“We’re going to keep working for a Syria that is free from Assad’s tyranny, that is intact and inclusive of all ethnic and religious groups, and that’s a source of stability, not extremism,” said US President Barack Obama yesterday after meeting with the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But it may already be too late to maintain Syria’s territorial integrity.

“After more than two years of conflict, Syria is breaking up,” writes The New York Times’ Ben Hubbard:

A constellation of armed groups battling to advance their own agendas are effectively creating the outlines of separate armed fiefs… …But as evidence of massacres and chemical weapons mounts, experts and Syrians themselves say the American focus on change at the top ignores the deep fractures the war has caused in Syrian society. Increasingly, it appears Syria is so badly shattered that no single authority is likely to be able to pull it back together any time soon.

Instead, three Syrias are emerging: one loyal to the government, to Iran and to Hezbollah; one dominated by Kurds with links to Kurdish separatists in Turkey and Iraq; and one with a Sunni majority that is heavily influenced by Islamists and jihadis.

“It is not that Syria is melting down — it has melted down,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria. “So much has changed between the different parties that I can’t imagine it all going back into one piece,” Mr. Tabler said.

Syrian democracy advocates and moderates like Ausama Monajed, the Executive Director of the Strategic Research and Communication Centre, continue to plan for a post-Assad transition that incorporates a program of transitional justice and reconciliation.

In a recent interactive speech on ‘Syria’s Long Night’ at the Oslo Freedom Forum (above), he described the horrors taking place on the ground, a timeline of significant incidents since the start of the revolution and insisted that Syria’s citizens still aspired for freedom and justice and to build a new state with equal opportunities and where citizens are treated on an equal basis before the law.

But that vision is increasingly in jeopardy, according to The Times’ Hubbard:

Since mass defections of mostly conscripted soldiers shrank the government’s forces earlier in the uprising, it has largely given up on trying to reclaim parts of the country far from the capital, said Joseph Holliday, a fellow with the Institute for the Study of War.

 “The only real outcome I see in the next 5 to 10 years is a series of cantons that agree to tactical cease-fires because they are tired of the bloodletting,” he said. “That trajectory is in place, with or without Assad.”

Photo: VOA

US President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) today discussed how to bolster the Syrian opposition and initiate a political transition.

“We’re going to keep increasing the pressure on the Assad regime, and working with the Syrian opposition,” Obama said. “The prime minister has been on the forefront of the international effort to push for a transition to a democratic Syria. Turkey is going to play an important role as we bring representatives of the regime and opposition together in the coming weeks.”

“That is the only way we’re going to resolve this crisis. And we’re going to keep working for a Syria that is free from Assad’s tyranny, that is intact and inclusive of all ethnic and religious groups, and that’s a source of stability, not extremism, because it’s in the profound interest of all our nations, especially Turkey.”

Erdogan said ending the conflict and securing a new government “are two areas where we are in full agreement with the United States. Supporting the opposition and Assad leaving are important issues. “

But his comments coincided with dismissive remarks by President Abdullah Gul about the international response to the conflict.  

“The international community’s contribution to Turkey’s financial aid to these people who are in a difficult situation is only symbolic,” Gul told reporters.

“From the very start the international community has only used rhetoric and heroism in their approach to the Syrian problem,” he said.

Erdogan also insisted that he will go ahead with a planned visit to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip next month despite pressure from the US to delay it.

“Turkey has not faced a threat on the scale of the Syrian crisis since Stalin demanded territory in 1945,” two leading analysts note.

The war in Syria threatens Turkey’s emergence as a key economic and political player in the region, according to The Washington Institute’s Soner Cagaptay, author of the forthcoming book “The Rise of Turkey: The 21st Century’s First Muslim Power,” and James F. Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq:

Turkey has a 500,000 strong Alawite community whose Syrian ethnic kin support the al-Assad regime against the largely Sunni Arab Syrian rebels. The Alawite vs. Sunni conflict in Syria threatens to spill over into Turkey, a danger multiplied by the growing threat from the proliferation of chemical weapons and exposure to al Qaeda. Turkey’s security situation is not immune to the fallout of having a Somalia-style failed state next door. The mess in Syria risks ending the country’s economic miracle, something that would be bad news for the Turks and for Erdogan’s political fate. The Turkish leader wants to be elected as the country’s next president in the summer of 2014, and an economic downturn could upset his plans. Erdogan is aware that unless he secures more dynamic U.S. assistance against the al-Assad regime, Turkey could become the big loser in Syria — and Erdogan the loser at the ballot box. Yet U.S. national-security interests are also at stake in Syria, say two former U.S. ambassadors to Turkey.

