Soli Ozel: Fourth Dimension

Israel attacked the flagship of a flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza in international waters and killed nine pro-Palestinian activists on May 31st. Since most of the passengers on the ship Mavi Marmara were Turkish, this meant that the Israeli army killed Turkish civilians. To be fair, the Israelis warned repeatedly before the flotilla took off and during its journey that they would not allow the ship to sail to Gaza. But probably even the most pessimistic observers would not have expected the attack, worthy of a rogue state, with no concern for either international law, human life, or for Israel’s own image in the international arena. Upon the return of passengers, Turkish papers published harrowing accounts of the raid and what happened inside the ship.

The already tense relations between Turkey and Israel quickly deteriorated further. Israel at first detained the passengers on all six ships and declared that it was going to try some of them, a position that the Turkish government said was unacceptable. The next night the Israelis announced that they were releasing all detainees. According to newspaper reports in Turkey, the foreign minister told Hillary Clinton that Turkey would cut off diplomatic relations with Israel unless its demands, that included an official apology from Israel, were met.

By early Thursday morning all Turkish detainees except for two who were in critical condition and some members of the group from other nationalities flew to Turkey. In mass demonstrations and at the funeral services for the nine, strong anti-Israeli slogans were chanted. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated that “this irresponsible, heedless, unlawful attitude that defies any human virtue should definitely, but definitely, be punished … No one should dare to challenge Turkey or test her patience for that the strength of Turkey’s animosity is as strong as the value of its friendship.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the attacks against his country an “international offensive of hypocrisy.” The Israeli public, sharing his sentiments, took a strongly anti-Turkish stance.

It is safe to argue that Israeli-Turkish relations will not be the same again soon, if ever. Certainly not, so long as the current Israeli government remains in place. After all, civilian blood has been spilled by Israel’s military, although the two sides are not at war. The botched raid is a turning point for this partnership that was valuable for the United States.

Partially, this is the result of the fact that the conditions that led to the flourishing of these relations a decade and a half ago are no longer valid. The balance of power between the two partners as well as the strategic framework in the Middle East within which the two parties operated has changed drastically. Turkey, unlike Israel, is a beneficiary of such changing conditions.

Because the ruling party of Turkey (Justice and Development Party, or AKP) belongs to Turkey’s Islamist tradition, many pundits see this turn of events as a function of an ideological drift in Turkish foreign policy. After all Turkey took a violently critical position against Israel’s Operation Cast Lead: the prime minister walked out on a panel in Davos after telling the Israeli president that his people knew well how to kill people. Turkish televison shows depicted the Israelis as heartless monsters capable of killing toddlers in Gaza.

Furthermore, Mr. Erdoğan attacked Israel and its policies in Gaza on every opportunity he could find. The relations came close to a breaking point earlier in the year when Israel’s deputy foreign minister tried to humiliate the Turkish ambassador by sitting him on a low sofa and then bragging about this before television cameras. That crisis was brought to an end only after Israel issued a formal apology.

I would argue that most of these incidents — including the latest, bloody one, which may have significantly changed the nature of Turkish-Israeli relations — stem from structural causes. The two countries have diverging visions for the Middle East and their policy preferences and approaches are increasingly irreconcilable. There is also a sense of competition as Turkey increasingly sees itself as a regional power and seeks to be America’s main partner in the region. Under the rubric of “model partnership” introduced by President Obama, Ankara believes that it has a chance to forge such a relation that will inevitably come at the expense of Israel’s most favored and protected status.

Turkey wishes to have a Middle East order that is based on economic integration, political stability, and peace. Achieving peace is seen as the precondition of political stability and economic integration that would consolidate that stability. Ankara believes Israel’s current policies are blocking this path. Whereas Israel is against the lifting of the siege of Gaza, Turkey believes it must be ended and a way must be found to engage Hamas in the political process. In pursuit of that goal, though, Turkey slides too far towards Hamas.

Prime Minister Erdoğan strongly reiterated his view that Hamas is a resistance movement and not a terrorist organization and that it won elections fair and square and that it ought to be treated accordingly. Such rhetoric, along with the Islamic undertones of his speeches and the relentless attacks on Israel, helped bring about the usual questions about the Islamization of foreign policy. Rhetoric notwithstanding, ideology is not the essence of the policy that Turkey pursues: it is the pursuit of regional hegemony that drives Turkish diplomacy. Still, while the Turkish government takes risks to open some space for Hamas to be engaged in the political game, until today Hamas had done nothing, such as releasing the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to the Turks, to boost Turkey’s position.

