for Islam per se, but for his neo-Ottomanism
ambitions. Early enough in December 1997, he was given a 10-month prison
sentence for voicing a poem that read: “The mosques are our barracks,
the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers;”
the poem was considered a violation of Kemalism by the secular judiciary.
Deceiving ‘Window of Opportunity ’
However, Erdogan’s Machiavellianism
finds no contradiction between his Islamist outreach and his promotion of the
“Turkish model,” which sells what is termed as the “moderate” Sunni Islam
within the context of Ataturk’s secular and liberal state as both an alternative to
the conservative tribal-religious states in the Arabian Peninsula and to the sectarian
rival of the conservative Shiite theocracy in Iran.
He perceived in the latest US
withdrawal of focus from the Middle East towards the Pacific
Ocean a resulting regional power vacuum providing him with an
historic window of opportunity to fill the perceived vacuum.
“Weakening of Europe and the US’ waning influence in the
Middle East” were seen by the leadership of Erdogan’s ruling party “as a new
chance to establish Turkey as an influential player in the region,” Günter
Seufert wrote in the German Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)
on last October
14.
The US
and Israel , in earnest to
recruit Turkey against Iran Turkey
could stand up to and sidestep the rising stars of the emerging Russian
international polar, the emerging Iranian regional polar and the traditional regional
players of Egypt and Saudi Arabia , let alone Iraq and Syria
For sure, his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood International (MBI) and his thinly veiled Machiavellian
logistical support of al-Qaeda – linked terrorist organizations are not and
will not be a counter balance.
He first focused his Arab outreach on
promoting the “Turkish model,”
especially during the early months of the so-called “Arab Spring,” as the
example he hoped will be followed by the revolting masses, which would have
positioned him in the place of the regional mentor and leader.
But
while the eruption of the Syrian conflict compelled him to reveal his Islamist “hidden agenda” and his alliance with the MBI, the removal of
MBI last July from power in Egypt with all its geopolitical weight, supported
by the other regional Arab heavy weight of Saudi Arabia, took him off guard and
dispelled his ambitions for regional leadership, but more importantly revealed
more his neo-Ottoman
“hidden agenda” and pushed him to drop
all the secular and liberal pretensions of his “Turkish model” rhetoric.
‘Arab Idol’ No More
Erdogan
and his foreign policy engineer Davotoglu tried as well to exploit the
Arab and Muslim adoption of the Palestine Question as the central item on their
foreign policy agendas.
Since Erdogan’s encounter with the Israeli
President Shimon Peres at the Economic Summit in Davos in January 2009, the Israeli attack on the Turkish humanitarian aid boat
to Gaza, Mavi Marmara, the next year and Turkey’s courting of the
Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas,” the de facto rulers of the Israeli
besieged Palestinian Gaza Strip, at the same time Gaza was targeted by the
Israeli Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 then targeted again
in the Israeli Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, Turkey’s premier became the
Arab idol who was invited to attend Arab Leage summit and ministerial meetings.
However, in interviews with ResearchTurkey,
CNN Turk and other media outlets, Abdullatif Sener, a founder
of Erdogan’s AKP party who served as deputy prime minister and minister of
finance in successive AKP governments for about seven years before he broke out
with Erdogan in 2008, highlighted Erdogan’s Machiavellianism and questioned the sincerity and credibility of his Islamic,
Palestinian and Arab public posturing.
“Erdogan acts without considering religion even at some
basic issues but he hands down sharp religious messages … I consider the AK
Party not as an Islamic party but as a party which collect votes by using
Islamic discourses,” Sener said, adding that, “the
role in Middle East was assigned to him” and “the strongest
logistic support” to Islamists who have “been carrying out terrorist
activities” in Syria “is provided by Turkey” of Erdogan.
In an interview with CNN Turk, Sener dropped a bombshell
when he pointed out that the AKP’s spat with Israel Israel
many tenders were granted to Israeli companies and Turkey
has agreed to grant partner status to Israel
in NATO: “If the concern of the AKP is to confront Israel
then why do they serve to the benefit of Israel Malatya
are there to protect Israel against
Iran
Sener argued that the biggest winner of the collapse of
the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad would be Israel because it will weaken Lebanon ’s Hizbullah and Iran , yet Erdogan’s Turkey
is the most ardent supporter of a regime change in Syria
Erdogan’s Syrian policy was the death knell to his strategy of “Zero Problems with Neighbors;” the bloody terrorist swamp of the Syrian
conflict has drowned it in its quicksand.
Liz Sly’s story in the Washington Post on this November 17
highlighted how his Syrian policies “have gone awry” and counterproductive by
“putting al-Qaeda on NATO’s (Turkish) borders for the first time.”
With
his MBI alliance, he alienated Egypt ,
Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in
addition to the other Arab heavy weights of Syria ,
Iraq and Algeria
According to Günter Seufert , Turkey ’s
overall foreign policy, not only with regards to Syria
Backpedaling too late
Now it seems
Erdogan’s “Turkey Iran and “Washington ’s request to end support for radical groups in
Syria
“Reconnecting” with Iran and its Iraqi ruling sectarian
brethren will alienate further the Saudis who could not tolerate similar
reconnection by their historical and strategic US ally and who were already
furious over Erdogan’s alliance with the Qatari financed and US sponsored
Muslim Brotherhood and did not hesitate to publicly risk a rift with their US
ally over the removal of the MBI from power in Egypt five months ago.
Within this context came Davotoglu’s
recent visit to Baghdad , which “highlighted
the need for great cooperation between Turkey
and Iraq Karbala
Within the same “backpedaling” context
came Erdogan’s playing the host last week to the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, not in Ankara ,
but in Diyarbakir , which Turkish Kurds cherish
as their capital in the same way Iraqi Kurds cherish Kirkuk
However, on
the same day of Barzani’s visit Erdogan ruled out the possibility of granting
Turkish Kurds their universal right of self-determination when he announced “Islamic brotherhood” as
the solution for the Kurdish ethnic conflict in Turkey
Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanism
charged by his Islamist sectarian ideology as a tool has backfired to alienate
both Sunni and Shiite regional environment, the Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian,
Emirati, Saudi and Lebanese Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Israelis and Iranians as
well as Turkish and regional liberals and secularists. His foreign policy is in
shambles with a heavy economic price as shown by the recent 13.2% devaluation
of the Turkish lira against the US dollar.
“Backpedaling” might be too
late to get Erdogan and his party through the upcoming local elections next
March and the presidential elections which will follow in August next year.
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit,
West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com