“Yet the benefits of deposing Assad could prove short-lived if his repressive rule is replaced with another form of oppression or an unstable failed state,” according to Morton Abramowitz, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and Eric Edelman, a former undersecretary of defense for policy:

To keep Syria together, a political transition must create a central government able to lead the entire country, but inclusive enough not to alienate frightened minority groups, which may by then include Assad’s Shiite Alawites in a majority Sunni country. Given the immense difficulty of this task, analyzing and planning for it should begin now.

Washington must take a leading role. The U.S. has great resources and coalition-convening power, but it lacks influence with the various forces of the opposition and has limited knowledge of the elements in Syria that can best shape a post-Assad government. Democratic Turkey’s help on this front will be paramount.

“Yet if the Muslim Brotherhood or some other Sunni regime asserts the tyranny of the majority without protecting minority interests, civil strife and refugee flows could well continue,” they fear. “Worse, if such a government is dominated or influenced by al Qaeda-allied extremists, post-Assad Syria could become a breeding ground for global terrorism.”

“There is urgency if the U.S. is to try to create a reasonably stable, more pluralist Syrian government,” conclude the two co-chairmen of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on the U.S. and Turkey in the Middle East.

But interventionists tend to “underestimate the unwillingness of the ordinary people in the region to countenance yet another American military adventure in their midst,” a Turkey specialist suggests.

“More importantly, they vastly overestimate how thankful the Syrian public will be once Mr Al Assad is removed; anti-Americanism is an ingrained phenomenon across the whole region. If this crisis is directly affecting the regional powers, they need to share the burden of solving it,” says Henri J Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania:

It is likely that the Turks and others would recoil at the idea of sending in their own troops; they too have public opinion to heed. It has been easy for them so far to put the onus on the Obama administration. Were the US to offer its support to a Turkish-Arab intervention in this way, before long the regional powers would have to seriously reconsider their options for acting to end the crisis.

If the regional powers did not step up their response under those conditions, they would still have to face the consequences of the civil war on their own populations, security infrastructure and resources. They would not, however, be able to put the blame on the United States and its western allies.

President Obama should also raise concerns over the state of Turkish democracy, the Washington Institute’s Cagaptay and Jeffrey contend:

Turkey is currently drafting its first civilian-written constitution. The new charter ought to enshrine liberal democracy, as well as release the pressure points of Turkish society, by providing for constitutionally-mandated gender equality and freedom of expression. The charter should also mandate freedom of religion and freedom from religion, so that both secular and conservative Turks feel welcome in the new Turkey.

“The takeaway of the new Turkish constitution for the White House is simple,” they write. “Erdogan wants to make Turkey a Middle East leader, and he wants Washington to treat his country as such. Turkey can achieve this goal only if it becomes a true liberal democracy.”

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.

“A half century after taking the first steps toward becoming an integral part of Europe, Turkey may be ready to give up,” The New York Times reports:

After heavy hints that Ankara is looking eastwards to a closer alliance with Asia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left), the prime minister, said this week that membership in the European Union was not a must for Turkey.

“It is not the Apocalypse if they do not let us in the E.U.,” Erdogan told reporters during a visit to Budapest on Wednesday, as he launched his latest broadside against the Union’s alleged delaying tactics to keep his country out. His remarks followed a news conference earlier this week in Prague, where Mr. Erdogan described the delay in granting membership to Turkey as “unforgivable.”

As Andrew Finkel wrote from Istanbul, the prime minister also “threw the diplomatic equivalent of a cream pie” into the debate by suggesting Turkey join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization instead.

