ISTANBUL — The 8-year-old Syrian conflict entered a new phase with a Russian-Turkish accord that fills a power vacuum resulting from the chaotic US withdrawal from the region.

The agreement, reached October 22 at the Russian resort of Sochi, strengthens the positions of Russia, Turkey and the Syrian government in north-eastern Syria at a time when withdrawing US forces were pelted with potatoes and tomatoes by angry locals as they left the region after years of controlling one-third of Syria’s territory.

The dramatic collapse of the US role after US President Donald Trump ordered his troops out of Syria robbed the Syrian-Kurdish militia People’s Protection Units (YPG) of a partner and forced them to pull back from the Turkish border, ending Kurdish self-rule in the area.

Following the Sochi deal, which stopped a 2-week-old Turkish military intervention, the rebel stronghold of Idlib is the only region in Syria where significant fighting continues. A total of 150 representatives of the government, the opposition and civil society in Syria are to start talks about a post-war political order in UN-sponsored negotiations October 30 in Geneva.

“We are entering a new phase but we have to wait and see if this could be the end of the war,” said Huseyin Cicek, a political scientist and expert on religion and politics at the Department of Islamic-Theological Studies at Austria’s Vienna University.

The Sochi accord deepened ties between Russia and NATO member Turkey, a development that is causing concern in the United States, NATO and the European Union. A day after the talks, Moscow said it was in contact with Ankara about extra deliveries of Russia-made S-400 missile defence systems to Turkey.

Russia and Turkey have cooperated closely in Syria despite diverging political interests in the conflict. While Russia wants Syrian President Bashar Assad to remain in power and extend his rule over the whole of Syria, Turkey has been supporting rebel groups fighting the regime and is refusing to deal with Assad.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan worked six hours to hammer out an agreement that was hailed as a triumph by both sides. Erdogan called it “historic.”

Fresh from an agreement with the United States that allowed Turkish troops to occupy a stretch of Syrian territory 100km long and 30km deep previously controlled by Washington’s YPG ally, the Turkish leader went to Sochi seeking an expansion of that zone. However, Putin, while accepting the dimensions of the original Turkish incursion, made sure that Erdogan’s troops would not go further.

After the deal was announced, the Turkish Defence Ministry said the United States had told Turkey the withdrawal of Kurdish militants was complete from the “safe zone” Ankara demands in northern Syria. There was no need to initiate another operation outside the current area of operation at this stage, the ministry said in a statement, effectively ending its military offensive that began October 9.

The Sochi agreement endorsed the return of Assad’s forces to the border alongside Russian troops, replacing the Americans who had patrolled the region for years with their former Kurdish allies. Russian military police took up positions in the border region a day after Erdogan’s visit to Sochi.

The Damascus government is to build 15 posts along the Syrian border with Turkey, the Russian Defence Ministry said. Russian and Turkish forces are to jointly patrol a 10km strip in the “safe zone.”

Under the deal with Moscow, the length of the border that the YPG must vacate is more than triple the size of the territory covered by the US-Turkish accord, covering most of the area Turkey had wanted to include.

Analysts said Ankara did not push through all its goals. As a result of the Sochi pact, Turkey will have full control over about 100km of Syrian lands along the border, much less than the 440km sought by Ankara. It must share control with Russia and Syria in the other sectors.

“The Sochi deal… puts an end to Turkey’s further territorial gains in Syria,” Kerim Has, a Moscow-based expert on Russian-Turkish relations, said in a message in response to questions. Cicek said Erdogan’s plan for the resettlement of up to 3 million in northern Syria was very unlikely to become reality.

Ankara also accepted a new role for the Assad government in northern Syria and could be pushed by Russia to establish direct contact with Damascus, something Erdogan, an outspoken critic of the Syrian president, had been trying to avoid.

“With the Sochi deal, [the] Kremlin received more effective tools to push Ankara to start an open and direct dialogue with Damascus,” Has wrote. “Ankara officially admits Russia’s role of mediator to restart its relations with Damascus and fully implement the 1998 Adana agreement,” a treaty between Turkey and Syria that allows Turkey to fight terrorist threats in a 5km zone inside Syria and calls for close contacts between the two countries’ security services.

“If the Number One enemy of the Syrian authorities, Erdogan’s Turkey, officially readmits Assad’s rule in current conditions, that would be a huge gain for Russia’s settlement policy in Syria,” Has added.

As a consequence, the Sochi agreement could hasten the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syria, Has said. “For Moscow, in the light of [the] US troop withdrawal, Turkey clearly shows up as the only ‘uninvited guest’ in Syria, which seems more unacceptable with every passing day.”

Thomas Seibert is an Arab Weekly contributor in Istanbul.

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 24 October 2019
Word Count: 896
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So, it’s a deal. But is it? The ceasefire agreement between US officials and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was, a Turkish Foreign Ministry official speaking anonymously to the Washington Post said, one of the smoothest in Turkish history, so easy that it came as a surprise to Ankara.

It is widely agreed that Erdogan won. He made a political gamble, the type that he has mastered over the years, and the world’s superpower blinked first. Those at home and abroad who had expected a fierce backlash for Erdogan were taken by surprise.

