18. June 2010 by admin.

Turkey: Escalating Tension Over the Flotilla Probe

June 15, 2010 

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses 

the Turkish parliament June 15

A spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry said June 15 that Israel’s decision to pursue an internal investigation on the May 31 raid on the Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza fell short of Turkish and international expectations. The statement follows a June 14 announcement by the United States that it will support Israel’s internal probe, with a U.S. State Department spokesman saying Israel has the institutions and capabilities to conduct a credible, impartial and transparent investigation.

By not supporting the Turkish demand for an international inquiry, Washington has put Ankara in a difficult position. Turkey must choose between maintaining its credibility as a growing regional power by taking a hard line against the Israeli raid, or taking a credibility hit for the sake of preserving its long-standing though frayed security and diplomatic ties with Israel.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had previously said that his country did not trust Israel to conduct an impartial review of the incident, and Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Turkey would not rule out severing ties if three demands — an international probe, a public Israeli apology, and an end to the Gaza blockade — were not met. Turkey has been seeking American support to press the Israelis into heeding these demands, but Ankara realizes that Washington has to balance between Turkey and Israel. If the United States cannot be relied upon to pressure Israel on meeting the demands, Ankara will have to find some lever to do so itself.

One such lever may be military and intelligence cooperation, which Israel has historically relied upon. Turkey has already downgraded cooperation, and rumors have surfaced that Israeli intelligence operatives may be expelled from a radar post on Turkish soil near the border with Iran. The threat of cutting off such security ties completely could be enough to push Israel into accepting at least some of Ankara’s conditions, without resorting to the much more serious severing of diplomatic ties, which Turkey hopes to preserve. Turkey’s influence in large part stems from it being the lone power in the region with ties to nearly everyone, including powers antagonistic toward one another, such as the Israelis, the Syrians and the Iranians.

Ankara has seen its influence grow significantly in recent years, both regionally and internationally. As such, it believes its credibility hinges on extracting concessions from Israel to demonstrate that its concerns are not easily dismissed. This is all the more important because Russia and France have also supported the Israeli move toward an internal probe, which undermines the Turkish claim that their stance has broad international support. This is the same position Turkey was put in when Turkey and Brazil were the only members in the U.N. Security Council to veto a fresh resolution on Iran sanctions, and Turkey has since been battling a perception spreading among U.S. policy circles that Turkey is an “unreliable” partner that has turned its back on the West. Now that the United States and Israel have apparently dismissed Turkey’s demand for an international probe, the question moving forward is whether Turkey will risk its credibility in backing off this particular demand, or if it can manage to save face by using its intelligence cooperation with Israel to pressure the Israeli government into making an overt concession elsewhere.

Posted via web from Jay’s Blogs

Posted in Turkey, Israel | Print | 1 Comment »

9. June 2010 by admin.

Next Steps for Ankara and Moscow

June 8, 2010 

WORLD LEADERS FROM ACROSS EURASIA and the Middle East will be gathering in Istanbul Tuesday for a Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit hosted by the Turkish leadership. Some of the high-profile attendees include Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar al Assad, Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

With Turkish-Israeli relations in serious jeopardy in the wake of the flotilla crisis, the war in Afghanistan in flux, Moscow contemplating a shift in foreign policy with the West and the United States trying to juggle all of the above, the geopolitical intensity surrounding the summit is all too apparent.

The headlining issue of the conference will of course be the Turkish-Israeli flotilla crisis. Not surprisingly, Israel decided to send a lower level diplomat from its consulate in Turkey rather than having a senior official come under fire by the Turkish hosts. Turkey will use the CICA platform — as well as a summit beginning Wednesday in Istanbul with Arab foreign ministers as part of the Turkish-Arab Cooperation Forum — to highlight what Turkey sees as the gross illegality of Israel’s actions that resulted in the death of eight Turkish citizens in international waters off the Gaza coast. Turkey does not intend to let this issue rest. The issue is not even really about Gaza, anymore. On the contrary, Turkey views its current crisis with Israel as an opportunity to accelerate its regional rise to fame.