Hugh Pope, the International Crisis Group’s project director in Turkey, suggested that Mr. Erdogan was courting popularity by bashing the Union.

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 an authoritarian international for Eurasia’s illiberal regimes; “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.

“Washington has suggested that Turkish membership in the S.C.O., a security organization viewed as an anti-American bulwark in Central Asia, might be problematic in view of the Turkish role in N.A.T.O.,” The Times reports.

Andrew Finkel is a former Reagan Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. FIDH and Human Rights in China are NED grantees.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is actively considering membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group that’s been described as an authoritarian international for Eurasia’s illiberal regimes, according to Eurasia Daily Monitor analyst Emrullah Uslu:

When asked to clarify whether the SCO is an alternative to the EU, Erdogan said, “The SCO is better and more powerful, and we have common values with them [emphasis added]. We told them, ‘If you say come, we will.’ Pakistan wants to join, as does India. They have also made requests. We could all join together. In terms of population and markets, this organization significantly surpasses the European Union in every way.”

“You should include us … and we will say farewell to the European Union,” Erdogan told Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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).

“Whether or not Endogen was once again ‘joking’ about Ankara giving up the EU in favor of the SCO, pro-AKP media outlets have nonetheless catapulted the debate into the public sphere,” writes Uslu:

Turkey has been criticized in the past for seemingly moving away from its democratization process and slowly turning into an authoritarian regime. Therefore, Erdogan’s statement about Turkey’s values matching those of the SCO is politically treacherous. Raising the SCO debate in Turkish politics may inadvertently negatively contribute to the international debate on whether Turkey’s political system is indeed becoming more authoritarian.

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.

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

Washington must engage Turkey before conflagration further complicates U.S. options for addressing the Syrian civil war, writes Soner Cagaptay.
Syria promises to be a major headache for the Obama administration during its second term. But if Washington works with Ankara effectively, Turkey can help the U.S. achieve an endgame in Damascus. To facilitate this coordination, Washington should assign a full-time, high-level White House envoy to work with Ankara on Syria.

Turkey, a NATO ally, might prematurely get pulled into the Syria conflict.
To avoid this risky scenario, Washington must be able to anticipate Ankara’s next steps, and find ways to pull Ankara back when necessary.

For Ankara, the Syrian conflict is a conflagration next door that needs to be extinguished now. Assad has to go, and fast. Many reasons drive the Turkish calculus. First, there is the uptick in Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) attacks. As soon as Ankara took sides against the Assad regime in August 2011, Damascus retaliated, allowing the Turks’ archenemy, the PKK, and its Syrian franchise, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), to operate on its territory again.

All this bodes poorly for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who wants to be elected as the country’s next president in 2014, filling the seat of Turkey’s founder and first president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Erdogan has almost all the stars aligned to achieve this goal. He has defanged Turkey’s once staunchly secularist military, and tamed the once inveterately anti-Erdogan business community and media.

Erdogan may not have the patience to wait for the soft landing that Washington desires. This is where White House envoy to coordinate Syria policy with Ankara comes in.

This envoy’s task would be two fold. The first task is listening. Take for instance, recent reports that Ankara might be training anti-Assad elements, while turning a blind eye to Salafist penetration into Syria. …….
The envoy’s second job would be to wield the White House’s clout in real-time. Erdogan, who has an amicable relationship with President Obama, would feel compelled to listen to Obama’s emissary.

Erdogan is savvy enough not to launch a full-scale military invasion of Syria. Such an adventure would surpass Turkey’s economic and military capacity. ….
If not coordinated with the United States, such Turkish steps will complicate U.S. Syria policy. For starters, an impetuous move on Turkey’s part would force Washington and Ankara to hash out their “day after” policies before having a chance to work out differences of views on the role of opposition elements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.

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

RTWT

In the ten years since his Justice and Development Party (AKP) scored an overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (above), has pushed through policies that have transformed the country’s political institutions – for good and ill, write Arch Puddington and Zselyke Csaky. 

The AKP’s triumph represented much more than a normal rotation of power between one traditional party and another. As a party—or, perhaps more accurately, a movement—with roots in moderate Islamism, the AKP stood poles apart from the secularist parties that had dominated Turkish politics for much of the previous century.