It is time for him to spin and sell his perceived victory at home, to reassert himself as the iron-willed commander-in-chief, to use the domestic tools to tame his opponents even more roughly and repair whatever damage his image received due the defeat in local elections. If not anything else, Erdogan has gained time and manoeuvring room.

But — and it’s a big but — this one may be a pyrrhic victory after all.

Yes, the deal offers openings for some legitimacy for the Turkish incursion, yet another surprise may await at the door, pulling Erdogan into the quagmire of Syria.

The 13-point document, filled with ambiguous phrases and diplomatic pitfalls, leaves a large vacuum regarding the key actors in the war-torn country: Kurds, Syrian regime forces, Russia and, in a shady corner, Iran. Not only that, the deal is certain to stir further storm in Washington as US President Donald Trump seems to be gliding into the vortex of impeachment.

Most of those variables have to do with facts the deal is unable to ignore. First and foremost, the deal falls short of putting strong enough conditionality on a full-scale withdrawal of Turkish armed forces from areas it invaded.

Statements from Ankara immediately after the deal was announced indicate an unchanged position, that it perceives a long-term stay alongside the Turkish-Syrian border from Iraq to Kobane.

Erdogan took a further gamble, saying that if the Americans do not cleanse the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the incursion will accelerate. These signals must be taken as evidence that Ankara will try to maximise the gains of the deal to exert a permanent military presence in the invaded parts of Syria.

If taken together with a total pullout of Syria, the Americans may come to not care whether the Turkish side stays in Syria or leaves. The current Trump stand is to wash his hands of this bloody regional conflict and hope to ignore whatever else Erdogan does.

He has decided to sell out the Kurds, leaving them vulnerable before Ankara and Damascus, as the deal undoubtedly displays. This is what Syrian President Bashar Assad and Erdogan welcome with applause.

Also, Turkey’s secular-nationalist opposition bloc openly supports it, long calling for a dialogue with Assad, discreetly hoping that the Kurdish aspirations for self-rule may far more easily be crushed when the two governments agree.

However, the deal cannot disguise the fact that Turkey is isolated because it has some bizarre plans to initiate resettlement and construction projects on foreign soil, without anyone’s consent.

If, for Syria, the priority is to reassert its control over mainly Kurdish northern parts and force Turkey out of its territory, it will be Russia, the winner in the multidimensional Syria chess game, that will have to manage a solution. Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin know this deal is blurred and short-lived, that, as soon as the SDF agrees to choose their side, the Adana agreement that Erdogan refers to will no longer have validity in terms of deals for a continued presence.

It is clear that Alexander Lavrentiev, who, as Putin’s special envoy for Syria, was in Ankara when US Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cut the deal, returned to Moscow with a relatively placid mind.

When Erdogan next meets his Russian counterpart, whom he must treat with great respect, Putin will only go further, to handle the issue of Idlib and jihadists assembled there, and push Erdogan deeper into the corner by insisting on direct talks with Assad. Slowly but firmly, Putin is getting there.

Anti-US circles who have led Erdogan to alienate everyone in Washington except Trump may have welcomed the deal as a step closer to de-orbit Turkey from the West, but two issues will continue to pose challenges to Ankara, however hard-line its rulers choose to become.

Turkey’s domestic Kurdish issue will not cease to bleed, feeding further an aggressive nationalism at home, and the common denominator of finishing off the Islamic State and other jihadists in Syria, uniting under the umbrella the United States, Russia, the European Union and large parts of Arab League, will never go away.

These two fronts make Erdogan’s Ankara victory a short-lived, pyrrhic one. His hands tied, his mind locked, they will weaken the ground on which he hopes to stand. For the West, Erdogan is a liability; for Russia, he is useful until he is not.

Yavuz Baydar is a senior Turkish columnist, and news analyst. A founding member of the Platform for Independent Journalism (P24) in Istanbul, he has been reporting on Turkey and monitoring media issues since 1980. A European Press Prize Laureate in 2014, he is also the winner of Germany’s ‘Journalistenpreis’ in 2018. 

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 21 October 2019
Word Count: 827
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Those who wonder whether Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will follow through on his audacious proposal to annex the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea, as well as parts of the West Bank, need only look east and then west.

East, to India, where Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the breathtakingly bold decision to unilaterally downgrade the constitutionally recognised special status of the disputed territory of Kashmir. As of August 5, Kashmir has become a federally administered region of India; its state flag consigned to the museum of lost objects and its people subject to a security lockdown as well as drastic restrictions on communicating with the wider world.

West, from where Netanyahu is campaigning for the September 17 Israeli election, are the United States and the Israeli prime minister’s unabashed supporter US President Donald Trump.

It is in the person of this US president that East and West gloriously meet, at least from Netanyahu’s perspective. After Modi’s decisive action on Kashmir, Trump responded: The Indian leader feels he has the situation “under control.” The hands-off US approach to unilateral action on a disputed territory must surely be reassuring for Netanyahu. It leaves open the possibility that any Israeli move to annex almost 30% of the West Bank will not be resisted by the Trump administration.

