The Race in The Mid East To Fill the Vacuum Created By Lack Of U.S. Leadership

By Barry Rubin 

In the absence of U.S. leadership, others want to direct the Middle East. The battle is becoming a competition of radicals for run the region. That’s what happened in the 1950s and 1960s and it isn’t good. Then, the competition was between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Today, the contestants are Turkey, Iran, and a radical Egypt, with Iraq and Syria sidelined due to internal issues. Meanwhile, the Saudis have been forced to take over leadership of the remaining moderate Arab states (the Gulf sheikdoms, plus Morocco and Jordan) since they can no longer depend on America for protection.

The Egyptian foreign minister has warned Iran not to try to intervene too much in the Gulf, posing as protector of Saudi Arabia and the smaller states. This is a hint that Egypt wants to resume its pre-Sadat role as leader of the Arab world. Cairo will see itself as protector of the Muslim, Sunni, and Arab world against Persian, Shia Muslim Iran; Turkish Turkey; and Jewish Israel. With Iraq turned inward and Syria turned upside down, Egypt is the only remaining Arab state that can make a play for region-wide power.

That Egypt wants to stop Iranian expansion is a good thing, but that the next government—a radical, possibly Islamist one, will have its own ambitions isn’t. I predict that Egypt and Iran will tussle over who will be the patron of Hamas and that Egypt will win. It also seems likely that a radical, Islamist-influenced Egypt would be supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Jordan, too.

The Saudis are also reaching out. Their leadership of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in sending troops to Bahrain and tightening the security links among the members is another sign that they aren’t depending on the United States any more. Equally impressive is the GCC’s invitation to Jordan to join, a total break with past policy. This is a good thing since the Jordanians need help (particularly money) to stay stable and fend off Iranian influence and a Muslim Brotherhood takeover.

Iran’s ambitions are well-known but the statement of parliament speaker Ali Larijani (generally regarded as a “moderate” on the Islamic republic’s political spectrum) is still an escalation. He said that Tehran will “protect” Muslim states from U.S. and Israeli aggression. Clearly, this doesn’t include Libya where the Iranians hope that the United States and NATO will overthrow dictator Muammar Qadhafi and open the way for a radical Islamist dictatorship.

Of course, Iranian protection implies that regime’s hands around the neck of other countries. The regime now has Lebanon as a satellite, tremendous influence in Iraq and parts of Afghanistan, patronage over Hamas, and an alliance with Turkey and Syria. That’s a pretty good situation. And once it has nuclear weapons, the Iranian regime believes it can do whatever it wants and nobody will complain too much.

Then there’s Turkey. It is foolish and certainly outdated to see Turkey as somehow on the “West’s” side against Iran. First, Turkey is allied with Iran to a large extent. Second, if and when the two countries differ it is about how to carve up others. Kemal Ataturk’s wise injunction—the equivalent of George Washington’s avoiding “foreign entanglements”—of “peace at home, peace abroad” is being thrown on the garbage heap with all of his other hard-earned wisdom.

I don’t like the use of the word “Ottoman” to apply to post-Ataturk Turkey as there are simply too many differences and confusing nuances. After all, in modern history, despite the fact that its sultan was also the Muslim caliph, the Ottoman Empire functioned internationally as a normative power, not an Islamist state. It was also a status quo power seeking to preserve an existing empire and easily forming alliances with European states.

The new Turkey is ambitious, Islamist, anti-Western, and not likely to be a force for stability. In his victory speech, reelected Prime Minister Erdoğan did not mention Europe or the West even once. Though the Western media didn’t notice it in praising the victory of the Turkish Islamists he spoke as a Muslim leader. .

Breaking with the orientation of the Turkish republic since the 1920s, Erdoğan began his speech by praising, “All friendly and brotherly nations from Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, Sarajevo, Baku and Nicosia.”

He added: “The hopes of the victims and the oppressed have won,” and, “Beirut has won as much as İzmir. West Bank, Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem have won as much as Diyarbakır. The Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans have won, just as Turkey has won.”

In talking about the Middle East, he wasn’t including Israel; in the Caucasus, he didn’t mean Armenia or Georgia; and as for the Balkans he didn’t mean Greece or Croatia or Yugoslavia.

As a Turkish journalist explained:
“The fact that he mentioned Sarajevo, while avoiding mention of Europe, clearly shows that he sees himself as the leader of the Muslims and that of those Muslims who are oppressed, not by their regimes, in the view of Erdoğan, but by the Christian West. So, Erdoğan’s world view, based on juxtaposing the oppressed East vis-à-vis the imperialist West, is here to stay.”

