Turkey finally became a “dialogue partner” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) last week, providing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (above) with a strategic counterbalance to NATO and a potential alternative to European Union membership.

“With this choice, Turkey is declaring that our destiny is the same as the destiny of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries,” said Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Joining with Russia and China in a conspicuously authoritarian grouping is a cause for concern, says Turkish analyst Semih Ildiz.

“Both regions have restive populations which are closely related to Turks, and the brutal attempts by Russia and China to suppress Chechen and Uyghur attempts at independence have always been met with public anger in Turkey,” he writes for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse:

Erdogan himself referred to the Chinese suppression of the rebellion in the Uyghur capital of Urumqi in July 2009 as “savagery,” going on to liken it to “genocide.” …..Turks remain equally sensitive about developments in Chechnya today, and are highly critical of the way Russia has put down Chechen uprisings in the past.

The same applies to the Russian and Chinese understanding of “extremism,” an understanding that is also largely shared by other SCO members who are committed to resist this. “Extremism” generally means “Islamism” for them.

The Turkey’s Islamist Gulen movement — which has many followers among Erdogan’s supporters, and whose schools in Uzbekistan and Russia have been hounded and closed, while its followers in Central Asia remain under close scrutiny — knows this well. It is therefore not possible for the Islamist Erdogan government to see eye to eye with SCO members about who is an “extremist.”

“Another common feature of SCO members is that they have serious democracy and human rights deficits, a fact that falls contrary to claims by Erdogan to be bringing ‘advanced democracy’ to Turkey,” notes Ildiz, citing one analyst’s contention that the SCO “has a deeply anti-Western DNA”:

Ankara’s EU perspective has provided important guidelines for Turkey to improve its democracy and its human rights record. The only guidelines emanating from the SCO concern “enforced stability,” rather than democracy, and are seriously out of tune with the Turkish political reality.

The SCO has become a vehicle for undermining international standards of human rights and refugee law, according to a recent report from the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

The SCO has also been described as “the most dangerous organization that the American people have never heard of” and “one of those international bodies whose proclaimed ideals conceal an often sordid reality.”

The group’s approach to counter-terrorism is modeled on China’s Three Evils doctrine for combating terrorism, extremism and separatism, even if, as one study notes, this has “too often acted as cover for suppression of ….legitimate opposition groups and the cutting-off of trans-regional ties between them.”

The SCO focus on territorial integrity, non-interference in internal affairs, and social stability “contributes to supporting repressive regimes at the expense of national, regional, and global human rights,” according to a recent whitepaper from Human Rights in China.

“Erdogan has on many occasions revealed deeply anti-Western sentiments, the most recent example coming after the French intervention in Mali,” notes Ildiz. “Anti-Western sentiment also scores political points in Turkey, especially among Islamist grass roots supporters and nationalists of all shades.”

RTWT

FIDH and Human Rights in China are grantees of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Turkey’s experience over the past decade under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government – blending democracy and Islamism, close ties with Washington and a neo-Ottoman foreign policy – has been cited as a potential model for transitional states emerging from the “Arab Spring.” But the “Turkish model” is not replicable across the region, says analyst Soner Cagaptay. Ankara should instead ensure that its new constitution embraces the principles of liberal democracy and establish its own assistance foundations - Turkish Stiftungen – to advance democratic institutions and ideas.

In the past decade, Turkey has experienced a dramatic transformation under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP has moved the country away from the trend toward Westernization begun in the late eighteenth century under the Otto­man sultans and reinforced by several decades of secularism in the name of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Since coming to power in 2002, the Islamist AKP has reversed statutes mandating the strict separation of religion, government, and education.

Turkey’s Islamization, however, has been moderated by the country’s exist­ing orientation. Even the AKP and its Islamist partners cannot escape Western realities such as the role of women in society and Turkey’s NATO member­ship, not to mention forces in the global economy pulling Turkey westward.

And recent events have pulled Turkey back toward the West, despite the AKP’s ideological vision. Particularly since the Arab Spring began in early 2011, regional instability has made Turkey’s access to NATO a valuable com­modity.

A new constitution would allow Turkey to serve as a model for countries experiencing the Arab Spring, thereby burnishing its status as a regional power. Only by embracing the principles of liberal democracy—for instance, by drafting a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech broadly defined, equal political rights for Muslims and non-Muslims, as well as full gender equality—can Ankara promote itself as a source of inspiration for its Arab and Muslim-majority neighbors, at least in the eyes of the West. If, on the other hand, Ankara mobilizes against any sign of pluralism that could challenge its will, even if the government is democratically elected, it could well make itself attractive to Islamist circles ascending to power in the Arab world. Such a development would likely make Ankara’s Western partners reluctant to support Ankara as a model for countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen.

Whether Turkey can be a model for other Muslim-majority countries, par­ticularly those affected by the Arab Spring, is a question of great interest for policymakers. A first response, one almost always overlooked, involves Tur­key’s relatively deep, sixty-year experience with democracy. Today’s mix of Islamism with democracy takes place within that context.

This is not the case for Arab societies, which anyway are profoundly differ­ent from Turkey. Most Arab countries are either still authoritarian or newly and shakily democratic.

Difficulties aside, the Turkish democratic model as applied to Muslim-majority states has been embraced by many commentators, such as U.S.-based Vali Nasr, a leading scholar on Middle East politics. In his 2009 Forces of For­tune, Nasr delivers a sweeping tour of the rising bourgeois classes across the Muslim world. From the shopping malls of Dubai to the streets of Southeast Asia, Nasr shows how capitalism and Islam are coming together to constitute a new force in global politics. According to Nasr, the implications of these commercial transformations are profound, including a more tolerant, liberal politics spurred by the growth of the middle class.

According to Nasr, the Turks have “championed the most hopeful model in the region for both economic development and the liberalization of poli­tics.” Nasr gives a convincing account of how the Muslim middle classes have the potential to liberate societies from the death grip of autocracy (admittedly, his analysis predated the onset of the Arab Spring), without abandoning them to the tyranny of fundamentalism. But does this mean that Turkey’s model of Muslim democracy is a recipe for liberal success? Not so fast.

AKP leaders are unambiguous that Turkey deserves nothing less than democracy writ large. AKP election pledges tout “advanced democracy” as the finish line for Turkey, a goal that denotes the highest standards in human rights, democratization, and civil society conditions. Yet one would have rea­son to doubt the AKP’s rhetoric as well as its true commitment to this path.