For this plan to work, Turkey needs to go beyond the public censures and pressure Israel into making a very public concession to Ankara. The problem for Turkey is that there is no Arab consensus to build on in forging this campaign against Israel. The Arab states are happy to engage in the rhetoric alongside Turkey, but when it comes to taking action against Israel, the impetus falls flat. Though Turkey will attempt to galvanize the Arabs at the Wednesday summit, it is not clear to STRATFOR that Ankara will be able to overcome the challenge of Arab fractiousness and weakness in formulating its response to Israel.

Turkey will also be spending some quality time during the CICA summit with the Iranian president. Iran is happy to see the flotilla crisis deflect attention away from its own nuclear controversy with the West, but it’s also not enthused about Turkey soaking up the spotlight and hijacking Iran’s role in defending the Palestinians. Wanting their piece of the action, the Iranians have announced that they will send their own aid ships to the Gaza coast, while privately hinting that they will try to score a moral victory in attempting to recreate the Mavi Marmara incident by provoking Israeli forces into an attack. An Iranian-provoked confrontation with Israel in the Mediterranean is precisely what the Turks cannot afford. Such a move would draw the United States to Israel’s side and undercut Turkish momentum in a snap. The Turks will use the summit as an opportunity to share some of the spotlight with Ahmadinejad and thus try to keep Tehran from scuttling its own agenda, but Iranian tenacity on this issue may also be hard to beat.

Turkey is not the only one with its hands full at this summit. Putin has a slew of private meetings lined up with the leaders of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. His sideline meetings in Istanbul come after Russia held a week of meetings in Germany and the Baltic states and ahead of a visit to France. Rather than an attempt to rack up frequent flyer miles, the prime minister’s busy agenda stems from a major shift Russia is seriously contemplating making in its foreign policy toward the West.

The strategic thrust behind the shift is a Russian desire to obtain Western technology to modernize the Russian economy in everything from energy to space to telecommunications. Russia has internally acknowledged that for it to get its hands on this technology –- and ensure Russia’s competitiveness as a global power in the years to come –- it needs to appear more pragmatic to the West in making its foreign policy moves. This doesn’t mean Russia is ready to be any less nationalistic, just a little more willing to strike deals to get what it wants. The only reason Russia can even think about making such a dramatic shift is because it has spent the past several years carefully laying the groundwork in the former Soviet Union states in preparation for this very moment.

Russia wants to make sure that before it follows through with this plan, it gets some assurances from Europe and the United States that they will reward Russian cooperation with the technological cooperation Moscow is seeking and respect the sphere of influence Russia has recreated. At the same time, Putin -– acting as the enforcer on this issue -– is talking to the former Soviet states to make sure they understand that any Russian opening to the West is not a signal of Russia relenting in its former Soviet space, but a sign of Moscow dealing with the West on its own terms and in the time of its choosing. In other words, Putin wants to make sure Ukraine, Georgia, the Central Asians and the Baltic states don’t get any ideas about trying to flirt with the West the second they see Moscow shift.

While Putin delivers this stern reminder to Ukraine and the Central Asians, he will also be meeting separately with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Russians are wary of Turkey’s regional resurgence and want to ensure that the two don’t bump heads in pursuing their respective agendas. But the Russians have a plan for this, too. By regularly waving deals on energy and peace agreements in the Caucasus, Russia is keeping its relationship with Turkey on an even keel. Putin is not (yet), however, scheduled to meet with the Iranian president, something that will not go unnoticed in Tehran. The Iranians, picking up on the leaks of a coming Russian foreign policy shift, have already spent the past weeks publicizing their ire against Moscow and warning the Russians against turning on them for a grand bargain with the United States. The Russians are not at the point of throwing Iran under the bus (Iran is still a very useful lever for them in dealing with Washington), but it doesn’t hurt Moscow to keep the Iranians on edge as Russia feels out the West and contemplates a major foreign policy shift that may be on the horizon.