Is it of some concern that the leader of Turkey speaks in the same terms as the leader of Iran? You wouldn’t know it from Western coverage.

One point that isn’t properly understood is that if Iran, post-secular Turkey, post-Mubarak Egypt, and Syria (though sidelined by its own internal problems for now) may be contending to some extent, it isn’t good for Western or U.S. interests. They’re squabbling about who gets to devour what.

In this context, the battle over Syria should be understood. It is widely claimed that Turkey has broken with the Syrian regime as if this were a humanitarian impulse. There are proposals to use Turkey as a mediator and even reports that President Barack Obama is consulting Turkey about what to do in Syria.

Big mistake. True, Turkey has been allied with the dictatorship of President Hafiz al-Asad. But the revolution has posed a dilemma for Ankara. Asad is good. After all, he hates the United States (though the Obama administration doesn’t seem to notice) and Israel, supports revolutionary Islamists (Hamas, Hizballah, Iraqi insurgents), and is an ally of Iran. Iran and Hizballah, both of them Shia Muslim, prefer their ally Asad, who claims to be Shia Muslim.

But for the (Sunni) Islamists in Ankara, the Islamists in Damascus are better. The Turkish regime doesn’t want a moderate, pro-Western democratic government in Syria; it wants an Islamist, even more anti-American government in Syria.

So the Middle East is returning to a higher level of conflict and eventually bloodshed, in part thanks to U.S. bumbling. It’s a typical story. Obama thinks American power is evil and bullying, but by withdrawing it (except for the bizarre adventure in Libya), he is contributing to anarchy and the destruction of legitimate U.S. interests.
By the way, notice that—at least for the moment—the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflict is of no importance in all this. Yet that’s the issue the West is obsessed with, usually in ways that would weaken Israel and thus strengthen all of its enemies.

It’s a very sad and even more dangerous story. The hope is that as all these problems and disasters become more visible, the Western democracies will wake up and change their policies. Every minute counts.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are teased and other articles are available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.   

Turkey's Election: An Islamist Revolution

By Barry Rubin

Remember this: By the end of 2011 more than 250 million people in the Middle East may well be living under what are in reality anti-American Islamist governments, mainly in Iran, Turkey, and Egypt, plus the Gaza Strip and an allied (but not Islamist) Syrian regime. Might this be a problem?

The elections in Turkey mark a revolution. When Iran’s revolution happened and the Islamists took over in 1979, everyone knew it. In contrast, Turkey’s revolution has been a stealth Islamist operation. It has succeeded brilliantly, while Western governments have failed shockingly to understand what has been going on.

Now we are at a turning point, an event every bit as significant as the revolutions in Iran and now in Egypt. Of course, it will take time but now Turkey is set on a path that is ending the republic established by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s. The Turkey of secularism and Western orientation is finished. The Turkey that belongs to an alliance of radical Islamists abroad and of Islamism at home has been launched.

Here are the numbers from the parliamentary election:

The stealth Islamist party, Justice and Development (AKP), received almost exactly 50 percent of the vote. Under the Turkish system this will give it 325 members of parliament, or about 60 percent of the seats.

On the opposition side the social democratic Republican People's Party (CHP) got about 26 percent of the vote and 135 seats. The right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) took 13 percent giving it 54 seats. There are also 36 independents, all of them Kurdish communalists. Eleven parties didn't make the minimum ten percent barrier (they received only about 1 percent or less each).

Now is this good or bad?

The AKP won 363 seats with a bit over 34 percent of the vote in 2002; 341 seats with 46.58 percent of the vote in 2007; and 325 seats with almost 50 percent of the vote in 2011.

In statistical terms, the AKP lost 6 MP's despite getting 5 million more votes, the MHP lost 18 MP's despite tallying half a million more votes while the CHP gained 33 seats adding 3.5 million votes. On paper, then, while the AKP stays in power, it is very slightly weaker than before.

But the outcome is nonetheless overwhelmingly bad. As you can see above the AKP's percentage of voters keeps rising. Most of the people who back the party don't want an Islamist regime and they don't think of the AKP in those terms. It rather seems to them to be a strong nationalist party respecting religious tradition that is making Turkey an important international power and is doing a good job on the economy.

The AKP got almost--remember that almost--everything it wanted. It increased voter support more than any other party and will be in power for four--and perhaps many more--years, infiltrating institutions, producing a new constitution, intimidating opponents, altering Turkish foreign policy, and shifting public opinion to dislike Americans and Jews to a larger degree.