By many measures, Turkey’s course over the past decade has not represented a straight shot toward liberal democracy—and, on some counts, the ball has been moved backward. To begin with, even as Turkey’s Muslim bourgeoisie have moved up the income ladder and Islam has entered the mainstream, the government’s treatment of the press has not improved. Based on an anal­ysis from Reporters Without Borders, Turkey’s economic boom has seen a corresponding drop in press freedom, with the country’s international rank­ing falling from 99 in 2002 to 148 in 2011. On the matter of overall political conditions, Freedom House has ranked Turkey as only “partly free” for the better part of the past decade.

On gender equality, Turkey’s economic success has not translated into the advances one might have imagined. Overall, Turkey is still far from a model to be emulated when it comes to women’s empowerment. Not counting agri­cultural workers, as of 2012, only 22 percent of Turkey’s women participate in the labor force, a rise of only four percentage points from 1988. In 2012, Tur­key was ranked sixty-fifth internationally on the Economist’s Women’s Oppor­tunity Economic Index, a composite measure of women’s access to education, workplace opportunity, finance, and legal rights.

In seeking a paradigm for Turkey’s role in the Arab world, we might look to Germany in Portugal following the Carnation Revolution of April 1974, which toppled Portugal’s forty-eight-year dictatorship. The rebellion was led by a group of army officers, joined by the underground communist movement and the masses, and the regime’s fall was surprisingly swift. Portugal—then riddled by poverty, illiteracy, and a legacy of authoritarianism—found itself at a crossroads: military rule or communist takeover. Neither happened. Thanks to the often-unmentioned efforts by Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) government and the Stiftungen (NGOs linked to Germany’s political parties) to build centrist forces in Lisbon, the unexpected occurred: Portugal became a flourishing liberal democracy, later joining the European Union.

In many ways, Portugal in the 1970s parallels today’s Arab societies. The coastal nation lacked deep democratic traditions or a sizable middle class. The communist movement, which can be likened to the Islamists in today’s Arab states, was powerful and seemed poised to commandeer the revolu­tion, while the military—which had taken charge following the revolution—seemed at a loss.

For its part, Germany’s SPD of the 1970s was the first elected social demo­cratic government in Bonn, and therefore had particular credibility in offering social democracy as a legitimate alternative to communism in Lisbon. And it did so quite deliberately. The SPD helped found the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS), a social democratic movement that called for a democratic Portugal and the defeat of the communists’ efforts to take power.

The German Stiftungen, too, performed a valuable function. The SPD-affiliated Friedrich Ebert Stiftungen (FES) alone donated 10 to 15 million German marks to train PS campaign workers and fund travel for its leaders, using discreet Swiss bank accounts to facilitate money transfers. The range of Stiftungen, which had connections to liberal and conservative German parties alike, built counterparts in Portugal as well.

The AKP, echoing the SPD in Germany, is Ankara’s first Islamist-rooted and democratically elected party and is therefore well positioned to propose alternatives to radical Islamism in Arab states. Yet if Ankara wishes to play a role similar to Germany, it cannot be expected to do so alone. Just as Bonn received financial and political assistance from the United States and other democracies in building Portuguese democracy, Turkey would benefit from support from the West as well as other Muslim-majority democracies, such as Indonesia, especially in creating “Turkish Stiftungen,” the missing part of the Germany-Turkey parallel.

Given that Turkey ruled the Arab Middle East until World War I, it must now be mindful of the effect of its messages. Arabs might be drawn to fellow Mus­lims, but the Turks are also former imperial masters. And as the Arabs them­selves press for democracy, intervention by a nation appearing to behave like a new imperial power will backfire. Arab liberals and Islamists alike regularly suggest that Turkey is welcome in the Middle East but should not dominate it.

Then there are the various problems associated with transferring the Turkish model to Arab countries. In September 2011, when Erdogan landed at Cairo’s new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies), he was met by joyous millions, mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood. However, he soon upset his pious hosts by preaching about the importance of a secular gov­ernment that provides freedom of religion, using the Turkish word laiklik—derived from the French word for secularism and translating, in Arabic, to “irreligious.” Erdogan’s message may have been partly lost in translation, but the incident illustrates the limits of Turkey’s influence in more socially con­servative countries.

What is more, Ankara faces domestic challenges that could hamper its influence in countries affected by the Arab Spring. If Turkey wants to become a true beacon of democracy in the Middle East, for example, the new consti­tution under discussion must provide broader individual rights for the coun­try’s citizens and lift curbs on freedoms, such as those on the media. Turkey will also need to fulfill Davutoglu’s vision of a “no problems” foreign policy—with the neighbors, in this instance, including Israel. This means moving past the 2010 flotilla episode to rebuild strong ties with the Jewish state and learn­ing to get along with the Greek Cypriots.

Turkey’s relative stability at a time when the region is in upheaval is attract­ing investment from less stable neighbors like Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Ultimately, political stability and regional clout are Turkey’s hard cash, and its economic growth will depend on both.

Turkey will rise as a regional power as well as play a role in the Arab uprising only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy and uses a deft and strategic hand when sharing its knowledge and experience with Arab countries.

Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.

This extract is taken from a longer report, The New Turkey and U.S. Policy. RTWT

Turkey is not only a potential model for transitions emerging from the Arab Spring. It can also give other democracies a lesson in raising human rights with China, writes Nury Turkel.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan led a 300-strong delegation to China last week, which prompted a remarkable response when it visited Urumqi, capital of the restive Xinjiang Uyghur  Autonomous Region, known to Uyghurs as East Turkistan.

“Erdogan’s visit demonstrates that it is possible to do business with China while addressing Uyghur  demands for cultural rights, political freedoms and economic equality,” notes Turkel, a Washington-based attorney and a former president of the Uyghur American Association:

The outpouring of affection stems from the fact that Uyghurs have historical, linguistic and cultural ties to the people of Turkey, and enjoy strong support from Turkey’s ruling and opposition parties, as well as the Turkish public. Mr. Erdogan harshly criticized China for its brutal handling of unrest in Urumqi in 2009, likening the events of July 5 that year to a genocide and urging Beijing to address Uyghurs’ legitimate demands for human rights.

The Uyghur’s rich, distinctive cultural identity is threatened by Beijing’s relentless Sinification and insensitive economic development, according to a recent analysis.

“The Chinese state’s top-down destruction of Uyghur communities in Kashgar and throughout East Turkestan has resulted in the loss of both physical structures, including Uyghur homes, shops and religious sites, and patterns of traditional Uyghur life that cannot be replicated,” according to Living on the Margins: The Chinese State’s Demolition of Uyghur Communities, 

“If the Chinese government is serious about bringing prosperity to all ethnicities in East Turkestan with its new development plans, it needs to work aggressively to end open discrimination in the employment sector and take steps to increase job opportunities for Uyghurs,” says Amy Reger, a researcher with the Uyghur Human Rights Project. 

