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CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Happy Hanukkah! Hag Sameach!
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Neo-Ottoman: Clifford D. May, Washington Times, Dec. 2, 2014— Turkey should have been part of the solution. Instead, it’s become part of the problem.
Turkey And The Islamic State: Neville Teller, Eurasia Review, Dec. 13, 2014— No-one quite knows where Turkey stands in relation to the brutal and bloodthirsty Islamic State (IS), but there are reasons for fearing the worst.
Hezbollah’s Syria Problem: Matthew Levitt, Politico, Dec. 1, 2014— Hezbollah wants the world to know it still wants death to Israel, it’s just really busy right now.
Still Failing Syria’s Refugees: New York Times, Dec. 13, 2014 — The international community is expected to offer shelter and support to more than 100,000 additional Syrian refugees, who have been forced from their homes by their country’s bloody civil war.
Israel Still Doing U.S. Dirty Work in Syria: Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary, Dec. 10, 2014
Al Qaeda-linked Syria Rebels Capture Two Military Bases From Regime: Dana Ballout & Mohammed Nour Al-Akraa, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 15, 2014
‘French Effect’ Hits Turkey as Jews Look to Future Outside of the Country: Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, Dec. 16, 2014
Erdoğan’s Grand Ambitions: Burak Bekdil, Middle East Quarterly, Winter, 2015
RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, THE NEO-OTTOMAN
Clifford D. May
Washington Times, Dec. 2, 2014
Turkey should have been part of the solution. Instead, it’s become part of the problem. The problem, of course, is the spread of jihadism throughout the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. Turkish policies have been aiding and abetting Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate; the Islamic State, which has turned large swaths of Syria and Iraq into killing fields; the Islamic Republic of Iran, still ranked by the U.S. government as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and well on its way to becoming nuclear-armed; and the Muslim Brotherhood, including Hamas, the group’s Palestinian branch.
Troubling, too, is the rhetoric we’ve been hearing from Turkish leaders. Fikri Isik, Turkey’s science, industry and technology minister, claimed last week that it was Muslim scientists who first discovered that the Earth is round. Two weeks earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that Muslim sailors reached the Americas 300 years before Columbus — only to find that well-established Muslims in Cuba had built a beautiful mosque. Such myth-making might be dismissed as nothing more than attempts to play to Islamic pride. Less easy to excuse is Mr. Erdogan’s increasing xenophobia. “Foreigners,” he recently observed, “love oil, gold, diamonds and the cheap labor force of the Islamic world. They like the conflicts, fights and quarrels of the Middle East.” He added that Westerners “look like friends, but they want us dead, they like seeing our children die. How long will we stand that fact?”
If Turkey were just another tin-pot dictatorship, none of this would much matter. But Turkey is a Muslim majority republic (98 percent) with a dynamic economy (not dependent on the extraction of petroleum), a member of NATO (making it, officially, an American ally), and a candidate for membership in the European Union (though that possibility now appears remote). Just three years ago, President Obama listed Mr. Erdogan as one of five world leaders with whom he had especially close personal ties. He regarded the Turkish leader as a moderate, his interpreter of — and bridge to — the tumultuous and confusing Islamic world.
Today, as detailed in a report by Jonathan Schanzer and Merve Tahiroglu, my colleagues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Mr. Erdogan is refusing to allow the American-led coalition formed in August to launch strikes against the Islamic State from Turkish soil. Worse, there is mounting evidence that weapons and fighters are crossing from Turkey into Syria, where they are delivered to the Islamic State. If Turkish officials are taking steps to stop the traffic, it has not been effective. Stolen oil is moving in the other direction, sold to raise cash for the Islamic State. Inside Turkey, as well, Mr. Schanzer and Ms. Tahiroglu write, the Islamic State has “established cells for recruiting militants and other logistical operations.” Last weekend, Turkey’s main Kurdish party accused the Erdogan government of allowing Islamic State fighters to attack the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani from within Turkey.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies report cites numerous sources alleging that Turkey also has given assistance to al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. To be fair: The Turkish government, like the Obama administration, seeks the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, satrap of Iran. A Turkish official is quoted as saying that al-Nusra fighters are essential to that effort, adding: “After Assad is gone, we know how to deal with these extremist groups.” Do they? Hamas is an extremist group, and one of its top leaders, Saleh al-Arouri, has been permitted to set up his headquarters in Turkey. In August, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said it had thwarted a Hamas-led plot to topple Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — and that Mr. al-Arouri was behind it. Mr. al-Arouri also claimed responsibility — in the presence of Turkey’s deputy prime minister — for the kidnappings and killings of three Israeli boys in the West Bank early last summer, an act of terrorism that led to a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. There’s more: Turkey has acknowledged helping Iran’s rulers evade sanctions; the fact that Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other country; Mr. Erdogan’s comparison of Israelis to Nazis (guess which he regards as more “barbaric”); and his pledge to “wipe out Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. They will see the Turkish republic’s strength.”