Erdogan’s policies have substantially transformed many of the country’s political institutions. Most significantly, he has reduced the military, long regarded as the ultimate source of political power and guarantor of Turkish sovereignty, to a position subservient to civilian authorities. Under the AKP, elections have become more competitive and fair, prison conditions improved, and, for a while at least, rights for Kurds were enhanced.

But there is a darker side to the AKP record. The reformist bent of Erdogan’s early years in office has been replaced by policies that are meant to entrench AKP power. The government has launched mass prosecutions against military officers, journalists, academics, and political figures accused of involvement in a deep-state conspiracy, called Ergenekon, that allegedly sought to bring down the government. AKP loyalists have increasingly come to dominate the judiciary. Erdogan has intimidated the media through legal cases brought against outlets that supported the opposition. Indeed, the highly respected Committee to Protect Journalists has marked the AKP’s 10th anniversary in power with a scathing report on the state of Turkish press freedom.

Perhaps most worrisome is a sense that despite its own history as a target of repressive efforts, the AKP is now embracing methods employed with considerable effectiveness by outright authoritarian regimes.  

This extract is taken from a longer post by Arch Puddington, Vice President for Research at Freedom House, and guest blogger Zselyke Csaky. The post also includes a chronology that highlights Turkey’s record of adherence to democracy and human rights norms during the period of AKP dominance, drawn from reports published in Freedom in the World, Freedom House’s annual survey of political rights and civil liberties.

As the UN’s Syria envoy prepares to go to Damascus to seek a ceasefire in the border conflict with Turkey, NATO has drawn up plans to defend a key member.

The NATO move raises the prospect of international intervention in the increasingly violent conflict although some observers believe Ankara’s leaders remain  wary of a Turkish ‘Vietnam.’

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 90 people were killed on Tuesday, including 29 soldiers, following Monday’s death toll of 210.

While some Syrian opposition figures are dismissive of Brahimi’s efforts, others extended a tentative olive branch to the regime, suggesting that the ruling Baath party could play a role in a post-Assad Syria.

“Kofi Annan had the support of the Security Council and was unable to achieve anything. It’s obvious that Brahimi doesn’t even have the support of the Security Council, so I don’t think he can achieve anything at all in the near future,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a spokesman for the opposition Coalition for a Democratic Syria who met with Brahimi in New York recently.

But the head of the Syrian National Council struck a more conciliatory note, indicating that current regime officials could figure in transitional arrangements. “We will not repeat the failed experience of de-Baathification,” said SNC head Abdulbaset Sieda.

“We will just remove all its (Baath party’s) illegitimate privileges and officials who committed crimes will be put on trial,” he added. “The Baath party will practice its activities in accordance with the democratic process. We will not have a revenge policy and we will preserve state institutions,” he said.

Some 25 civil society groups will join the SNC as part of a major makeover at a meeting in Doha next week.

“The most important point which will be discussed is restructuring the bloc and expanding it as a further step towards uniting the Syrian opposition under a broader framework,” said council member Louay al-Safi.

Safi said new political and civil society groups will join the SNC — the main opposition bloc — including a Turkmen bloc and Nasserist socialists “as well as several political blocs, most of them from the revolt groups inside the country.” ….Last month, the SNC agreed to expand to include more opposition groups, but not the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, which favours non-violent regime change and opposes foreign military intervention in Syria.

Demands for Western intervention continue to be driven by concerns that abstention is undermining democrats and empowering radical Islamists within Syria’s fractious opposition.

Syrian rebels and the West’s Arab allies offered a warning to the West, The New York Times reports:

The Syrian people are being radicalized by a combination of a grinding conflict and their belief that they have been abandoned by a watching world. ….Wearied by violence, heading into another winter of fighting, and enraged by what they see as the inaction and hypocrisy of powerful nations, frontline leaders of the rebellion say that the West risks losing a potential ally in the Middle East if the Assad government should fall.

The corollary is frequently sounded, too: The West may be gaining enemies where it might have found friends. As anger grows, armed groups opposed to the United States may grow in numbers and stature, too.