“Without Uyghur participation in the development drive that is taking place in the region, East Turkestan’s indigenous population will continue to suffer the effects of economic, cultural and social marginalization that state-led initiatives bring to the region,” she writes on The Huffington Post.

The Turkish leader is able to take what some analysts call a dual-track approach – engaging Beijing on economic interests and retaining the right to criticize its rights record – because of a convergence of strategic interests, Turkel argues:

Beijing recognizes both Turkey’s influence in the Muslim world and China’s own increased strategic and economic interests in Islamic countries. Thus, while Mr. Erdogan’s statements and Turkey’s stance on the Uyghur  issue have inevitably complicated Sino-Turkish relations, Beijing can’t afford to cut off dialogue with Ankara, and is even willing to tolerate visits by Turkish officials to Xinjiang as the price of summits in Beijing.

Ankara’s leverage on defending Uyghur  rights would be enhanced if other Central Asian states took a similar stance, he suggests, and it should consider joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to counter Beijing’s use of the grouping as an ‘authoritarian internationale’ for exercising its soft power and suppressing Uyghur  rights:

Ankara can also lead in rallying democracies further afield to press for improvements in Xinjiang. As a longstanding ally of the U.S. and a neighbor of Europe, Turkey is uniquely well-situated to do this. As an initial step, Foreign Minister Davutoglu should organize a “friends of Uyghur s” conference with democratic allies—similar to the ones organized for Libya and Syria—discussing Ankara’s vision and policy objectives with respect to the Uyghur  people in China.

“Turkey’s actions provide a model for other democratic countries on how to approach minority issues in China,” Turkel concludes.

RTWT.

The UAA and UHRP are supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.

The Arab revolts have sparked an ideological struggle between Turkey’s liberal Islam and Iran’s radical Islamist agenda, says a leading analyst – and Ankara has the edge.

A prominent member of Iran’s Guardian Council recently warned that “arrogant Western powers” were promoting “innovative models of Islam, such as liberal Islam in Turkey,” in order to “replace the true Islam” represented by Iran, Mustafa Akyol notes in Foreign Affairs.

He has reason to be worried, but it’s the region’s Islamist parties, not the West, who are driving the agenda, writes Akyol, the author of Islam without Extremes: a Muslim Case for Liberty.

Mainstream Islamist parties have won elections across the region “by explicitly appealing to the ‘the Turkish model’ rather than to an Iranian-style theocracy,” a development which validates the ‘third way’ or neo-Ottoman foreign policy of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), he contends:

Turkey is … a source of inspiration for the region, particularly for Islamist parties that want to participate in democratic politics and form governments that will deliver to their people. This is because the AKP’s third way, while having clear Muslim cultural tones, also enshrines values that are more universal: democracy, human rights, and the market economy. The way Erdogan defines these concepts is not as liberal as the West might like — especially when it comes to freedom of speech — but neither is it unhelpful. In a recent survey, TESEV, a liberal Turkish think tank, found that the majority of Arabs see Turkey as “a model country,” because “it is at once Muslim, democratic, open, and prosperous.”

The Arab world’s democratic upsurge has definitively killed the myth of Islam’s incompatibility with democracy, Akyol has argued.

Turkey has emerged as the “biggest winner” from the Arab Spring, according to Saban Center surveys, while opinion polls by the Pew Research Center reveal that most Muslim respondents hold an unfavorable view of Iran. Only in Pakistan and Indonesia are more than 50 per cent of respondents favorable towards Iran, while most respondents in Egypt, Jordon, Lebanon, and Turkey are unfavorable. More than 80 per cent of Egyptians and over 74 per cent of Jordanians feel threatened by the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.

“The clash between Turkey and Iran has been more than just rhetorical,” Akyol writes:

Tehran has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest supporter, whereas Ankara has come to condemn the regime’s “barbarism” and put its weight behind the opposition, hosting the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, the rebel government and army in exile. In Iraq, Iran is a patron of the Shias; Turkey is, at least in the eyes of many in the Middle East, the political and economic benefactor of the Sunnis and the Kurds…. Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has pursued a third way, by strengthening Turkey’s economic and political ties to all of its neighbors. In doing so, he has attempted to walk between the region’s “radicals,” such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, and its “moderates,” such as former President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

“The AKP’s third way stakes its claim to moderation and modernism ….. on its democratic system and its pragmatism,” says Akyol:

Although the cadre at the top of the party is generally pious, it has not imposed sharia rule in Turkey, as some secularist Turks have feared, and has not geared its foreign policy toward spreading Islamism. Instead, it has focused on soft power and economic interests.

But other observers suggest that in the war of ideas between Turkey’s democratic Islam and Iran’s radical Islamism, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is up for grabs. The group angrily dismissed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s defense of a civil state when he visited Cairo last year and its spokesmen have reportedly been open to overtures from Iran.

A shared Islamist agenda and “the need to find an alternative to American aid are temporarily playing in favor of Iran,” according to Zvi Mazel, a former ambassador to Egypt, and a fellow of The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

“Iran, fearing to lose Syria, is courting Egypt and hastened to congratulate the Egyptian Parliament after it issued a grievous anti-Israeli declaration this week,” he writes:

Conversations with Iran were cut short by the discovery of an Iranian terror cell in Cairo but are about to start anew at the initiative of the recently elected parliament where the Muslim Brotherhood holds the majority of the seats. The Foreign Relations committee, headed by Issam Alarian, vice president of the Justice and Freedom party of the Brotherhood, has announced that it was reconsidering relations with Iran. The Arab spring having brought to power in Egypt an extremist Sunni organization – the Brotherhood – one would have thought that this would lead to clashes with Iran, leader of the extremist Shia branch of Islam and fighting for supremacy in the Middle East.

But Akyol believes Iran’s Islamic Republic has lost whatever revolutionary élan and appeal it once held in the region.

“The Arab Spring has heightened the ideological tension between Ankara and Tehran, and Turkey’s model seems to be winning,” he insists. “And for all those who wish to see a more peaceful, democratic, and free Middle East, this should be good news.”

RTWT

Almost 80 percent of survey respondents in the Middle East had a favorable view of Turkey, and three out of five consider it a model for a modern Islamic state, according to a recent survey by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), a non-governmental think-tank.

The survey confirms earlier poll findings that Turkey has emerged as the biggest winner – at least in terms of soft power – from the Arab Spring. But a transatlantic spat between Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and acclaimed New York-based novelist Paul Auster (left) is drawing renewed attention to Turkey’s credibility as a model of democracy for the Arab world.