To understand what Turkey has become, it helps to know a little about what Turkey used to be. Istanbul was once Constantinople, a Christian capital of the ancient world. In 1453, it fell to the fierce armies of the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic caliphate. Islam’s political and religious leaders soon established the Sublime Porte, the central government of their growing imperial realm. Almost 500 years later, in the aftermath of World War I, the empire collapsed and the caliphate was dissolved. Modern Turkey arose from the ashes thanks to the leadership of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, a visionary general who believed that progress and prosperity could be achieved only by separating mosque and state. His goal was to make Turkey a nation — one as modern and powerful as any in Europe.
A century later, the world looks rather different. There are good reasons to believe Europe is in decline and America in retreat (these are disparate phenomena). While it may be delusional to believe that Columbus encountered Muslims in the Caribbean, it is not crazy to believe that, over the decades ahead, fierce Muslim warriors will profoundly alter the world order once more. Viewed in this light, Mr. Erdogan looks like a neo-Ottoman, one who dreams of commanding Muslims — and those who have submitted to them — in many lands. If that’s accurate, the rift between Turkey and the West can only widen.
Neville Teller
Eurasia Review, Dec. 13, 2014
No-one quite knows where Turkey stands in relation to the brutal and bloodthirsty Islamic State (IS), but there are reasons for fearing the worst. The worst, from the point of view of the West generally, as well as much of the Middle East, is that Turkey’s antagonism towards Syria’s President Bashar Assad outweighs any opposition it may have to IS, and that its current foreign strategy is postulated on that premise. Underlying this position is the long-standing aim of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to deny Kurdish aspirations for full independence, and crush the militant Kurdish organisation, the PKK – a stance which has the full support of Ankara’s political establishment. As demonstrated last autumn in the fight for Kobane, the town on the Syrian-Turkish border, rather than have the Kurds prevail the Turks would have preferred to see it overrun by IS. In the event, due to determined efforts by the US-led anti-IS alliance, Kobane has not fallen, but the Turks have sat on their hands while the battle raged.
The Western powers can perfectly well see what game Turkey is playing – standing by while IS slogs it out with its traditional Kurdish enemies, and using the humanitarian disaster thus created to pressure the US into helping remove Assad and his Shia-supported Islamic government. In pursuit of replacing the Assad regime with one in the Sunni tradition, many fear that the Turks are actually supporting IS fighters with arms and training, as well as facilitating the flow of foreign fighters across its borders to join IS – something that Turkey strongly denies. Perhaps this explains the recent influx of foreign visitors to the court of Turkey’s new president. First to arrive early in December was Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. He was followed by a high-powered delegation of top officials from the European Union. Hard on their heels came the UK’s prime minister, David Cameron. Each was seeking to pull Turkey closer to its own political interests.
Putin’s visit highlighted a major disagreement between Russia and the EU involving the supply of gas to southern Europe. The South Stream pipeline project, announced in 2007, was a plan to transport natural gas from the Russian Federation through the Black Sea to Bulgaria, then through Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia to Austria. The project fell foul of EU competition and energy legislation, and the difficulties could not be resolved. Putin made his trip to Turkey in order to announce that Russia was scrapping South Stream, and to name Turkey as its preferred partner for an alternative pipeline. The proposed undersea pipeline to Turkey, with an annual capacity of 63 billion cubic metres, would face no EU competition problems, since Turkey remains outside the EU. No doubt Putin hoped that Turkey would respond by agreeing to retain its neutral stance as regards Russia’s activities in Ukraine, and continue to refrain from imposing Western-style sanctions.