The only point on which the AKP  fell short is that it didn't get the two-thirds of the seats, 357, that would let it pretty much write Turkey's new constitution any way it wanted. It is, however, close to the 330 needed to take a constitution that it produced to a referendum.


But so what? Deals with a few willing parliamentarians from other parties could provide the five additional votes needed for subitting an AKP-authored constitution to a referendum. The government can offer individuals a lot, including what I will delicately call here personal benefits for their support. And given the way the parliamentary elections went, the AKP can almost certainly win that referendum.

In short, the AKP is entrenched in power and can now proceed with the fundamental transformation of Turkey.

The AKP has become famous for the subtlety of its Islamism, disguised as a "center-right" reform party. Some people in the Arab world are starting to talk about this as a model. Notably the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is fascinated by the strategy. Yet as the Islamist party gains more and more power and support--Turkey has demonstrated this--it becomes more ambitious, daring, and extreme.

This would include:

--A constitution that would take the country far down the road to a more Islamist state and society.

--A more presidential style of government empowering the mercurial (a nice word for personally unstable and frighteningly arrogant) Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to become the chief executive.

--The government can now infiltrate, take over, and transform the remaining hold out institutions, especially the armed forces and courts, along with the remainder of the media that has not yet been bought up or intimidated by the Islamists.

--A government whose policy is to align with Islamists like Iran, Syria (not Islamist but part of the Tehran-led alliance), Hamas, Hizballah, and perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood.

--A government against U.S. and Western interests.

--A government that, to put it bluntly, hates Israel and many of whose members hate Jews.

--For Israel, any dreams of restoring the alliance with Turkey, or even a friendly relationship or normal diplomatic relations are finished. This is the regime that sponsored the first Gaza flotilla and is now behind the second one. From an Israeli interests’ perspective, Turkey’s government is now on the other side, the side of its enemies.

It is hard to place these unpleasant realities and many will not want to face them. There will be no shortage of soothing analyses and encouraging talk about Turkish democracy succeeding, moderate Muslim politics, and how “great” it is that the army’s political power is destroyed.

Don’t be fooled.

This is a disastrous day for the United States and for Europe; for the prospects of stability and peace in the Middle East. And it isn't great news for the relatively moderate Arab states either.

It is the end of the republic as established by Kamal Ataturk in the 1920s and modified into a multi-party democracy in the 1950s.

Yet how many people in the West actually appreciate what is happening? How many journalists will celebrate the election as a victory for democracy? Lenin once reportedly remarked that he would get the capitalists to sell him the rope with which to hang them. The AKP has gotten the West to provide that rope as a gift.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org.

U.S. Government Cheers As Turkey Goes Islamist and Anti-American

By Barry Rubin

On Sunday, June 12, Turkey will hold what might well be its most important elections in modern history. It may also be the worst thing that’s happened to the country in modern history. If the current regime is reelected—and it could do so, given Turkey’s electoral system, with less than thirty percent of the vote, the emboldened Islamist regime will hit the accelerator in transforming Turkey into as much of an Islamist state as possible.

The ruling AK Party has been cautious, concealing its aims and pretending to be a "center-right" reform party. Many Turks have also accepted this notion. Roughly only 12 percent want an Islamist state and around 30 percent will also vote for the current regime in the belief that it won't give that to them.

Yet as the AK has entrenched itself in power, put its cadre into institutions, undermined democracy, and paid virtually no international cost for doing so it has become more confident. One might better say, arrogant. This election could well be the last straw pushing Turkey over the edge of the cliff.

Whether or not anyone in the U.S. government recognizes it now, that development will spell the end of a U.S.-Turkish alliance that has endured 55 years. Turkey, arguably the Muslim-majority country with the most advanced infrastructure and greatest military capability in the world, will be in the enemy camp.

Already, the Turkey-Israel alliance is long over and will not return under this regime in Ankara. The Turkish government supports Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah. The regime officially sponsors antisemitic hatred. The hatred of the regime for Israel and Jews is pathological. Nothing like it has been seen in Turkey during all of the centuries since the Turks arrived in Anatolia. Many Jews are leaving or are getting prepared to do so.

If the regime gets a big enough majority it will rewrite the Turkish constitution. Turkey, as we have known it, a secular democratic state since the 1920s, will no longer exist. Of course, not everything will be obvious and happen overnight, but the repression we have already seen will increase. The courts, the armed forces, and other institutions will be taken over by this Islamist government.

It will be a disaster for Western interests. And coupled with the same thing happening in Egypt, these events will catapult the region back a half-century or more into strife.