Rebel groups are dismissive of the small donations of nonlethal assistance from Washington, the Times reports:

“We haven’t received anything from the outside,” said a member of the ad hoc governing body in Kafr Takharim known as the revolutionary council. “We read in the media that we are receiving things. But we haven’t seen it. We only received speeches from the West.”

Other men echoed this sentiment, and accused the United States and Europe of playing a double game, in effect of conspiring with the Kremlin to ensure that no nation has to act against the Assad government or on the rebels’ or civilians’ behalf.

Western powers have called for the opposition to unite but the problem facing the Aleppo Military Council and others trying to coordinate the rebels is due to “the fact that this is an authentic, bottom-up revolution,” writes The Washington Post’s David Ignatius.

“It arose spontaneously in different parts of Syria, and every area has spun off its own battalions, many seeking funding from wealthy Arabs in the Gulf,” he notes. “Unless these militia-like groups can be gathered around a single source for money and weapons, they’re unlikely to mount a unified resistance to Assad. “

Ignatius highlights the Washington-based Syrian Support Group’s efforts to help organize the opposition, but officers of the Free Syrian Army warn him that they are losing out to better-funded and better-armed radical Islamist groups.

“They say they’d like help from the United States, but that it hasn’t materialized. Without money or weapons to distribute to the fighters, these U.S.-friendly military councils will quickly lose their coordinating power,” Ignatius writes.

“The alternative power center in the revolution is the emerging Salafist jihadist network,” including such groups as the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, and the Idlib-based Soukor al-Sham Majlis al-Shura, or Shura Council, whose former leader was killed recently after raising al-Qaeda’s black flag at a Syrian border crossing.

US allies and analysts alike argue that the U.S. has a strategic interest in taking a more interventionist position, not least by countering and undermining Iran’s Islamic Republic.

“Syria is Iran’s entry into the Arab world,” said one Saudi official. “Take down Assad and you inflict a strategic blow on Iran.”

U.S. allies are also eager to avoid an Afghanistan-like blowback if Syria becomes a magnet for radical Islamist groups, the Times reports:

Many Saudi and Qatari officials now fear that the fighting in Syria is awakening deep sectarian animosities and, barring such intervention, could turn into an uncontrollable popular jihad with consequences far more threatening to Arab governments than the Afghan war of the 1980s.

“If the killing continues, the youth will not listen to wise voices,” said Salman al-Awda, one of this country’s most prominent clerics. “They will find someone who will encourage them, and they will go.”

While the West shies away from arming pro-democratic factions in Syria’s opposition, Islamist groups are enjoying patronage from the Gulf, reports suggest:  

The Saudi government appears to be trying to finance more secular rebel groups….while the Qataris appear to be closer to the Muslim Brotherhood. But these distinctions are slippery, in part because rebel groups adapt their identities to gain money and weapons. One group, in an almost comical bid for support, named itself the Rafik Hariri brigade, after the former Lebanese prime minister and Saudi ally who is believed to have been assassinated by the Syrians, and whose son Saad is influential in doling out Saudi support to the rebels.

One rebel commander appeals to the Post’s Ignatius:

If the United States can help him get modern antiaircraft and antitank weapons, “I will keep them away from extremist groups,” he promises. He hopes America can provide training, too — even a two-week basic course that could help create a real army.

“If the United States wants the rebels to coordinate better, it should lead the way by coordinating outside help,” Ignatius concludes. ‘The shower of cash and weapons coming from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and other Arab nations is helping extremist fighters and undercutting any orderly chain of command through the Free Syrian Army.”

The struggle over blasphemy is a part of the larger debate on the future of democracy in the Arab world and beyond, writes Arch Puddington Vice President for Research at Freedom House.

The amateur anti-Islamic video that provoked the recent violent anti-American protests has not only “reignited efforts to enact global legislation that would penalize insults to religion,” but also prompted “an epidemic wave of hypocrisy,” he argues:

First, there is Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called for recognizing “Islamophobia as a crime against humanity”…… Yet even as he speaks dismissively of “hiding behind the excuse of freedom of expression,” Erdogan presides over a government that is a world leader in the jailing of journalists.