Posted via web from Jay’s Blogs

Posted in Turkey, Geopolitics, Russia | Print | No Comments »

12. March 2010 by admin.

Protesters in Istanbul burn a Chinese flag during a demonstration after a Friday prayer.

Summary

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a July 10 televised address, labeled the Chinese crackdown against Uighurs in the northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang a “genocide.” Erdogan’s statement is the latest in a stream of bold moves by Ankara to internationalize Beijing’s struggle with its minority Uighur population. Turkey’s interest in the violence between ethnic Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs is motivated in part by domestic politics, but is also a manifestation of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s contentious desire to push a pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic agenda.

Analysis

In a televised address July 10, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented on the Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang province, stating: “The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There’s no point in interpreting this otherwise.”

Given the mass killings of Armenians by Turks during the Ottoman Empire, “genocide” is a loaded term for the Turks, and not one they throw around freely. Erdogan’s comment is the latest in a stream of provocative statements aiming to draw international attention to Beijing’s attempts to contain ethnic unrest in Xinjiang. China, highly vexed by Turkey’s actions, has already dismissed Turkey’s attempt to take the Xinjiang riots to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC); Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang issued a statement asserting that the Chinese government had taken decisive measures according to the law, and that the unrest is a purely internal Chinese affair. Qin emphasized that the issue was not one that demanded the attention of the UNSC, despite Turkey’s claims.

Ethnic riots between dominant Han Chinese and Muslim Uighur minorities in Urumqi in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region have so far killed 156 people and left more 1,000 injured, according to Chinese reports. The international response to date has been relatively mixed and muted. Russia has come out strongly in defense of China’s territorial integrity and the state’s forceful crackdown, while Europea and the United States have cautiously called on China to respect human rights in putting down the unrest. Turkey, however, has gone above and beyond any other country in internationalizing the issue and in condemning Beijing, raising questions over what is truly driving Ankara’s agenda.

Turkey has not always been this vocal about its support for the Uighurs, an ethnically Turkic group that speaks a dialect similar to Turkish and a fraction of which considers itself part of a greater Eastern Turkestan region of Central Asia. Though Beijing’s repressive policies toward the Uighurs have long been a sticking point in Chinese-Turkish relations, the Turkish government typically has restrained itself and acted indifferent when China carried out periodic crackdowns in Xinjiang, in the interest of maintaining a healthy relationship with Beijing.

Just five days before the riots in Urumqi broke out, Turkish President Abdullah Gul visited the Xinjiang region after visiting Beijing in the first trip to China a Turkish president has made in 14 years. While there, Gul said that China’s Uighurs represented the “friendship bridge” between China and Turkey and would allow the two countries to further their relations.

It only took a few days for that friendship bridge to collapse. When the riots erupted, the Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned a senior Chinese diplomat and issued a relatively calm response July 7 with a statement that read: “It is our expectation that the persons who are responsible for these incidents will be found as soon as possible and brought to justice. We believe that the necessary measures will be taken to prevent this kind of incident in the future in China, a country on the way to becoming more stable and prosperous. We extend our condolences to the people of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in particular and to the people of China in general, to the families of those who lost their lives and wish speedy recovery to those who were injured.”

Domestic politics then began to take over, as several Turkish nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups, pro-government business unions and nationalist opposition parties began calling for boycotts of Chinese goods and criticized the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for keeping quiet while Turkic Uighurs were getting killed by Chinese security forces. Erdogan on July 8 then denounced Beijing, calling the Uighurs Turkic brethren of Turkey and saying he would take the issue to the UNSC, using Turkey’s position as a non-permanent member of the council and as president of the council for the month of July. A day later, Erdogan announced that his government would grant a visa to Rebiya Kadeer, a wealthy and prominent Uighur political activist, if she chose to travel to Turkey. Kadeer had said in a July 8 interview that her visa applications to Turkey in 2006 and 2007 had been denied. Apparently, the Turkish government no longer feels as compelled to respect Beijing’s wishes in keeping the Uighur issue out of the political limelight and is even ready to give the stage to a well-known activist like Kadeer. Finally, on July 10, Erdogan brought the issue to a new level when he called the Chinese crackdown a “genocide” — a term that even the most radical Uighur separatists would not use lightly.