Erdogan took exception when Auster highlighted constraints on freedom of expression in Turkey and declined to visit the country so long as so many journalists and writers remain in prison:

“Supposedly Israel is a democratic country, a secular country, a country of limitless freedom of expression, individual freedoms and human rights. What an ignorant man you are … Israel is a real theocracy,” Erdogan said. “Didn’t [Israel] shower Gaza with bombs? Didn’t [Israel] launch phosphorus bombs and use chemical weapons?”

Auster quickly shot back: “Whatever the Prime Minister might think about the state of Israel, the fact is that free speech exists there and no writers or journalists are in jail.”

At least 70 journalists and writers have been jailed under Erdogan, according to rights groups and media watchdogs. Turkey is 148^th out of 179 countries on the press freedom index of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders – slightly ahead of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but behind Morocco (138), Jordan (128) and Lebanon (93).

What some observers call the “Putinization” of Erdogan has raised questions about his tolerance of opposition and the depth of his AK party’s commitment to genuine political pluralism.

“You are all liars,” celebrated writer Mehmet Ali Birand wrote this week. “I’m talking about you: politicians in power, business circles, military, members of the judiciary.”

“You credit those who protect your interests as ‘good journalists,’ but drag through the mud those who have contrary views. And then you dare to talk about freedom in this country.”

A recent attack by Erdogan on a visiting delegation from a German democracy assistance groups also raised eyebrows.

But the AK party leader’s illiberal side is less of a reflection of his Islamist politics than Turkey’s accommodation with modernity, writes Mustafa Akyol, a journalist and author of Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty.

“Turkish modernity corresponded to what would be called in the West ‘the dark side of the Enlightenment,’ which produced militant forms of nationalism, including fascism, and an illiberal secularism that suppressed traditional religion,” he argues.

“The AKP is too Turkish – not too Islamic:

In other words, its authoritarian tendencies emerge from the usual problems of Turkish politics, which existed in previous center-right parties as well.

The AKP should come to its senses and curb its temptation to unlimited power if it wants to remain a model for would-be liberal Islamists. Meanwhile, its transformation to post-Islamism remains genuine and meaningful for the Arab Islamists, who are entering an age of power with which they have little experience.

RTWT

The ruling AK party is using the notorious Ergenekon conspiracy to launch a broad-brush offensive against its critics, writes Kemal K?l?çdaro?lu, chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main opposition party.

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? But independent analysts share his anxiety.

“Many in Washington have been debating whether Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) could be a model for the Arab Spring , as our neighbors in the Middle East aspire to get rid of totalitarian regimes and become true democracies,” writes Turkish researcher E. P. Licursi. “But the reality in Turkey makes clear that the AKP model does not hold.”

While some observers were initially prepared to give the government the benefit of the doubt over the Ergenekon affair, the arrest of two renowned journalists, Nedim ?ener and Ahmet ??k “confirmed that the AKP was targeting its most serious and effective critics” under cover of the investigation.

“Overseas, we are well aware of these shortcomings in democracy,” says foreign policy expert Sinan Ulgen “but Erdogan’s regime keeps on feeding the imagination because compared to political systems in Iran or Saudi Arabia, Turkey’s is preferable.”

The country remains a model for emulation for having “reconciled two dynamics: economic growth and a democratic system put in place by an Islamist-derived party,” he says.

The neo-Ottomanism forged by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has been cited as another source of AKP authoritarianism, as the country distanced itself from Europe and the democratic West. But the Arab Spring has put paid to Davutoglu’s notion of “zero problems” with Turkey’s neighbors and forced a reorientation to the West.

“You can argue that the ‘Arab Spring’ has forced Turkey to reinforce its ties to the West because those are the only stable ones. It’s a question of stability versus instability,” says Henri Barkey, a Turkey analyst at Lehigh University in the United States. “One thing you can say about the West: It is what it is. It’s not going to change.”

Turkey’s vibrant civil society also has a role to play in defending and extending democratic space. The Freedom of Expression Association, for instance, seeks to enhance the role of civil society in the legislative process through public platforms for dialogue with parliamentarians, including 41 small provincial assem­blies in which citizens discuss relevant issues in monthly town hall meetings.

The AKP’s progress in democratizing Turkey and subjecting the military to civilian control is “indisputable,” Licursi writes in a Freedom House blog post on the  Ergenekon case and Turkey’s democratic aspirations,  but there is much still to be accomplished:

 The articles in the penal code that restrict freedom of expression should be removed, the antiterrorism laws should be narrowed in scope, and the judiciary must be reformed to allow for due process and eliminate improper detention. In short, the AKP should use its popular mandate not to marginalize its opposition and attack dissidents, but to implement positive legal and institutional reforms. Far from fettering its stated agenda or diminishing its public support, this would empower the government’s international ambitions, both in Europe and the Middle East.

Reporters Without Borders and the Freedom of Expression Association are grantees of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.

With Syria facing the prospect of further deterioration into sectarian violence, reports suggest that a mixture of political stalemate, polarization and opposition division make a resolution of the crisis highly unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Opposition activists meeting in Istanbul today gave Burhan Ghalioun (above, center) a one-month extension as head of the Syrian National Council, after rejecting a draft transition plan he had agreed with a rival faction.

“Ghalioun’s three-month tenure was renewed for another month until a better mechanism to elect a head of the council is devised,” a source, in contact with delegates at the closed meeting, told Reuters.

Ten days after Syria’s principal opposition groups appeared to have agreed a transition strategy, the subsequent collapse of the pact indicates that factions supporting foreign intervention to depose President Bashar Assad are in the ascendancy, analysts suggest.

The SNC chairman agreed a transition accord with the internally-based National Coordination Body, which specifically rejected “any military intervention that harms the sovereignty or stability of the country,” writes Mariam Karouny:

But members of Ghalioun’s own council denounced the deal, forcing him to disavow it. Many grassroots protesters inside Syria also rejected it, saying they had lost hope that 10 months of peaceful demonstrations – now accompanied by an armed insurgency in some regions – would bring down Assad…..But the quick unraveling of the pact, which ruled out such international action, ensures that achieving that goal will remain elusive since Western powers are loath to throw their weight behind a fractured Syrian opposition.

Protesters in the Khaldiyeh section of Homs came under fire from Syrian troops today as Arab League observers toured the neighborhood, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The observers reportedly fled the scene, reinforcing opposition claims that the ineffectual mission is being used to buy time by the Assad regime.

“The Arab League has shown itself to be not just ineffective but also negligent,” says Salman Sheikh of the Brookings Doha Centre. The crisis is likely to become “more unpredictable, more militarized and more atomized”.

The Arab League yesterday repeated its demand for an end to the violence, and said its monitoring mission would continue, despite criticism from opposition activists.

The league’s Sunday’s meeting was “very disappointing,” said Radwan Ziadeh (pictured above, right, with Galhioun), a Washington-based member of the Syrian National Council, the leading opposition umbrella group.