Even without Kashmir-grab as a template, it has become increasingly apparent that Trump is not minded to censor Israeli unilateralism towards disputed territories. In fact, he has pushed the process along. In December 2017, Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy there, taking the holy city off the table in final-status negotiations. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Trump also recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, breaking from the post-WWII international consensus that forbids territorial conquest during war. Israel captured the plateau from Syria during the 1967 war.

In March, when Trump made his gift of the Golan Heights to Netanyahu — as if it were his to give — the Israeli prime minister faced a tight election battle. Now, Netanyahu is back fighting for his political life in Israel’s second vote in six months.

The possibility of Trump’s backing on crude electoral stunts and bold measures afterward matters hugely. Annexation of West Bank territory increasingly enjoys popular support in Israel. A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute in August indicated that 48% of Jewish Israelis asked said they were in favour if supported by the Trump administration. Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s rival and head of the main opposition Blue and White alliance, said it had been his grand idea all along.

Clearly, Trump’s somewhat casual attitude to agreed international principles — on conflict, disputed regions, unilateral action — are central to developments in disparate parts of the world. Add to that this US administration’s frivolous approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a whole. Can there be anything more derisory than Trump’s announcement that his new Middle East peace envoy will be 30-year-old Avi Berkowitz?

Berkowitz is a former aide to the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. His role was once described by former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks as “primarily administrative and involved assisting Kushner with daily logistics like getting coffee or coordinating meetings.”

Berkowitz has no experience of international problem-solving and no discernible expertise on the Middle East other than one that might be a liability. He is a Zionist Jew, who spent a couple of years studying at an Israeli secondary school where the focus was traditional religious texts.

Berkowitz aside, how committed is Trump to the mirage he advertised as the Deal of the Century? Jason Greenblatt, the man Berkowitz is replacing, was Trump’s real estate lawyer, a greenhorn diplomat who damningly announced his departure before the full Trump plan was rolled out. As US President Barack Obama’s Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Martin Indyk has said, with Berkowitz, Trump is replacing the unqualified architect of a widely panned peace plan with someone even worse.

What’s clear is that Trump likes the theatrics of peace-making but not the logistics, the detail and the emotional subtext of the politics on all sides.

We’ve seen this time after time in the past three years. Trump’s love of grand personal gestures has fallen short with Afghanistan, North Korea and China. The pattern is clear: North Korea talks are stalled; the part-reveal of the Middle East peace plan was a non-event. Few are setting much store by the second installment, due right after the Israeli elections.

The art of the deal seems still to elude Trump. Thus far, the number of just and sustainable deals he’s done for the United States — or anyone else — can be reduced to a single number. Zero.

Rashmee Roshan Lall is a regular columnist for The Arab Weekly. She blogs at www.rashmee.com and is on Twitter @rashmeerl

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 16 September 2019
Word Count: 796
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ISTANBUL — New rules for internet media and streaming services in Turkey are stoking fears of increased government pressure on dissent.

Turkey granted its radio and television watchdog, the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK), sweeping oversight over all online content, including streaming platforms and news outlets. The move to strengthen the RTUK, an institution dominated by the government and its nationalist ally, raised concerns that the state was tightening control over the media.

More than 600 institutions, including Netflix and local streaming platforms Puhu TV and BluTV have applied for licences under the new rules, RTUK said.

Free speech advocates said RTUK’s new powers could be used to smother media outlets that refuse to toe the government line. The regulations extend RTUK rules to online broadcasters such as Medyascope, an internet television station critical of the government.

“Of course this is censorship,” Veysel Ok, a Turkish lawyer who specialises in free speech cases, said about the new rules.

Turkish-language services of international outlets such as the Britain’s BBC, Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) or the United States’ Voice of America (VoA) might be affected, Ok said by telephone. He said he had initiated a complaint before Turkey’s highest administrative court in Ankara to stop the new RTUK rules.

Medyascope and foreign content providers the BBC, DW and VoA have become popular with Turks seeking news coverage not under Ankara’s control. Most of Turkey’s large media organisations are owned by companies close to the government.

Critics said pressure on independent outlets has increased since a failed coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016. More than 100 journalists are in prison, journalist associations said. Turkey ranked 157th out of 180 countries on a press freedom index by Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group.

The government denies it is cracking down on free speech, arguing that some media in Turkey were instruments of the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Islamic cleric accused by Erdogan of masterminding the 2016 coup attempt.

RTUK said the new requirements had nothing to do with censorship. “Our aim is not to limit individual freedom but to regulate a field that has been off the books,” the organisation said on Twitter. “There is no cause for concern.”

However, critics do not trust RTUK. Six of the nine council members represent Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party and its right-wing partner, the Nationalist Movement Party.

The new RTUK regulations stipulate that content providers must have a fresh licence and comply with RTUK guidelines to operate in Turkey. If they do not respect the guidelines, they will be given 30 days to change their content or face having their licences suspended for three months and later cancelled. It is unclear what standards RTUK expects.

One result of the new requirements could be that images of cigarettes and alcoholic drinks will have to be blurred in programmes on Netflix and other broadcasters, in line with RTUK rules that the organisation said have been introduced to protect young people and family values.

Consequences could be much more serious than blurred whisky glasses, said Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Istanbul’s Bilgi University and a cyber-rights activist.