Then there is Hassan Nasrallah (above), the political and spiritual leader of Hezbollah. In a televised speech to his followers in Lebanon, Nasrallah declared: “Those who should be held accountable, punished, prosecuted, and boycotted are those who are directly responsible for this film and those who stand behind them and those who support and protect them, primarily the United States of America.” But while Nasrallah demands punishment for those who have insulted Islam, he has publicly and repeatedly pledged solidarity with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, a man responsible for the violent deaths of up to 20,000 Muslims.

The available evidence confirms that the violent anti-American protests were not a “spontaneous reaction” to the 14-minute video, but were pre-organized, writes Yarim-Agaev, a former Soviet dissident:

The film, “Innocence of Muslims,” was available on YouTube for a long time without attracting any attention. Two days before the riots, the film was broadcast in Arabic on the Salafi Egyptian television channel Al-Nas. Several popular preachers on other conservative Islamic satellite channels called upon people to turn out Tuesday at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt. If this was not organization, what was it?

“Protests orchestrated on the pretext of slights and offenses against Islam have been part of Islamist strategy for decades,” says Husain Haqqani, professor of international relations at Boston University and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

The debate over freedom of expression “is a distraction from what is really going on,” he contends.

“It ignores the political intent of Islamists for whom every perceived affront to Islam is an opportunity to exploit a wedge issue for their own empowerment,” writes Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2008-11:

Islamists almost by definition have a vested interest in continuously fanning the flames of Muslim victimhood. For Islamists, wrath against the West is the basis for their claim to the support of Muslim masses, taking attention away from societal political and economic failures. For example, the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Conference account for one-fifth of the world’s population but their combined gross domestic product is less than 7% of global output—a harsh reality for which Islamists offer no solution.

“The Arab world is at an important crossroads. It is time to abandon this false narrative” of a Western war against Islam, says a former radical Islamist.

Across much of the Muslim world, the democratic West is “viewed through a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories, half-truths and a selective reading of history,” writes Ed Husain, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of The Islamist:

When I met Muhammad Mahdi Akef, the influential former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, in April 2011, he insisted that Al Qaeda was a figment of the Western imagination. The idea that it doesn’t exist, that the United States attacked itself, is buttressed by preachers in mosques, on satellite television channels and in glossy Arabic books.

When I watch Al Jazeera Arabic I am stunned by unchallenged references in talk show interviews to the “American Zionist plan” or “the American enemy” or the “ally of the Zionist entity.” Attacking the United States has become part of the political culture in much of the Middle East.

If hypocrisy is a common feature of many reactions to the crisis, “so is the limp response of democratic political leaders,” writes Puddington. “In this regard, President Obama’s relatively straightforward defense of freedom of expression at the United Nations stands as one of the less apologetic affirmations of the values of freedom in the face of pressure from the advocates of censorship.”

But the overly apologetic response of some Western leaders is explained by a failure to understand the lessons of history and the nature of ideologically-driven political actors, says Yarim-Agaev, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

“Any suggestion of compromise or acceptance of the legitimacy of your enemy’s ideology is a sign of your weakness—which only provokes further attacks,” he contends:

It is not surprising that America’s leaders are not proficient in the strategies and tactics of ideological warfare. Lessons learned from communism are now long forgotten, and are certainly not taught to current U.S. politicians. ……..We did not start wars with communism, Nazism or Islamism. They were imposed upon us. Those ideologies thrive on confrontation with the free world. Today we must revisit Kristallnacht, the Holocaust and the Cold War, to recollect our successful experience of dealing with those virulent ideologies.

“The struggle over blasphemy is a part of the larger debate on the future of democracy, both in the Arab world and beyond,” Puddington argues on the Freedom House blog:

Those who stand firm behind freedom of expression are not advocating offensive speech, but the fundamental right of all human beings to decide for themselves what speech to endorse, denounce, dismiss, or ignore. This right applies not just to YouTube videos, but also to the words of political leaders. And that is the true reason why many leaders are so eager to restrict it.

RTWT