“We support the mission of the observers,” he said, “but at the same time they should refer the case to the Security Council.”

The Local Coordination Committees objected to the Arab League communiqué’s moral equivalence in condemning regime violence and opposition resistance , complaining that it “puts the killer and the victim on the same line,” according to Al Arabiya.

The regime is banking on internal divisions and political shifts within the Arab League working to its advantage.

“Oppression seems to be the only policy of the government and they are playing for time after and looking forward to their ally Iraq taking over the presidency of the Arab League in March,” said Patrick Seale, a biographer of Assad’s father. “The balance of power remains very much in the regime’s favor. I don’t see any immediate change in the situation and I don’t think the Syrian opposition has what it takes.”

On the other hand, despite its violent crackdown, writes Washington-based dissident Ammar Abdulhamid, “the regime has not been able to prevail over the protesters the overwhelming majority of whom remain committed to nonviolent tactics.”

Meanwhile, rebel faction from within the ruling Baath Party, today announced a “coup” against the Damascus leadership, according to a leaked statement issued from London. The “neo-Baath” dissidents urged party members to return to the movement’s ideological roots of “national unity, freedom, and democracy,” to rebel against the “corrupt” leadership” and to “confront tyranny in order to establish a democratic, plural, and civil state.”

While Ghalioun and his supporters stress the need to avoid a sectarian civil war, the domestic opposition wants to boost the role of the defector-based Free Syrian Army.

“Moreover, the SNC, although it has come to include more on-the-ground activists, has failed to shed its reputation as a mainly expat-controlled movement that does not adequately reflect the ethnic and tribal makeup of Syrian society,” according to analyst Michael Weiss. 

The US and Turkey want the Syrian opposition to maintain its largely non-violent resistance.

“Those who want a better future for Syria have so much more power and so much more moral authority when they reject violence and push their own government to do the same,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

“The Syrian opposition demands democracy and we told them during a meeting yesterday [Sunday] that this should be done through peaceful means,” a spokesman for Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told AFP.

But the absence of international leverage in support of Syrian dissidents undermines the effectiveness of non-violent strategies, veteran activist Kamal Labwani suggests.

The first Syrian dissident invited to the White House, Labwani said the opposition tried the Velvet Revolution approach in 2005’s Damascus Spring “to import civil rights and human rights to face this kind of totalitarian regime by this way.”

“We achieved some kind of change but the circumstances go another way after 9/11, because the international community was not interested in what happened inside Syria,” Labwani said. “We didn’t have any support.”

While the opposition remains largely non-violent, the regime has maintained its repressive approach. at least 30 people were killed over the weekend in Homs, Hama, suburbs of Damascus and the northern province of Idlib, according to the Merei monitoring group and the Local Coordination Committees.

“The Syrian government has been very consistent from the beginning with a policy to confront the demonstrations with a combination of mass arrests, violence, and they haven’t changed,” said Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. “It’s a policy to beat the uprising down and hit people so badly that they surrender and give it up, and that obviously hasn’t worked.”

The opposition remains divided over the relative weight of armed struggle and peaceful resistance, the role of Islamist groups, and the scope for external intervention.

The Arab League called on the opposition to present a coherent political vision in a recent communiqué, which also criticized the Baathist regime. But Ahmad al-Khatib, a member of the Syrian Revolution General Commission, said the league report “could have been more damning”, expressing a widely-felt disappointment with its observer mission.

“The Arab League seems to want to keep a line open with the Syrian regime and not risk having the monitors expelled or see their work further restricted,” he told Reuters.

A visiting scholar at Harvard University and former Reagan-Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, Ziadeh believes the Arab League monitoring mission lacks the capacity and expertise to stop the violence.

“What’s needed is international intervention,” he argues. “We need a buffer zone along the Turkish borders where the situation is still escalating. Maybe the UN has to declare some ‘safe cities.’”

Independent analysts concur with activists’ claims that the Arab League mission is providing cover for the regime.

“The question is, how can an alternative government be found which can rely on popular support, how can an election be organized, as well as a new constitution, and how can all the forces in Syria participate in bringing about these changes?” asks Ruprecht Polenz, a foreign policy expert for Germany’s Christian Democrats. “Either way I believe that things cannot continue with Assad still in power.”

Other observers suggest that the mission could still perform a useful function if it had additional resources and a revised mandate.

“Perhaps a more robust team will take account of the torrent of criticism levelled against it and improve the monitors’ performance, either forcing the Syrian regime to abide by its commitment or flatly declaring non-compliance,” writes the FT’s Roula Khalaf. “But if the mission allows itself to become a fig leaf for repression, a lot more than the credibility of the league will be at stake.”

While supportive of military defectors’ actions, the internal opposition remains opposed to a Libyan-style international “militarization” of the revolt.  

“We are against the militarization of the revolution because it justifies the oppression and the use of force. Tens of people are getting killed now but if the revolution becomes a military one then hundreds will be killed,” said Khalaf Dahowd, a member of the National Coordination Body’s executive bureau. “Syria is a country of many sects and ethnicities. Foreign intervention will break the social infrastructure of Syria and its political borders,” he said.

Many SNC members originally agreed with the NCB’s rejection of international intervention, said SNC member Khaled Kamal “But now all roads are blocked and the political solution did not work.”.

“After ten months and after we knocked on all doors… foreign intervention is the only choice before us,” he said.

But there is a lack of consensus within the SNC and a recent assessment of the risks of military intervention posted on its website* highlighted the “potential costs and unintended consequences” of foreign interference.

The last year’s uprising “has been a critical setback not only to the Assad regime, but also to Iran and Hezbollah,” but “Syria’s future will be governed largely by uncertainty and prolonged malaise,” the analysis suggests.

“Given the range of risks, the US and its allies should consider carefully the potential costs and unintended consequences of further intervention,” it concludes.

The opposition is failing to provide a viable alternative to the regime, in part because its schisms reflect the divisions in Syrian society, Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics, told CNN.

“The reality is, this is not a sectarian conflict. This is an essentially political conflict,” he said.

“The uprising is real and genuine. Millions of Syrians basically would like to have serious change in Syria. But also the reality is that Syria is deeply divided, not just the opposition.”

Unlike Libya’s Transitional National Council, the Syrian National Council only emerged over several months and has yet to secure international recognition, in part because of differences with Syria’s domestic opposition.

“Many protesters criticized the SNC’s slow response to unfolding events, particularly the action of its chairman, Burhan Ghalioun, who initially refused to support individual military defections, arguing that the Syrian army should defect en masse,” according to Weiss, an analyst with the Henry Jackson Society, a forum for democratic geo-politics.