Akdeniz said Turkey already restricted the free flow of information on the internet by blocking access to more than 245,000 websites, including the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. By the end of the year, that figure was likely to be around 300,000, Akdeniz said by e-mail.

“Based on this censorship climate, things will only get worse,” Akdeniz said. “The new system is advertised as a ‘licensing regime’ but, in reality, this is yet another censorship mechanism and tool that will target independent media outlets.”

Akdeniz agreed with Ok in saying that international providers such as BBC, DW and VoA could face problems in Turkey.

“If they choose not to apply for a licence or if their applications are rejected, [RTUK] will ask a criminal judgeship of peace to block access to such media outlets’ websites from Turkey. This is now a strong possibility.”

Kerem Altiparmak, a human rights lawyer, said the move was the “biggest step in Turkish censorship history” and said all outlets producing opposition news would be affected.

“Everyone who produces alternative news and broadcasts will be affected by this regulation,” Altiparmak wrote on Twitter. “Every news report that can be against the government will be taken under control.”

International streaming services such as Netflix must find a way to comply with RTUK’s new rules or risk being barred from Turkey.

Netflix serves 1.5 million subscribers in Turkey and reaches about 10% of the country’s broadband households, the company said. That makes the Turkish market a potentially important and lucrative source of new subscribers as competition mounts.

The company operates one of the world’s largest streaming services and has sustained its position at the top by courting new subscribers outside the United States as its US home market matures. In the quarter ended June 30, Netflix lost subscribers in the United States for the first time in eight years and fell short of targets for new subscriber growth overseas.

As part of obtaining the Turkish licence, Netflix said it would set up a local entity and pay 0.5% of revenue generated in Turkey to the government. The company said it is in discussions to pay similar levies in Spain and Italy.

Turkey has not attempted to censor Netflix content, a source told Reuters.

Thomas Seibert is an Arab Weekly contributor in Istanbul.

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 09 September 2019
Word Count: 898
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In mid-September, Tunisian voters will head to the polls to decide who will be their next president.

The polarisation of the 2014 elections and the charismatic presence of Beji Caid Essebsi have given way to a splintered landscape with no obvious front-runner who could win the majority of votes in the first round.

Qualifying for the second round might, in fact, depend on a fraction of a percentile.

There is no figure among the 26 final candidates who rises above the fray. There are no historic leaders and no charismatic personalities, although many feel they have the mettle to “save Tunisia.”

Many, including some who served in recent years in senior government positions, are distancing themselves from the political establishment. Anyone associated with the government will have a tough time convincing voters he or she could be part of the solution.

In recent years, confidence in Tunisian institutions has taken a serious beating, except perhaps for security agencies and the military in their fight against terrorism.

There are, hence, doubts about the ability of politicians to pull the country out of its economic predicament. There is even less confidence in their ability to tackle the endemic problem of corruption. Considering the unimpressive results achieved by successive governments since 2011 and the complexity of the problems at hand, such scepticism comes easy.

The anti-establishment streak that is part of the populist narrative of several candidates is too Manichaeistic but it accommodates many voters who have no time for nuances.

As defined in the Guardian by Georgia University Professor Cas Mudde, populism is “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’.”

Kais Said, a candidate with wide appeal, promises a bottom-up political process that would vindicate the “unfinished uprising” of “revolutionary youth.” His supporters look up to him to lead them to victory over “corrupt” elements from the previous regime and foreign powers that deprive Tunisia of its natural resources. Often poaching in the Islamists’ backyard, Said presents himself as a defender of “identity.”

An even more populist candidate, Nabil Karoui, head of the Qalb Tounes (Heart of Tunisia) political party, says it is “from the heart” that he speaks to the poor and is better than all others in his ability to “reach their hearts.” He promises to correct the ills of the system that are at the root of so much poverty and marginalisation.

Opinion polls put him in a good position to be among the front-runners. Even though he is in detention on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, his campaign staff seems confident that his incarceration will only boost his electoral fortunes.

Free Destourian Party President Abir Moussi shares some of the attributes of the populists but also those of more conventional candidates. Moussi doesn’t tire from haranguing crowds and clashing with rivals. Voters who are unhappy with their deteriorating quality of life or are yearning for easier, simpler times have swollen the ranks of her party.

Among many of the candidates, not just Moussi, the legacy of Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first president, provides a potent symbol of statesman-like vision and leadership. The founding father’s mythology serves as a shelter in current days of uncertainty.

Under the sway of populists and other anti-establishment candidates, voters do not look at programmes, even when they are fully articulated. They are drawn to emotional gratification in their adversarial contests with other contenders. Instead of fixing what doesn’t work, they promise a total overhaul, the Tunisian Constitution and all. Their supporters look for reinforcement and not for discussion of the issues in social media.

Claudia Alvares, associate professor at Lusofona University in Lisbon, said: “The anger that populist politicians manage to channel is fuelled by social media posts because social media are very permeable to the easy spread of emotion. The result is a rise in the polarisation of political and journalistic discourse.”

Populism might have acquired a negative connotation in modern politics even as it has been associated with the election of a US president and the triumph of Brexit. It is the political equivalent of popular culture as contrasted to highbrow culture. Long gone are the days when popular culture was frowned upon. Populist and anti-establishment politics attract a growing audience that cannot be dismissed as driven by emotionalism and ignorance.