Facing the prospect of a new Russo-Turkish entente, and clearly fearing the worst as regards Turkish intentions in the anti-IS battle, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, together with other top EU officials, flew to Turkey on December 8 to urge its full participation in the fight against IS militants in Syria, and to persuade Turkey to stop the flow of foreign fighters across its borders. Underlying the visit was Turkey’s long-standing application, dating back to 1987, to join the EU. The visit by these top EU officials was one of the highest-profile in years and, said Mogherini, is a symbol of: “…our desire to step up the engagement.” The EU apparently hopes that the coincidence of a new president and prime minister in Turkey, and a new European Commission in Brussels, can mark a fresh start in EU-Turkey relations. This could at least pave the way for regular high-level talks to discuss common strategic interests, if not lead to granting Turkey’s long-standing wish to join the EU.
One issue up for discussion during the visit was surely the fact that Turkey has not joined in with the sanctions imposed by the West on Russia over Ukraine. The proposed Russian-Turkish gas project clearly renders such a possibility even more remote, though EU officials doubtless pressed Turkey to join in sanctions, or at least not to take advantage of the situation by exporting affected products to Russia. The EU officials had barely left Turkish soil before the UK’s prime minister, David Cameron, flew into Ankara to try to persuade Erdogan to bend his policies in Britain’s direction. In particular IS poses a direct threat to Britain’s national security, both through its brutal beheadings of Western hostages and because of the growing number of British jihadists who are seeking to return home from fighting in Syria to carry out acts of terrorism. Cameron hoped to persuade Erdogan to help track the movements of British and other foreign jihadists crossing Turkey’s border with Syria. At a joint press conference with Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish Prime Minister, Cameron was able to announce: “The prime minister and I have agreed that we should exchange even more information, we should cooperate more in terms of intelligence.” This is understood to include requiring all Turkey’s airlines to share timely and accurate information about airline passengers flying from Turkish airports direct to the UK. As for Turkey’s EU aspirations, Cameron said that he discussed Turkey’s accession to the EU during talks in Ankara on December 10 with Davutoglu. “In terms of Turkish membership of the EU,” he said, “I very much support that. That’s a longstanding position of British foreign policy.”
Cameron’s difficulty is that Turkey, though a member of Nato, has a very different take on the Syrian conflict, and persuading Turkey’s leaders to alter their focus from overthrowing Assad to defeating IS is a task probably beyond Cameron, let alone the high-powered EU delegation that preceded him in Ankara. In fact, Erdogan has already announced the terms on which he might be persuaded to be more active in supporting the anti-IS alliance. His most specific demand is the creation of a buffer and no-fly zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, protected from Assad’s troops and aircraft. This would represent a serious escalation of the conflict, since establishing a no-fly zone could involve destroying a good chunk of Assad’s air defence system. Moreover, artillery within the range of the buffer zone might also have to be targeted. There is also the implication for relations with Iran. Creating a buffer zone would be seen by Iran as an invasion of a key ally, and it might well scupper any hope the US may have of linking the on-going nuclear talks with securing Iran’s support for a managed political transition that removes Assad but preserves much of the Syrian state. All in all, the chances of persuading Turkey to abandon its somewhat equivocal approach to the Syrian conflict seem somewhat remote..
Matthew Levitt
Politico, Dec. 1, 2014
Hezbollah wants the world to know it still wants death to Israel, it’s just really busy right now. As Iranian and P5+1 negotiators met in Vienna against a looming deadline and prospects for a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program seemed increasingly dim, Iran’s primary militant proxy—Lebanese Hezbollah—chimed in with news of its own. In an interview with Iran’s Tansim news agency, Hezbollah deputy chief Na’im Qassem announced that with Iran’s help the group had acquired advanced Iranian missiles with “pinpoint accuracy” that it could use in any future war with Israel. In other words, should negotiations fail Israel should think twice before carrying out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. This is not exactly an empty threat—though in point of fact Hezbollah has been making noise about its continued focus on fighting Israel for some time now, despite (or perhaps because of) its strong desire to avoid a full-fledged war with Israel at the present time.