For Israel, Turkey had lately become a problematic partner. Not only does Turkey continue to engage Iran, despite criticism that Tehran uses it to gain time for further enrichment, it also keeps bringing up Israel’s nuclear arsenal every chance it gets. The recent decision of the nuclear conference that invited Israel to open its nuclear program to scrutiny proved that Turkey’s persistence on this matter paid off.

In this light, the Israeli raid on the flotilla is seen in Turkey as an attempt by the current Israeli government to send a clear message of its discomfort with Turkey. Since Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who consistently argued that relations with Turkey were of utmost importance, masterminded the operation, many Turks took the raid to be a deliberately hostile act that resulted from a strategic decision by the Israelis to deny the Turks their goals.

The operation got strong condemnation from the world community despite reservations expressed by the nature and intentions of the main Turkish sponsor of the flotilla. Turkey got what it wanted but at an intolerable cost. In the wake of the bloody event, the siege of Gaza is back on the world’s agenda. Israel has lost more legitimacy but Turkey also lost its status as a mediator between Israel and Arab parties. The all-important Ankara-Tel Aviv axis is in disrepair, if not broken.

This should be of some concern for the United States, which always supported and promoted this particular relationship. The mood in Turkey is furiously anti-Israeli and the Israeli public appears no less incensed about Turkey. A member of the ruling party in Turkey suggested that the escalation may lead to the annulment of all bilateral military agreements between the two countries.

Should the current Israeli government fall, the relations might have a chance to start a long process of recuperation. American diplomacy should spend more time and energy in helping repair this alignment, the precondition for which is the lifting of the Gaza siege and a serious peace process. Both for Western interests and the long-term stability of the region, such a restoration would be most desirable.

Whether or not it can be attainable after this bloody encounter, however, remains to be seen. 

The Turkish foreign minister spent about two and a half hours briefing editors and columnists last Tuesday on the joint declaration signed in Tehran between Iran, Brazil, and Turkey. The deal, reached after eighteen hours of negotiations, resembled a similar agreement from last October that the Iranians first accepted and then rejected.

The foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, presented his case in detail and reiterated that his government kept in touch with the US, as did the Brazilians, whom the Iranians said they would consider to be a mediator. Referring to a letter that President Obama sent to the Brazilian president and the Turkish prime minister, Davutoğlu argued that the deal satisfied all of the United States’ conditions: that 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium be transferred out of Iran (in this case, to Turkey), that this transfer be done all at once, and that the fuel rods would be given to Iran within a year.

For the Turkish contingent this was a good deal. The hard work of gaining the trust of the Iranians over the past few years, when Turkey was seen as an apologist for Iran, had paid off. The Iranians trusted the Turks and this is why, in the end, they signed the deal. It must have helped that the Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdoğan, told the Iranians that he would not join President Lula of Brazil in Tehran if the Iranians had nothing new to offer. Since Erdoğan indicated that he believed the Iranian program was for civilian purposes only — and repeatedly referenced Israel’s nuclear arms every time he spoke on the Iran issue — his message must have gotten the attention it deserved.

In the end, the Turks and the Brazilians became convinced that this deal could preclude the need for new sanctions. The agreement put a timetable in place and laid out well established principles; its language observed the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but also recognized Iran’s right to enrich uranium under the NPT. At the very least, getting Iran’s signature on a formal international document for the first time in a long time was quite important in itself. Davutoğlu was particularly fond of telling his audience at the press conference that he spoke with all the relevant parties in Iran every time he went there in search of a diplomatic solution that would avoid sanctions.

Turkey devoted a great deal of diplomacy to such a solution because while it objects to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, it also opposes the military option and stands against sanctions that would be detrimental to its economic interests. Ankara not only brokered a deal that helped itself, but one that the United States and the West should not have any reason to protest — and which could very well pave the way for a more comprehensive diplomatic resolution of the issue.

That the Obama administration strongly disagreed became clear within hours of the news. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Russia and China were on board for a new sanctions package that would be taken to the UN Security Council. For Clinton this was the best answer to what Iran had been trying to do in the last few days. This not only showed that the US didn’t approve of the Tehran agreement, but that it probably had never expected the Iranians to sign it at all. That a couple of mid-level powers were taking matters into their own hands on an issue that occupied center stage in American diplomatic efforts surely added to Washington’s annoyance. Last but not least, Iran said that it would continue to enrich uranium as well.

Looking at the way the press in the US covered this story, I was deeply surprised to see pundits and other members of the American news media once again commenting on world events as if the Iraq War had never happened. Without recognizing how damaged American credibility has become as a result of the war — no less because it so egregiously abused the UN process through misinformation, bullying, and manipulation — it will be difficult for the American public to appreciate what other countries are doing.