In these Tunisian elections, much of the public looks for personal appeal of fresh faces with comforting discourse. Convincing programmes draw only a few.

In the country’s world of supply and demand, populism and anti-establishment discourse fulfil the need for voters to express their unhappiness about politicians and their policies. Nobody knows where the anti-establishment wave will lead, considering the divided ranks and endless sniping between the more conventional candidates, especially in the modernist camp. Furthermore, if candidates with true ability to “save Tunisia” underestimate the appeal of the populists, they could be in for a September surprise.

Oussama Romdhani is the chief editor of the Arab Weekly.

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 04 September 2019
Word Count: 824
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In September 2017, US President Donald Trump was vowing the “total destruction” of North Korea. Eight months later, he was shaking hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and discerning great economic “potential” in the dictator’s isolated, impoverished country.

In May 2019, Trump was tweeting about “the official end of Iran.” Then, as the G7 summit in France closed August 26, he spoke of Iran’s “tremendous potential” and the possibility of meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rohani.

With apparent friendliness, more extreme than he initially extended to North Korea, Trump even spoke of a “Make Iran Rich Again” programme. “MIRA” has the ring of #MAGA, the “Make America Great Again” slogan that animated Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign. In a sense, this erratic US president appeared to be elevating Iran to a level he hasn’t North Korea.

It’s stuff and nonsense. This is reality television in the biggest, most consequential “Big Brother” house possible but it’s not certain the Iran-US series of the Trump Show will come to pass.

Any comparisons between Trump’s overtures to North Korea and Iran were always superficial. In the days since Trump’s offer of talks, Tehran has, at least overtly, been less obliging than Pyongyang about providing Trump with a short-lived diplomatic triumph.

It wouldn’t involve much, just, say, a photo op but Rohani has demanded that all sanctions be lifted before any meeting can take place. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif dismissed the prospect of a meeting as “unimaginable.”

Chances are the Iranians won’t be as wily — and as smart — as North Korea, which has strung Trump along through three meetings and lots of “beautiful” letters from Kim but no change of behaviour. Is this because the Iranians are especially wise or remarkably foolish?

Neither. The political reality is that Iran is no North Korea. It doesn’t have nuclear weapons, which means Trump can be a tad more dismissive, a point the Iranians recognise and probably rue. It has regular elections, even if circumscribed by the ruling clerics. Rohani cannot make do with a photo op; he must be responsive to public opinion, especially with parliamentary elections in February.

This is a complication but it is partly of Trump’s making. His 2018 unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal and “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran emboldened regime hardliners and weakened the pragmatic Rohani, who pushed the accord in his first term.

The fulminations of Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the Kayhan state-run newspaper, viewed as the hardliners’ mouthpiece, are a good indication of the hostility aroused by Trump’s blithe offer of talks with Rohani. Shariatmadari said any such meeting would be “madness.”

Funnily, Trump’s conciliatory gestures towards Iran illustrate just how different it is from North Korea. Trump previously called Iran a “corrupt dictatorship” but, unlike Kim, Rohani doesn’t have the powers of a dictator. He doesn’t have carte blanche to engage in talks with the country Iran calls the “Great Satan.”

It is Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has the final say. He too, unlike Kim, will eventually give way to a successor, chosen by clerics elected to the Iranian Assembly of Experts. Khamenei has ruled out negotiations with the United States as “double poison,” which dampens Trump’s desire for an easy and eye-catching moment for the history books.

If it happened, it would be an even bigger triumph than the first Trump-North Korea photo op. In June 2018, Trump became the first sitting US president to meet with the leader of North Korea. To meet the Iranian president would top that. After all, the cry of “Death to America!” doesn’t ring out in Pyongyang, as it has in Tehran every Friday since the Islamic revolution of 1979 and former US President Barack Obama, on whose watch the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was negotiated, only ever spoke to the Iranian leader on the phone.

That Trump is eager to be the great dealmaker with Iran is painfully clear. That he will have to tread carefully, so as not to anger Middle Eastern allies as well as sections of his own stridently anti-Iran Republican Party, is also abundantly clear. That Iran is unlikely to play nice, quickly and easily like North Korea, is crystal clear.

At this point, talking about talking about talks may be the safest way forward for everyone concerned.

Rashmee Roshan Lall is a regular columnist for The Arab Weekly. She blogs at www.rashmee.com and is on Twitter @rashmeerl

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 02 September 2019
Word Count: 719
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Today one is inclined to talk of a double impasse for Turkey. The massive Syrian offensive into Idlib province, backed by the Russian military, begins pitting Ankara against Moscow and it may prove the point of those arguing that the Sochi process was stillborn from the onset.

Whatever the case, one point is clear: the last stronghold of jihadist forces has surfaced as the area where Turkish and Syrian-Russian interests will clash.

It can be argued that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not only at odds with the United States. No matter what direction he chooses, he will be only playing for time, nothing more.