“Making matters worse, in the last two weeks, the SNC has further embarrassed itself by sending mixed messages about its real intentions,” he writes in Foreign Affairs:

First, the group said that it was in favor of foreign military intervention. But on December 30, 2011, reports swirled that Ghalioun and a handful of senior SNC figures had inked a unity agreement with the anti-interventionist National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, a domestic opposition group that activists suspect is a cover organization pushing reconciliation with Assad’s regime. Two high-ranking members of the SNC, Ausama Monajed and Radwan Ziadeh, told me that the council rejected the text of the agreement, which they claimed was only a “draft.” Sure enough, a few days later, the SNC launched its official Web site that, drawing on a blueprint I prepared, called for outside forces to establish a safe zone in Syria. This more aggressive call for foreign military intervention reflects a need to hang on to support from the protesters, who now often denounce the regime and the SNC in the same breath.

Damascus has scandalized every Potemkin effort at reform or negotiation,” writes Weiss:

The Arab League observer mission has proved useless. Thousands have been massacred; many thousands more have been tortured using methods as imaginative as they are sadistic. When a country of 23 million collapses into anarchy, how many people will have to be widowed, orphaned, or dispossessed before the definition of failed statehood has been met? The more time the world gives Assad, the more he makes a mockery of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, and the more people begging for Western assistance are simply wished the best of luck and left to their grim fate.

Nevertheless, “the regime is clearly losing control,” writes Washington-based dissident Ammar Abdulhamid:

So, with an internationally mandated and protected buffer zone in place, humanitarian support to protest communities, and material and logistical support to the Free Syrian Army, the job of toppling the Assads can be accomplished. Focus of the international community should now move to drawing up day-after political and security arrangements in cooperation with an assortment of Syrian opposition members and experts. This discussion cannot be avoided or delayed anymore. The regime is losing control. This means that the alternative needs to be found soon so that all these nightmarish scenarios we are afraid of can be avoided.

*The SNC’s analysis of the risks of military intervention:

Syria’s stability and its role in regional security politics have become steadily more uncertain since early 2011. The country has now experienced eight months of popular protests. Despite a lack of political cohesion or unity of purpose among the country’s opposition forces, rural areas and smaller cities continue to experience increasingly armed unrest. Meanwhile, the regime’s crackdown on dissent has shown little to no sign of abating as the country’s Alawite-led praetorian security forces attempt to restore order and quash unrest.

The chorus of international pressure on Syria has steadily increased. The US and EU have bolstered unilateral sanctions regimes, turned to the UN to deepen international pressure and have openly called for President Bashar Al-Asad to step aside. Turkey, until recently one of the regime’s closest allies, has been one of Syria’s most vocal critics. Lastly, the conservative Gulf monarchies, which continue to have reservations about regional popular unrest, have nonetheless pushed ahead with Arab League efforts to further isolate Syria.

On the one hand, local and expatriate Syrian forces opposed to the regime are backed by the West, and key Arab and Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey. On the other hand, the Al-Asad regime enjoys the support of its key regional ally Iran, support from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and strong international backing from Russia and China – countries that could play counter-revolutionary roles during what is increasingly looking like a “long winter of Arab discontent.”

A number of countries – including US NATO allies such as France and Turkey – increasingly entertain the prospect of creating a “humanitarian corridor” in Syria, potentially along the border with Turkey, to provide relief to both the Syrian population and dissident groups opposed to the Asad regime. These calls are echoed by Syrian opposition forces both in and outside Syria, including the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Istanbul-based Syrian National Council (SNC).

These calls do not address the real world challenges of creating such a “humanitarian corridor”: joint and combined military operations to suppress Syria’s air defense network, the need to neutralize the country’s air force, eliminating Syria’s asymmetric deterrence by containing unconventional threats from long range missiles (potentially armed with chemical or biological agents) and instability along the Golan Heights. They also do not address the risk of eventually having to engage loyal Syrian ground forces (including large concentrations of Alawites) that see few prospects in a post-Asad Syria.

Some consider military intervention in Syria to be a potential next step in shifting the regional balance in favor of the US and its allies. There is little question that sustained military operations in Libya would have been impossible without American logistics, targeting, command and control and sheer military capacity. In the case of Syria, military intervention is similarly unlikely to succeed without US involvement. However, military intervention, in the Middle East, let alone near the epicenter of the Arab-Israeli conflict, always involves serious risks and the impact of the law of unintended consequences.

There now is only limited support in the US, Europe, and the Arab world for direct intervention in Syria. However, the same could also have been said in the lead-up to operations in Libya. There are also reasons why the US might directly (or indirectly) take the lead in such efforts. The withdrawal of US troops from Iraq has left many questions about the future role and influence of the US, especially in the context of strategic competition with Iran. Instability in Syria presents Washington with the opportunity to undermine Iran’s regional posture, weaken or change the leadership of one of its key regional allies and potentially to downgrade the Islamic Republic’s role in the Arab-Israeli conflict through Hezbollah.

Syria is not Libya. While the later may be geographically much larger, it is a mostly empty country with a small population and very limited military capacity. In contrast, Syria’s population is more than three times larger than Libya, has almost 30 times the latter’s population density and a much larger and far more capable military overall. All of these factors complicate any calculus on military intervention in Syria, whether in terms of the level of potential military opposition, or with regards to the risk of high civilian casualties.

Opposition forces in Syria do not control territory, nor do they currently have military resources at their disposal to mount more than hit-and-run attacks. Most attacks by the FSA, while potentially coordinated, seem to have limited tactical or strategic depth and have yet to present a serious challenge to units loyal to the regime. While Libya’s opposition forces were divided, Syria’s are far more so, with little unity or agreement on the use of violence as a means to an end, and discord about the potential role of foreign intervention. The bulk of the security forces remain largely loyal as decades of over-recruiting from mainly rural minority groups bares fruit in terms of a strong corporatist military culture.

As the US and its allies weigh options for their next-steps in their Syria policies, they need to consider a number of key military and political factors that shape the prospects for any form of direct intervention:

Syria’s military forces have many qualitative limitations, particularly in terms of modern weapons, combat readiness, and recent combat experience. They are, however, very large and months of protests, and concern over a potential Israeli strike on Iran, have made them more alert. They would need to acquire more modern and capable systems, such as major surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and a new sensor and C4I network to defeat a major US-led air operation, but it would take a far more advanced operation than was the case in Libya, and Syria’s leverage over Hezbollah, and Syrian long range missiles, air and coastal defense systems, and chemical and biological stockpiles present another kind of challenge.

Despite defections and desertions, Syria’s praetorian military units may have little choice but to rally around the Asad regime. Given their limited prospects in a post-Asad Syria, heavily Alawite elite units with sizeable numbers of loyal Sunnis will likely perceive no alternatives to defending the regime in the event of wider intervention.