After all, the Iraq War was disastrous for the Middle East. It was the Bush administratiom’s rejection of a diplomatic deal by Iran that pushed the scales in favor of Ahmedinejad and an accelerated nuclear enrichment program. It is the Iraq War that made Iran as powerful in Iraq and the Gulf as it is today. So it is difficult to convince regional powers not to speak of populations of the wisdom of American diplomacy all the time.

The historical role of the Obama administration is at least in part the restoration of American credibility. But American and Western credibility cannot be put back in place in total disregard for what other interested parties are saying. If indeed a new world order is in the offing, this will require more participation between great powers and mid-ranking ones. That Iran is not a credible interlocutor and that it has misled negotiators and negotiated in bad faith are all widely shared opinions. Yet this does not suffice to keep the West or the US on the right side of the international agenda all the time.

In this particular instance it is clear that the Iranians played their cards well. But one has to appreciate as well that the deal could be the beginning of a new diplomatic process. The demand by Turkey and Brazil to meet with P5+1 and even participate in the permanent members’ meeting ought not be dismissed automatically. The great powers ought to lend an ear to these two rising powers. Given the fact that everyone talks about the inefficacy of sanctions perhaps it is time to give more imaginative diplomacy a chance.

This will be the line that Turkey will defend anyway.

Turkey and the US have many common interests in Iraq and AfPak, on energy and other matters. The Iran issue was always going to be a difficult one for the two allies to handle. Because of the declaration and Turkey’s conviction that it obviates a sanctions package, the two partners will have to clear the air between each other. Turkey is a non-permanent member of the Security Council and under the current circumstances is likely to vote no on the US proposal — or at best abstain.

This would in due time help deteriorate Turkish-American relations. Whether the Iranians deserve such principled stance by Turkey is a different matter that can only be known if the exchange is allowed to proceed.   

In the upcoming weeks and months, all observers of the Turkish political scene will have a lot to get used to: Fitful though it may be, the country’s political modernization is running apace and a new political architecture is being formed.

The recent television images of 49 retired and active duty officers (two force commanders and a deputy chief of staff among them) being removed from their homes by the police and taken into custody were quite a shock. Many of the detainees were arrested and will await trial possibly on charges of conspiring to overthrow the Turkish government in 2003 as part of an alleged plan named “Sledgehammer.”

The immediate reaction abroad was one of apprehension about the military’s possible retaliation. When all the generals and admirals of the Turkish military met the evening of the arrests, the level of anxiety only escalated. In the end, nothing much happened—a different story from other times, when the military called all the shots.

Until recently, almost no analysis of Turkish politics could be complete without a word or two on its politically powerful (meddlesome?) military. Indeed, the military has exerted enormous influence in Turkish politics over the decades, since it was the foundational institution of the Republican regime.

Since 1960, it has been actively engaged in politics almost incessantly through military takeovers, attempted coups, “post-modern” interventions, and a myriad other means. Turkey’s current constitution was written by and for the military, and its authoritarian spirit is still dominant despite tens of amendments enacted as part of the EU reform process.

For those accustomed to seeing the military in such an all-powerful position, the recent developments have been quite shocking. Here was an institution defending its political role, as its power receded. Civilianization of the polity deepened. There is no significant constituency for military rule domestically, and the international environment is not one that could accept the legitimacy of such a move.

The weakening of the staunchly secularist military’s grip on the country’s politics started about a decade ago. Institutional dynamics, the profound transformation of Turkish society, the advent to power of a party with an Islamist pedigree for which civilianization was an existential matter all contributed to this trend. Turkey’s EU accession process provided the framework for and further inducement to the continuation of the civilianization/democratization process.

The unraveling began with an investigation that started after the discovery of arms caches in the garden of an officer. The so-called Ergenekon investigation, which launched in 2007, looked into different conspiracies and the illicit activities of a network of military and civilian personalities—retired officers, including four-star generals, were arrested along with their alleged co-conspirators. The investigation exposed part of the military and their civilian collaborators as subversive of the constitutional order.

The critical element here is that the current military top brass was at least tacitly supportive of the investigation and the arrests in order to cleanse the institution from such elements.

Three years ago, the weekly magazine Nokta published the diaries of a former Navy commander. These told the story of coup plots by force commanders in 2003 and 2004 that went awry. In the first case, the chief of staff was able to block these efforts. In the second case, the commander of the gendarmerie had no supporters among the top brass.