He knows the Americans will impose their will in the so-called “safe zone,” mainly to protect their local allies from Turkey. The United States is allied with the Syrian Democratic Forces, a hybrid combat front dominated by the Kurdish fighters in Rojava, north-eastern Syria. These forces will remain a deterrent against the Islamic State and the risk of advances by Iran. It will be also a bargaining chip when the time comes to redesign the Syrian administrative map.

The Russians have not trusted Turkey, especially under Erdogan’s rule. They do not see Erdogan holding to his commitments and still favouring regime change in Syria with hard-line Sunni fighters in mind.

Moscow may have calculated that the standoff between Ankara and Washington over the safe zone has made Turkey more vulnerable. To gain an upper hand over the future of Syria, it initiated a final thrust at the heart of Idlib, disregarding the humanitarian disaster it causes for the civilian population. After all, Russia may have reasoned, after the sale of S-400 missiles to Turkey, it has nothing to lose. Win-win for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Damascus ally.

In Ankara, some pundits close to the Turkish Army say the United States is the real game-setter on the safe zone and some generals are not happy about what they see as the sealing of protection of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units controlling the area. For now, it is only a tension-builder in Ankara. There is not much said about the Syrian offensive and Idlib issue from the same circles.

It has to do with the long-brewing division of views between Erdogan’s camp, which supports the jihadist-dominated Free Syrian Army against Assad’s military, and the camp that includes the secular main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and a tiny Homeland Party, a hardcore, militarist-nationalist group with a strong influence within the Turkish security apparatus and demands, not a retreat from Syria, but to open direct dialogue with the Assad regime.

Divisions in Ankara leave prospects open for a final showdown over who will rule Turkey. Much depends on the pace of developments in the Syrian theatre.

On the surface, there is the Kurdish dimension, which keeps Ankara in convulsions. Stuck in a vicious circle for decades, Turkey’s political class has once more returned to the default position, as the battle against Turkey’s Kurds intensifies.

The unlawful removal of three elected Kurdish mayors by Erdogan has shown that the two alliances that competed against each other in recent local elections — “Public,” bringing together Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party with the ultranationalist National Movement Party and “Nation,” CHP taking side with the offshoot of the ultranationalist Iyi — have not been that far from each other, regarding the Kurdish issue. Opposition parties have given the impression they are closer to supporting the oppressive state than trying to salvage whatever remains of democracy.

If Erdogan knows anything, it is that he can extend his power and control the state apparatus as long as he can keep the secular-nationalist opposition bloc closer to his rule, by continuing to demonise the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). He thrives on this consensus.

With a double impasse in Syria, the appointment of government trustees in three major Kurdish municipalities added more elements to the social turmoil in Turkey. It is apparent that the move was premeditated, aimed at weakening the HDP and alienating some reformist circles within the CHP. A closure case against HDP is also on the agenda.

Another objective could be to provoke street violence or attacks by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) at home or against Turkish Army posts in Syria — just to create pretexts for countermeasures.

In any case, the removal of mayors, who were elected with more than 53% of the vote, is a blow to the will of the voters. Not only has it hampered prospects for a renewed peace process between Ankara and the PKK, it has acted as a silencer for optimists arguing that the process was only a matter of when, not if.

Erdogan and his partner in the alliance, Devlet Bahceli, have shown there is no room for wishful thinking or for hope. If anything, the brutal domestic offensive against the HDP should tell the world that, as long as Erdogan is in power and backed by extreme hardliners in key positions, there will never be a peaceful solution of the Kurdish issue.

So, we should not be talking of double impasse but rather of a triple impasse.

Yavuz Baydar is a senior Turkish columnist, and news analyst. A founding member of the Platform for Independent Journalism (P24) in Istanbul, he has been reporting on Turkey and monitoring media issues since 1980. A European Press Prize Laureate in 2014, he is also the winner of Germany’s ‘Journalistenpreis’ in 2018.

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 26 August 2019
Word Count: 856
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After the thwarted gun attack August 10 on a mosque in Norway, an American cartoon from a few days earlier seems acutely perceptive and seriously unfunny. “Can you step to the side?” asks a man wearing a stars and stripes hat to a gun-toting, heavily muscled giant in a red cap emblazoned with a swastika. “I’m trying to spot Muslim and Mexican terrorists.”

The cartoon appeared in USA Today after the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, where the killer allegedly targeted visually distinct Hispanic people he regarded invaders.

It captured the absurdity of the United States’ continuing focus on jihadist terrorism when it is white nationalism that may be the more lethal emerging threat, not just in the United States but across other parts of the Western world. From New Zealand to Norway to North America, white extremism is on the rise.

The seriousness of the threat can be judged from the way it has been described by several former high-ranking American counterterrorism officials. After the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, they issued a statement saying domestic terrorism should be treated “as high a priority as countering international terrorism has become since 9/11.”

That would make sense. Data compiled by the New America think-tank indicate that Islamist terrorism claimed approximately 104 lives on US soil since 2002. Far-right extremism was responsible for the death of 109 people in the same period.

In other words, the United States and the wider world are faced with not one but two destructive hatreds, each premised on its own perverted logic of a cosmic war for dominance and survival. Both hatreds are converging in terms of toll, their ability to spread terror and online recruiting.