Armed opponents of the regime, such as the Free Syrian Army, are an important development. However, their size, structural limitations, their predominantly Sunni character and as-of-yet limited command and control and offensive capabilities mean that the FSA has limited prospects in the short term for presenting a meaningful counterweight or alternative to the Syrian military. It is far more likely that the group’s insurgency will be used as a platform by the Asad regime to weaken an already divided Syrian opposition.

Syria’s internal divisions are not new. However the Asad regime has managed to escalate Sunni-Alawite tension to the point that it has taken a life of its own and could be difficult to bring under control by any of the country’ political forces. This presents the risk that any escalation in Syria’s instability is likely to be sectarian, with real prospects for deepening divisions and broadening communal segregation. A divided Syria, once an unlikely worst case scenario for Syrians, grows increasingly probable as a result.

Given Syria’s relatively high population density and the close proximity of civilian and military centers, it is unlikely that airstrikes in or near major urban centers – even with advanced targeting – will result in fewer casualties than the number of Syrians the Asad regime is thought to have killed so far.

The Asad regime may react by pursing strategies that risk deeper regional destabilization as a means of deterring its regional and international opponents. It could also undertake desperate efforts to secure the future of the Alawite community. Syria’s potential responses – which include turning to regional proxies and its BCW-capable ballistic missile holdings – range in scale but all have potentially catastrophic consequences for Syria and the region. They also vary considerably based on what triggers Syrian escalation.

In the event of further escalation in Syria, there is no certainty that regional spillover effects can be contained. Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq are susceptible to instability, as are Israel and Turkey. The scale of Sunni-Shi’a regional acrimony, the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process and uncertainty about future political forces warrant a degree of caution.

The prospect of direct escalation in Syria may trigger kneejerk reactions from both Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah. This includes deflecting attention from Syria and heightening the costs of intervention by escalating tensions with Israel. Should intervention take place, there is little to prevent Iran and its allies in Lebanon and Iraq from undertaking potentially destabilizing action in Syria not unlike the cycle of violence in Iraq in the wake of the US invasion.

Russia has emerged as a key player in balancing against further intervention in Syria. It is likely that Moscow will opt to heighten the stakes further through military posturing in the Mediterranean and “game-changing” military aid to Syria to deter the US and its allies from further escalating in Syria and raising the prospect of Libya-style intervention in the Levant. Other members of the so-called “BRICS” countries, crucially China, can also be expected to bandwagon with Russia at least at the level of the UN Security Council.

It could be argued that even without further escalation, a year of Syrian instability has been a critical setback not only to the Asad regime, but also to Iran and Hezbollah. Syria’s future will be governed largely by uncertainty and prolonged malaise. Given the range of risks, the US and its allies should consider carefully the potential costs and unintended consequences of further intervention in Syria.

If Turkey has emerged as the biggest winner from the Arab Awakening, it seems both an undeserved and perverse result, especially given the ruling AK party’s foreign policy record and current domestic trends.

New regulations to filter internet access (above) are just the latest in a series of measures to curb civil society and stifle dissent that have alarmed democracy advocates and analysts alike.

Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan is “thoroughly monopolizing power in all aspects of life,” said Soli Ozel, a professor at Istanbul’s Bilgi University. “The politicians are basically going back to their true nature and eliminating whatever autonomy these institutions had.”

The government claims that the new web filters are designed to protect children, but media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says that access to more than 7,000 Web portals could be completely blocked or heavily censored, including online services by Google, Myspace and Vimeo. The government banned YouTube for two years and sporadically blocked access to the site in recent months.

In a revealing insight into the government’s illiberal mindset, the interior minister recently confessed that he could not understand the concern expressed by human rights groups over the arrest of Busra Ersanli, a prominent academic, during a recent sweep of pro-Kurdish dissidents.   

“She is one professor among thousands of professors in Turkey,” said Idris Naim Sahin. “I have difficulty understanding those saying a professor should not be arrested while thousands of other people are being arrested in Turkey.”

Observers note that the AK party is effectively undermining democratic counterweights to the state.

“If you have a strong government that is precisely when you need to have a strong civil society as a check, especially when you have a government that has been in power as long as this one,” says Stephen Hadley, a former US national security adviser who heads a taskforce on Turkey for the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Turkish political system does not have checks and balances; it promotes authoritarian tendencies,” says Ustun Erguder, founder of the Istanbul Policy Center.

There is a bitter irony in Arab public opinion’s perception of Erdogan as a model democrat, analysts suggest.

The ruling AK party’s commitment to a foreign policy based on “zero problems” with its neighbors led it to forge close ties with regional authoritarians, especially Libya, Iran and Syria.

“Turkey only became a champion of human rights and democracy in the Middle East world after Arabs took matters into their own hands and began bringing down Ankara’s friends,” notes Council on Foreign Relations analyst Steven A. Cook.

Erdogan was vehemently opposed to foreign intervention to support Libya’s rebels (well, he was the recipient of the Gaddafi human rights prize) and only abandoned the neo-Ottoman foreign policy devised by foreign minister Mehmet Davutoglu when the region’s citizens rebelled against Ankara’s friends.

“Once the game was up, revealing Turkey to be no different from any other major power in the region all too willing to do business with unseemly characters, Erdogan and Davutoglu were forced to tack hard against their own policies,” Cook writes.

As Turkey’s Foreign Minister prepares to visit Syria tomorrow in a last-ditch effort to persuade President Bashar al-Assad to halt his security forces’ violent assault on civilian protesters, speculation is rising that an anti-Assad coalition is emerging among Syria’s neighbors. Assad today dismissed his defense minister in the face of intensifying regional pressure to halt his regime’s violent response to pro-democracy protests.

Saudi King Abdullah called on Syria to “stop the killing machine” in an extraordinary statement on Al Arabiya television, insisting that the regime’s violent repression of civilian protesters had “nothing to do with religion, or values, or ethics.”Assad should “think wisely before it’s too late and issue and enact reforms,” said Abdullah, cautioning Damascus that failure to reform would unleash further conflict. “Either it chooses wisdom on its own or it will be pulled down into the depths of turmoil and loss,” he said.

Arab states have been reluctant to call for regime change, mindful that an Arab League call for Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi to go prompted international intervention. But “in what could yet prove to be the turning point of the crisis,” according to one report, “opinion in the Arab world swung firmly against Bashar al-Assad.”

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain today withdrew their ambassadors, while Riyadh demanded an end to the bloodshed and called on Assad to adopt reforms.