Later on, a succession of leaked documents revealed many more plans that aimed to generate instability, create conditions for a military intervention through acts of terror, and overthrow the government.

The leaks did substantial damage to the military’s reputation on at least two counts. First, the appearance that almost every conversation was eavesdropped, and that top secret documents were obtained and exposed in public indicated a serious security breach in the heart of the Turkish military.

Second, the outrageous plans that were alleged to have been prepared within the corpse, the discovery of arms caches in different parts of the country suggested a military where some factions were clearly out of control. The inability of armed forces chief General Basbug to come up with convincing explanations about these revelations—and his apparent lack of knowledge about what his subordinates had done—undermined his own prestige.

As the investigation unfolded, many opinion leaders who initially supported it and its auxiliary operations began to raise concerns about the procedural problems that plagued the case. Islamic fraternities that are well organized within the police and have some influence in the judiciary were thought to have their own insidious agenda for gaining power. Accusations of political revanchism abounded. Concerns about the politicization of the judiciary were frequently expressed. In fact the judiciary, which has always been politicized and never really independent or impartial, was itself sharply split between pro-government and anti-government factions. Neither of these appeared to care much for the rule of law.

What is happening in Turkey is a transformation of the old order and a radical shift in the balance of power from the military towards the civilians. The military, until recently, provided the backbone for the Turkish political system, and it was the custodian of the existing order as well as the provider of its ideology. Urban middle classes for far too long relied on the military to fight their secularist battles for them and abdicated their responsibilities.

These days are over and the Turkish political system needs a new institutional arrangement and a new ideological framework. The fierceness of the battle reflects the magnitude of the stakes and the increasing mobilization of the civilian forces. This is no less than a battle for the soul and the identity of a new Turkish republic.

Turkey passed an important threshold in the great power shift from the military to civilian authorities that started at the beginning of the decade. Whether this deepening civilianization will lead, as expected, to a rule-based democratic consolidation and finally finish the “second transition” from democratic government to democratic regime remains to be seen. 

There is one thing that is uplifting about the debate on Iran. Military action is no longer seen as a viable, let alone desirable option, by straight-thinking people, Sarah Palin notwithstanding.

Even the unfolding debate on containment and whether this would work puts less emphasis on the threat of force than on the country’s political isolation in the region, and the regime’s new elites within Iran. For such a shift in approach to be consequential, two things are necessary: Delicate diplomatic coalition building, and persistence. Coalition building must start in the region. Many observers seek a tacit alliance between Israel and some Arab states on this issue—alliances that had actually been in place since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War. This is a fine idea, but even monarchies need some degree of legitimacy when they pursue a particular foreign policy.

A common front against Iran would necessitate some glimmer of hope that life in Gaza would improve and that some kind of process, which can respectably be called a peace process, is in the offing. It is true that Iran’s current policies and behavior about its nuclear program should not be mixed with Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons. But this does not mean that it isn’t in the minds of the region’s populations.

Recently, the Turkish government and particularly Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan have been pretty vocal about these connections. As such, this adds to the popularity of Mr. Erdogan in the region even if his official interlocutors in Gulf countries feel a bit uncomfortable with his discourse. On the other hand, when one looks at the Turkish diplomacy with Iran, it is necessary to go beyond this populist rhetoric that irritates many.

Over the past several years, Turkish diplomacy has been instrumental in a quiet way in either blocking the expansion of, or reducing, Iranian influence in the Middle East. The role that the Turkish government played in persuading the Iraqi Sunnis to participate in the elections of 2005, as well as the joint efforts with Qatar to overcome the 2007-08 presidential crisis in Lebanon, were significant signposts. Most importantly though, Turkish diplomacy invested heavily in Syria at a time when the Iranian regime was most vulnerable after the assassination of Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri. Ankara did so against the wishes of Washington. That policy has already yielded the proximate talks between Israel and Syria that broke down after Gaza.

The United States came around to seeing Syria as part of the solution and not part of the problem. Most importantly, Turkey, by engaging Syria, did what Washington and conservative Arab countries wanted all along: That is, to put some distance between Damascus and Tehran.

In some sense then, it is curious that Ankara is so adamantly in favor of engaging Iran and opposes a sanctions regime under almost any circumstances. Turkey is not commonly mentioned in the debates about the Iranian nuclear program. Yet it is actively trying to find a middle ground between Iran and particularly the United States. The policy is risky in the sense that Tehran uses (or abuses) Turkey’s efforts and position to gain time and postpone the moment of reckoning. Yet there is much trust that has been built between the two capitals over the past few years.