The convergence says something significant. Those who doubt the white nationalist far right is a mortal threat in and to the West or as great a danger as Islamist jihadists must at least accept they are both equally violent.

Both rely on myth-making and historical reinvention. Jihadists say they are fighting to return to a glorious Islamic past. White supremacists reach back into an imagined idea of the Middle Ages, when Europe was wholly white and Christian, had repulsed Muslim efforts to dominate and was thereby a model for 21st-century North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Historian Kathleen Belew, author of “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America,” recently noted that it was best not to divide white extremism “into anti-immigrant, racist, anti-Muslim or antisemitic attacks. True, they are these things but they are also connected with one another through a broader white power ideology.”

The jihadists and white extremists differ mainly in terms of area of operation and standard operating procedures. Jihadists operate in locations all over the world and variously employ suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices, trucks, knives and guns.

White extremists generally operate in majority-white countries. They use guns to kill those they consider the enemy — Hispanics in El Paso; Muslims in two Christchurch mosques; a Jewish congregation in Pittsburgh; and African-American worshippers in a Charleston church. The man who ploughed his car into a crowd of protesters after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville two years ago was a bit of an aberration. The white extremist’s tool of choice is the gun.

There is one other crucial way in which white nationalism is distinct from jihadism. It may be the stronger of the two. It is seen to be validated by the rhetoric of powerful politicians, not least the US president, Hungary’s prime minister and Italy’s deputy prime minister.

Furthermore, fewer law enforcement resources are devoted to tracking, disrupting and investigating white extremist cells and conspiracies. Punishment is not always easy either, especially in the United States where federal prosecutors are severely limited in how to deal with white nationalist terrorism. Such acts can, at best, be tried as hate crimes because a US statute defines domestic terrorism but carries no penalties.

The white jihadism is a truly terrible force and it is with us.

Rashmee Roshan Lall is a regular columnist for The Arab Weekly. She blogs at www.rashmee.com and is on Twitter @rashmeerl

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 19 August 2019
Word Count: 666
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The Trump administration has decided on the Temporary Protected Status given by the United States to approximately 7,000 Syrians. The designation, granted by the US Department of Homeland Security, is meant to help people from countries affected by war, environmental disaster or other extraordinary conditions. The 18-month extension announced August 1 merely defers the uncertainty.

It stays in place until conditions in the refugees’ home countries improve but for the Syrians in Donald Trump’s America, their legal right to stay is uncertain.

In the name of getting tough on fraudulent claims for refuge, the Trump administration has been making it harder for people fleeing violence and trafficking to enter the United States and lodge asylum claims.

Trump recently met a Yazidi woman from Iraq and a Rohingya Muslim, along with other victims of religious persecution from around the world. It was a set-piece event and there is little sign Trump would do anything to provide refuge.

Reports stated that the administration was considering a total shutdown of refugee admissions next year, a policy change that could affect thousands of Iraqis. The US Department of Defence has championed their admission because they risked their lives assisting US forces.

The issue of migrants seeking asylum is hardly less fraught in Europe. The European Union has promised to check into a BBC investigation into the brutal treatment of migrants trying to enter the bloc via Croatia.

The report said that even a minor — 17-year-old Mustafa from Egypt — was not spared a beating. He and other migrants were robbed by Croatian police, who are apparently engaging in so-called “pushback” operations meant to prevent people from seeking asylum in the European Union.

Is the idea of asylum and refuge all but over? It was always subject to an individual state’s willingness to comply with the 1951 Geneva Convention, which defined the status of refugees, set out rights of individuals granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations.

The convention is legally binding but compliance is not enforceable by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. That agency cannot make Trump accept asylum-seekers or grant them refuge. It cannot force the United States to maintain protections for Syrian refugees already in the country. Were the United States to renege on its promises of resettlement of Iraqi translators, there is nothing anyone can realistically do about it.

The post-World War II international consensus on asylum and refuge was always about goodwill. The rights promulgated by the convention were interpreted in very different ways by disparate countries but the overall thrust of the convention has generally been accepted. Until now.

A more piecemeal approach to refugees has been in evidence in recent years. Bangladesh allowed hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from neighbouring Myanmar to remain on its soil but initially refused to recognise them as refugees. Last year, the United Arab Emirates, which is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, regularised the residency status of Syrians in the country. However, the Emirates uses bespoke terminology for the situation and the remedies it offers.

As for the United States, since Trump became president denial rates for asylum-seekers and visas for victims of human trafficking have skyrocketed. US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Jessica Collins recently explained it as a response to a grim “reality.” She said: “Our asylum system is being abused by those seeking economic opportunity, not those fleeing persecution.”

The same sort of view is increasingly taking hold in Europe, all of which suggests waning support for an internationally accepted obligation to provide a safe haven to those fleeing conflict.

What comes next? What should come next? What might conceivably replace the old order? How to fashion a new paradigm?

One thing is clear. If the rich Western world no longer feels obliged to provide refuge to desperate people from poorer, conflict-ridden countries at the very least it should cease destabilising Arab and African countries for geopolitical gain and the profits of defence manufacturers.

Second, rich countries should stop the continuing impoverishment of the global south. This occurs mainly through the machinations of large Western multinational companies, which deprive governments of poor countries of tax revenue by means of remarkable accounting contortions.