Turkey’s bold criticism of Beijing brings to light a number of contradictions. The Turks’ ethnic ties to China’s Uighur population may justify, in Ankara’s mind, a defense of Turkic Uighurs against the Chinese state. However, the Turkish government’s concerns are just as large as Beijing’s when it comes to maintaining territorial integrity and containing separatist movements, whether Eastern Turkestani or Kurdish.

The AKP also has a strong economic interest in China, which is what primarily drove Gul to visit China recently with a large business delegation to encourage more Chinese investment into Turkey. Turkey has a large trade deficit with China that works in Beijing’s favor; according to Chinese customs statistics, bilateral trade between the two countries, which mostly consists of raw materials, totaled $12.57 billion in 2008, with Chinese exports to Turkey reaching $10.59 billion and Turkish exports to China only reaching $1.98 billion. Turkish exports have already taken a major hit over the past year as Turkey’s main trading partners in Europe have struggled to cope with the global recession and sustain demand for Turkish exports, making it all the more imperative for Turkey to seek out new markets in places like China. However, in this case, the Uighurs were paramount to Turkish economic interests in China. Even Turkish Trade and Industry Minister Nihat Ergun implied on July 9 that Turkish consumers should boycott Chinese goods over the Xinjiang riots, stating that Turks should reconsider their values if the country that they buy goods from does not respect human rights.

Domestic politics has certainly played a role in the AKP’s increasingly hard-line attitude toward Beijing, but the Turkish response to the Xinjiang riots is also a reflection of the AKP’s broader pan-Turkic and pan-Islamic agenda to expand Turkish clout in its traditional spheres of influence, a policy embodied by Erdogan and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.

Turkey’s unusually bold criticism of Israel during the Israeli military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in early 2008 was the Islamist-rooted AKP’s way of broadening its appeal in the Arab and wider Islamic world. By taking a harsh stand against its traditional ally in the region, Turkey sent a message that it would be a defender of Muslims across the region, allowing Ankara to gain esteem from its Arab neighbors who had only just started to pick up on Turkey’s regional resurgence.

While the Islamic image has worked well for Turkey in its Arab backyard, the Turks have been struggling to garner the same level of support in the Caucasus and Central Asia, where Turkic-speaking populations are spread throughout Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In these regions, Turkey has relied more heavily on its Turkic identity to connect with the Turkic populations and establish a stronger foothold in its near abroad. However, the AKP has also overestimated the extent to which others identify themselves as cousins of Turkey, particularly in the post-Soviet space where the AKP’s Islamic branding and pan-Turkic movement tend to alienate post-Communist regimes that do not identify as strongly with Islam and fear a Turkish imperial agenda. This is mostly due to the issue of time. Turkey — as the Ottoman Empire — ruled much of the Middle East up until the end of World War I. But the Turkic groups of Central Asia have not been united with their “brothers” in Turkey for the better part of a millennium, and even then not under the rubric of what could be considered a single government.

In China, the Turkic Uighurs, while grateful for a foreign backer, were already suspect of Turkey’s intentions when Gul visited Xinjiang province. Turkey has had little influence amongst the Eastern Turkestan movement and, until now, has been more inclined to remain indifferent to the Uighurs’ plight. Even now, Turkish support for the Uighurs does not stretch beyond rhetoric. Taking the case to the UNSC may draw international attention to the issue, much to Beijing’s discontent, but any action in the UNSC is highly unlikely with Russia and China carrying veto power.

Nonetheless, Turkey seems prepared to risk a serious breach in relations and economic links with a major power like China for the sake of promoting its pan-Turkic/Islamic brand. The AKP may well believe this is the path toward regional expansion, but once the Turks go beyond the Arab world in pushing this brand, they are only more likely to encounter greater resistance.

“This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR“

Posted in Turkey, China, Islam | Print | No Comments »