In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, the former head of IAEA, Hans Blix suggested that Turkey be the location for the exchange of low-enriched for highly enriched uranium if a deal could be struck on this issue. “(T)here is an evident choice for that: Turkey” he said. “Both sides trust Turkey.”

It is difficult to keep a tab on the number of times Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met with his Iranian counterpart Muttaki or American National Security Advisor James Jones. Just over two weeks ago at the Munich Security Conference, he met them both twice. He also contacts his American counterpart, Hillary Clinton, whenever it is necessary.

Davutoglu has been feverishly busy in order to find a formula to bring P5+1 and Iran to make a deal. Despite these efforts—and the acknowledgement by the American Ambassador in Turkey that Turkish officials have nudged Tehran—not many people are aware of Ankara’s role in this process either. Turkey is therefore at least a supporting actor in the unfolding drama of the Iranian nuclear program. Ankara does not desire to see a nuclearized Iran any more than the other countries in the region; however, it staunchly opposes sanctions that will damage its own economy, and it certainly rejects a war option.

The day of reckoning may come though if there is a vote in the Security Council on a sanctions regime against Iran. The United States and the Western allies will expect Turkey to be on their side. As a NATO ally, Turkey should vote yes to sanctions even if very reluctantly. Yet, if such a vote is ever seriously considered, Ankara may also decide to abstain, arguing that this is necessary in order to keep the lines of communication open with Tehran. After all, it did so a couple of months ago at the IAEA meeting that reprimanded Iran for the same reason.

So it also serves Turkey’s interests that some semblance of negotiations continues for as long as possible in order to avoid the choice—and the day of reckoning.

It was at once both intriguing and infuriating to watch Tony Blair before the Chilcot Inquiry panel. Part of the frustration was generated by the docility of the board in questioning Mr. Blair. But much of it stemmed from the fact that Blair remained unrepentant and ever self-righteous about a war that had gone tragically wrong and to which he committed his country long before the matter came to a head in 2003.

Blair even lied about the fact that already a year before the war he was in favor of “regime change.” Documents released in Britain show that before 9/11, he offered his support for removing Saddam Hussein “when the circumstances were right.” He remained defiant about his decision to go to war and argued that Saddam, intent on carrying on with his WMD programs, “was a monster who threatened the region and the world. I do genuinely believe the world is safer as a result.”

The testimony also revealed that Blair, the Prime Minister of the former imperial power that literally invented Iraq (if not the entire Middle Eastern political geography) after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, did not think through the full consequences of this war. According to Blair, “people didn’t think that al-Qaeda and Iran would play the role that they did.”

In other words, Blair did not think that a Shiite-dominated Iraq would give Iran vast opportunities to increase its influence—especially once the Americans refused the offer made to them by Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami in April 2003 to settle all outstanding issues between the two countries. Resentful or fearful of Iran, Blair came very near to calling for military action against that country in his testimony.

Blair could not fathom that the disenfranchised Sunnis of Iraq, as well as all those Sunnis in the region infuriated by the invasion, would respond to al-Qaeda’s call. For someone who claimed that “after September 11, the calculus of risk changed,” such shortsightedness strikes me as quite an admission of incompetence.

There is one element in Blair’s testimony that can and should be taken seriously. The historical verdict on the war may yet be different. The war did have a revolutionary impact. By unseating the regime in Iraq, the Americans and the British, along with their junior partners, changed the social basis of political power in Iraq.

The Iraqi Shiites and Kurds ascended at the expense of long dominant Sunnis. This had both social/political and strategic implications because of the Iran connection in neighboring countries. In the end, 30 years from now, the Iraqi experiment may turn out right, but then the question will remain whether the cost in lives, treasure, calamity was worth the result.

Still, the exercise in Britain to go to the bottom of the decision-making process about Iraq is an important one. An exercise I hope will be repeated in the United States as well. Not only because there are eerie similarities in the way both governments/administrations used what turned out to be false pretenses to go to war.

In both countries the democratic checks and balances seriously malfunctioned, the media were far too quiescent and international law arguably was stretched to the limit. The war undermined the authority of international law, debased Western claims to be the custodian of universal principles, and delegitimized Western discourse on human rights, democracy, and liberal internationalism. Those responsible for this misadventure and its aftermath ought to be held accountable for their deeds and exposed.

If we talk about the shift of power from West to East these days, the financial/economic crisis is only part of the reason. The Iraq war took away (or seriously undermined) the West’s right to set the rules and demand compliance from other countries on the basis of liberal values. The humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq and Abu Ghraib may prove to be far more damaging to Western interests, from this angle, than Saddam could ever be.