Meanwhile, the West snores on. Western media coverage of the Turkish regime is glowing. Yet if one actually looks at what’s happening in the country, reading the Turkish-language media and talking to the many Turks horrified by these developments, the picture is horrifying.

Here is an example of life in contemporary Turkey. The town of Hopa received a visit from Prime Minister Erdogan. Opposition banners are removed by the police. When local people resisted, the police attacked. A retired teacher who had been trying to negotiate with the police died.

Scores of journalists have been arrested and thrown into jail. One-third of the media has been bought up by the regime; much of the rest intimidated. Military officers, college professors, union leaders, activists, and peaceful critics of every description are thrown into jail on trumped up charges and kept there for months, years. The waiting time for a trial during which people are jailed is now three years. Yes, three years without proof of any wrongdoing.

A respected investigative journalist is arrested and accused of terrorism. His crime? Writing a critical book on Fathi Gulen, Turkey’s leading Islamist cleric. All of the copies of the manuscript are confiscated. Gulen controls the police.

Two other journalists are arrested. Their crime? Saying that they were about to publish documentation showing that the government’s claims of conspiracy, used to arrest so many, are bogus. Gareth Jenkins, a serious scholar, has gone through thousands of pages of court documents and shown that the hundreds of people imprisoned have not even been accused of any specific act. I know of a half-dozen journalists fired for daring to criticize the government. There are many more.

How to intimidate the media? Tax officials arrive and take over offices, going through all of the documents trying to find some technicality on which to bring charges. The largest media group in Turkey, the Dogan Group, was told that it owed $2.5 billion in penalties. That is not a typographical error. It is several times the worth of the entire company. The government demanded that they pay the fines first and then if they wanted they could go to court. To provide a partial payment and bank guarantees, the Dogan Group had to sell two newspapers.

People feel that they are watched, wire-tapped, and spied on. Turkey was never a perfect democracy. Yet this atmosphere is closer to that of a country under Communism than the Turkey they have known all their lives.

As a Turkish professor writes to me:

“There has been an air of terror where people are afraid to talk anymore, in public or over the phone or even behind closed doors against the government or Gulen movement. Who knows [whether] your words will be used against you in the future?”

Four prominent parliamentarians of the MHP party, the nationalist opposition, were forced to withdraw their candidacies in the forthcoming election after a mysterious website published video and audio of their involvement in illicit sexual activity. America has had its scandals recently. But the government using its intelligence assets to destroy its opponents systematically is something quite different.

Actually, since the process has not advanced so far, one can read about all of these things and more in some Turkish newspapers or be told of events by credible sources. The campaign of anti-Americanism is in the open. The daily preaching of hatred against Jews and Israel is in the open. The tightening links with Islamist movements and regimes is in the open.

As we know from leaks, the U.S. embassy in Turkey has reported many of the kinds of arguments and analysis I’m making. Yet the White House and the president are blind. On that reporting, check out Okan Altiparmak and Claire Berlinski, “The Wikileaks Cables on Turkey: 20/20 Tunnel Vision,” MERIA Journal, Vol. 14, No.4 (December 2010).

I don’t want to overstate the threat so feel free to assume I’m exaggerating. Subtract the proportion you want, take another look, and you’ll still see a great deal to be alarmed about.

The View from the White House

Perception of this revolutionary Islamist threat by Obama White House: Close to zero.

Actions taken by the Obama White House to counter it: Zero.

Principal enemy according to White House: Al-Qaida, which rules no population.

Main problem in the Middle East according to White House: Israel’s presence on part of the West Bank, ruling about 30,000 Palestinians directly (in Hebron) and the existence of settlements with about 300,000 Israeli settlers.

The View from the Middle East

Egypt has 82 million people; Iran has 78 million people. Turkey has 79 million people. Total: By the end of this year, almost 240 million people in those three countries alone will live under Islamist or radical anti-American regimes allied to them. Adding in the Gaza Strip, those under Hizballah control in Lebanon, and Syria brings the total to about 250 million. One-quarter of a billion people are going to be—many of them involuntarily--in the enemy camp. Call it the Crescent Curtain if you wish.

These countries and groups will not work together in every respect but they will work against the West, stability, democracy, and Israel’s existence.

The loss of Turkey—yes, I said it, loss—would be a tragedy of tremendous proportions to the West and, of course, the loss of liberty and democracy in Turkey would be most of all a tragedy for the Turkish people.

The event would be a tragedy; the failure to see what’s happening is shameful. In policy and analytical terms, it is the equivalent of criminal.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.