The United States has long opposed progressive changes to global rules that would force multinationals to pay tax where economic activity is actually occurring but the so-called Mauritius Leaks, a recently released cache of 200,000 files from a law firm in the Indian Ocean tax haven of Mauritius, showed that billions of dollars in revenue were being withheld by Western companies from some of the world’s poorest governments.

We are at a fork in the road on the issue of asylum and refuge. Those who do not want to provide succour have the right to refuse it. Equally, they shouldn’t be stoking the conditions that create refugees in the hundreds of thousands.

Rashmee Roshan Lall is a regular columnist for The Arab Weekly. She blogs at www.rashmee.com and is on Twitter @rashmeerl

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 05 August 2019
Word Count: 807
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It was April 5, 1946, when the USS Missouri — a major battleship remembered as the setting that formally ended World War II — anchored in Bosporus, Istanbul. It had sailed from New York on a special mission — carrying back the remains of Mehmet Munir Ertegun, ambassador of Turkey, who was a dean of diplomatic corps in Washington.

The visit had a higher symbolism and would come to be remembered as a breaking point. It marked the beginning of a new world — marked with a long Cold War all over it — taking shape and the value the United States placed on Turkey.

Six years later, February 18, 1952, Turkey had officially become a member of NATO. In 1954, a special bilateral treaty gave the United States the right to establish bases and keep military staff on Turkish soil.

In a way, July 12, 2019, could come to be seen as significant as the visit of the American warship 73 years ago.

As the first shipments of the sophisticated Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile defence systems arrived in Murted Air Base in Ankara, the sense of a historic shift hangs in the air.

Turkey’s insistence on acquiring the batteries from a NATO adversary, defying the basic principles of “interoperability” of the alliance, despite open and unified threats from Washington on severe sanctions, raises inevitably the question of whether Ankara is determined in deorbiting from the alliance for good.

Comparisons between USS Missouri and S-400 are not far-fetched. History is filled with such events. Perceived threats from Joseph Stalin’s Russia pushed Turkey to the West then. Now, in one way or another, it is the other way around.

Nobody can argue that the decision-making that led to the Turkish obstinacy to proceed with buying the Russian missile defence systems was based on reflexes.

The underlying reason seems apparent: Since the collapse of the Warsaw Bloc and end of Cold War, Turkey bears a major part of the responsibility for an alienation from NATO. For three decades its discontent has been brewing along with its inability to transform into a democratic state, which failed to develop into a predictable, accountable, rights-based one.

Turkey has insisted on the years-long argument that it was a special case requesting special treatment, refusing to handle its bleeding issue — the Kurds. Coupled with the failed attempts to meet the Copenhagen Criteria and a myopic EU leadership, it has perceived the West as the one discriminating.

When the ruling Justice and Development Party and its leader, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, proved unable to unify the society under benevolent political management, the country became a ship adrift.

When its rudder was broken by an attempted coup, Turkey in 2016 turned into a state, if not a rogue one, seeking a port where autocracy was the norm. This is where those ruling in Ankara see the interests of the country and themselves.

The rift that developed between Washington and Ankara has a background that strengthens the thesis of a historic breaking point. Since 1989, it was the — then mighty — Turkish generals who felt their long-hidden frustration with the United States come to the surface. They developed theories that it was the Americans who pushed Turkish Islamists more and more to the centre stage of politics in Turkey.

In their dark illusion, they remained in denial that the profound corruption that rotted the Turkish political class and bureaucracy was the reason the voters sought alternatives. When Erdogan and his party rose to power, allying themselves with the Fethullah Gulen Movement, they were subjected to revenge by trials and a slow-motion demotion from the centre stage. The military, whose main bulk had always American-sceptic features, didn’t blame Islamists for the mistreatments they faced but the Americans.

Paradoxically, after a while, Erdogan — once an adversary of the officers — came to believe the same. When he fell out with Gulen, he faced one challenge after another, with the murky coup attempt in 2016 as the peak point. Erdogan may have been blaming the Gulenists for the act but he believes the Americans are seeking to topple him from power.

The profound disbelief — if not hostility — towards the United States is the force that brought the so-called Eurasianist generals and Erdogan together, approximately since 2014-15. Although this alliance that supports the presidential system may be short-lived, the challenge to NATO and rapprochement with Russia are its products.

Turkey is determined to face the consequences now expected — mandated US sanctions and farther marginalisation within NATO — but the complexities of its objectives will remain: Erdogan and his Eurasianist allies in the administration have different views on Syria, jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood.

It should be argued that with the S-400 components having landed on Turkish soil, adventurism in Ankara has escalated much more dramatically. Turkey is facing, layer upon layer, a deepening crisis that will shatter its domestic political ground. Let’s see what the opposition can do.

Yavuz Baydar is a senior Turkish columnist, and news analyst. A founding member of the Platform for Independent Journalism (P24) in Istanbul, he has been reporting on Turkey and monitoring media issues since 1980. A European Press Prize Laureate in 2014, he is also the winner of Germany’s ‘Journalistenpreis’ in 2018. 

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 16 July 2019
Word Count: 817
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