Previously a staunch ally of Damascus, Turkey is shifting its stance in response to the Arab Spring, according to Sinan Ulgen. Competing with Iran and Saudi Arabia for regional leadership, Ankara is prepared to press for democratic reform and human rights even where it jeopardizes relations with incumbent leaders, he argues in an analysis published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Foreign minister Mehmet Davutoglu’s mission to Damascus “will be facing his toughest challenge as a diplomat,” notes one analyst, ” as his pet dogma of ‘zero-problems’ in Turkey’s relations with its neighbors lies in complete ruins.”

The United States should side with Syria’s pro-democracy activists, said US Senator Robert P. Casey, citing the case of Sakher Hallak, a medical doctor killed by security forces following a recent trip to the US. But Syria’s neighbors enjoy more leverage than Washington, he notes.

“Our allies in the Arab League and in Turkey could play a critical role in pressuring Assad — they have economic and diplomatic ties with Syria that the United States does not,” writes Casey, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian affairs.

But the regime is unlikely to compromise. Last Saturday the government promised to hold free and fair elections, but shortly afterwards security forces detained Walid Bunni, a leading dissident and proponent of a peaceful transition to democracy. Evidence suggests that the regime’s hardliners are turning increasingly violent (see above).

“It’s massive, brutal and determined,” said Wissam Tarif, an activist with Avaaz, a human rights monitoring group. “They are just killing people everywhere.”

Several days after internet footage showed Ibrahim Qashoush leading protesters in an anti-Assad chant, the poet from Hama was found dead, with his throat slashed and his vocal cords ripped out, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports.

A secret document leaked from the Syrian Army last month demonstrates that the military is increasingly stretched and heavily dependent on the elite fourth division headed by Maher al-Assad, the president`s brother, according to Radwan Ziadeh, an exiled dissident. Maher is not the official leading officer but the de facto head of the fourth division, he says, and the document provides instructions for the fourth division to lay siege to the city of Daraa, sealed with the official stamp of Maher alongside the stamp of the president.

Many analysts believe the regime’s implacably violent strategy is deliberately designed to stoke sectarianism and provoke a violent response from opposition groups. And activists concede that extremist elements are jeopardizing the opposition’s efforts to adhere to non-violence.

“The main aim is the keep the uprising as peaceful as possible, but the longer this goes on, the harder it is to control people on the street as people get frustrated and start to question the dynamics of non-violent revolution,” said Ausama Monajed, a leading dissident.

“You cannot expect even a peaceful revolution to be 100 per cent peaceful,” he said. “Now the opposition has to deal with both the brutality of the regime and the stupidity of a few people who don’t understand that this has to be kept peaceful.”

With today’s biggest-ever demonstrations against the Baathist regime, Syria’s protest movement entered its fifth month, “showing no sign of withering away,” according to Damascus University’s Marwan Kabalan.

It is clear that whatever reforms President Bashar al-Assad introduces would “essentially require sacrificing the Baath party’s supremacy,” ending five decades of single party rule, he writes, as the repeal of Article 8 of the constitution that designates the party as “leader of state and society” has been a consistent priority of the protest movement

While the pro-democracy forces have regained momentum, many observers contend that external actors – especially the U.S. and Turkey – have a critical role to play in facilitating a peaceful transition.  

The Washington-based Foreign Policy Initiative recommends that the Obama administration take five steps to hasten Assad’s exit: unequivocally call for Assad to step down; withdraw the U.S. Ambassador to Syria and expel Syria’s Ambassador to the United States; pressure the Assad regime over its secret nuclear program; further sanction the Assad regime for human rights abuses, and persuade other states—especially in Europe—to do likewise; and get Turkey to exert pressure on the Assad regime.

“Turkey was quick to cheer the Arab Spring, when hopeful protest seemed to promise a democratic Middle East in Turkey’s own image,” writes Vali Nasr, until recently an adviser to the later Richard Holbrooke. “In an effort to increase its influence in the world, it used its image as a prospering Muslim democracy to offer the region a bridge to the West.”

Turkey grows ever more concerned about state collapse and an Iraq-style sectarian civil war leading to a major refugee crisis on its borders. Washington lacks the leverage to influence events in Syria, notes Nasr, an international politics professor at Tufts University, but it is invested in Turkey’s stability and success. The Obama administration should help Ankara to match its reputation as a rising regional power with appropriate actions to match.

“Ideally, we should want to see the Turks establish a buffer zone or safe haven on the Syrian side of the border,” writes Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:

Such a Turkish intervention, which would likely be backed by the French, would be convulsive inside Syria and would signal to the military that Ankara had irreversibly chosen sides. It would also signal to the Sunni elite of Aleppo, just 26 miles from the Turkish border, that their essential Turkish trading partner had drawn a line in the sand….Neither [Turkish premier] Erdogan nor [foreign minister] Davutoglu would want to do this; but Turkey might feel obliged to if the demonstrations continue, regime savagery and the number of refugees increase, and Sunni Syrian military units start to peel off.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists that that “Assad is not indispensable and we have absolutely nothing invested in him … remaining in power” but the administration is still unable to utter the magic words — “Bashar must go,” writes Brookings analyst Shadi Hamid.

Excuses for prevarication are invariably accompanied by the claim that the U.S. has no leverage with Damascus, he notes. But a recent article by David Schenker and Andrew Tabler outlines several policy options, including

Appoint a special human rights rapporteur. Although China and Russia may balk, Washington should press the UN Human Rights Council to designate a special rapporteur on Syria. … The mere discussion of a rapporteur would serve as a point of annoyance for Damascus and keep human rights issues in the spotlight.

Enhance relations with the opposition. Becoming overly involved with the Syrian opposition could prove counterproductive for Washington. At minimum, however, the administration should meet routinely with respected opposition leaders (exiles and, where appropriate, Syria-based figures), encourage Turkey to continue hosting opposition conferences, and consider recognizing a government in exile if one is established.

“The goal here is not to change Assad’s mind,” writes Hamid, “but rather to encourage the country’s Sunnis, particularly the business elite, to distance themselves, and possibly defect, from the regime.”

The administration’s equivocation about regime change in Damascus is especially perplexing because the Baathists’ demise would represent a major strategic advance for U.S. interest in the region, argues Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East (Hoover Institution Press). As the closest ally of Iran’s Islamic Republic and leading sponsor of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, change in Syria “offers the prospect of a devastating setback to America’s worst enemies.”

Has Turkey made a strategic mistake in embracing Middle East autocrats while turning its back on traditional democratic allies?

Foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has not only refashioned the foreign policy of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), writes Andrew Finkel. “It would be no exaggeration to say that he has been the main architect of their two terms in government.”

But his concepts of “strategic depth” and “zero problems” are looking increasingly, well, shallow and problematic, suggests Finkel, a former Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.