In case it wasn’t already clear, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah wants anyone who’s listening to know this: Hezbollah stands fully prepared to fight Israel despite the group’s deep involvement in an entirely different battle in Syria. At least that was message of Nasrallah’s annual speech marking the Shiite holy day of Ashura in November. What he didn’t say, and is loath to publicly admit, is that Hezbollah desperately wants to avoid a full-blown military conflict with Israel right now and is therefore limiting its attacks on Israel to small and infrequent roadside bombs along the Lebanese border and attacks by local proxies on the Golan Heights. In the hornet’s nest that is the Middle East, filled with splinter terror groups of all persuasions, Hezbollah—long financed and supplied by Iran and based in Lebanon—has proved one of the most resilient, adaptable, and deadliest. Now, in its newest evolution, instead of its traditional strategy of attacking Israel and, occasionally, Western interests, Hezbollah has found itself consumed by the three-year-old war against Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria where, together with Iranian operatives, it’s squaring off against Sunnis of all stripes, from Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIL to moderate Sunni rebels in defense of the Syrian regime.
Today, Hezbollah is far more active targeting Israeli and Jewish interests—especially Israeli diplomats or tourists—in plots that can be carried out far away from Lebanon and executed with reasonable deniability.
Hezbollah’s new strategy, born out of necessity rather than strength, is a mixed blessing. It marks a significant—and underreported—development in one of the longest-running proxy fights in the Middle East, ushering in an era that has increased the security of Israeli citizens at home while simultaneously boosting the risk faced by Israeli tourists and diplomats abroad—and potentially boosting the terrorism risk to U.S. citizens around the world. In the plus column for Israel, Hezbollah’s army-like militia, the Islamic Resistance, is heavily occupied fighting Sunnis both in Syria and increasingly at home in Lebanon as well, reducing in the near-time the likelihood of another full-blown war with Israel. However, Hezbollah’s use of local proxies and terrorist operatives dispatched around the world is likely to increase in frequency and, as U.S. counterterrorism officials have warned, these plots may not be limited to targeting Israeli interests alone.
Hezbollah “is fully ready in southern Lebanon,” Nasrallah stressed in his recent address, despite being bogged down in the Syrian war where it has already lost as many as a thousand experienced fighters (this is a significant loss for a group believed to have only about 5,000 full time, highly-trained fighters and as many as 20,000-50,000 part time reservists). It is in Southern Lebanon, along the UN-demarcated “Blue Line” delineating the Israeli-Lebanese border, that Hezbollah faces off in the most immediate way with Israel. Hezbollah last instigated a full-blown war there in 2006. Today, Nasrallah seeks to deter Israel from taking advantage of the fact that Hezbollah is enmeshed in the Syrian war and initiate a confrontation of its own to undermine Hezbollah capabilities in Southern Lebanon. Indeed, this is a message Hezbollah has been proactively peddling for some time now. For example, in October—for the first time since the July 2006 war—Hezbollah publicly claimed responsibility for an attack against Israel after two soldiers were wounded by a bomb planted along the Lebanese border. Then, too, Nasrallah pointed to the attack as evidence that despite Hezbollah’s massive investment in Syria “our eyes remain open and our resistance is ready to confront the Israeli enemy.”
Bravado aside, though, the attack was hardly Hezbollah’s best work. It was small in scope and only mildly successful: No one was killed by the relatively small homemade explosive, and unlike previous operations no Hezbollah commandos were on call to grab wounded Israeli soldiers and drag them into Lebanon to be used as bargaining chips—dead or alive—in a future prisoner swap. Why? Because while Hezbollah wants to maintain its credentials as an anti-Israel fighting force, it can’t afford a full-scale battle with the Jewish state in Southern Lebanon while committed to fighting Sunnis in Syria and increasingly forced to do the same at home in Lebanon. Nor does it want to take the chance of inviting the Israeli air force to respond in Syria, where Israeli airstrikes could severely damage Hezbollah and other forces loyal to the Assad regime. It should therefore not surprise that Hezbollah has chosen to recruit and dispatch local proxies to place roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs) near the border fence between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights. Israeli military officials point to 15 such attacks since March. “It’s a proxy organization [that places these bombs], so everyone can say it’s not us,” an Israeli general told the New York Times. “Hezbollah gives them the IEDs and the Iranians give them the inspiration.”
STILL FAILING SYRIA’S REFUGEES
New York Times, Dec. 13, 2014
The international community is expected to offer shelter and support to more than 100,000 additional Syrian refugees, who have been forced from their homes by their country’s bloody civil war. That is progress — but it is not nearly enough when measured against the enormous need and the fact that some of the world’s wealthiest countries are still turning their backs on this humanitarian disaster.
Since the start of the conflict in 2011, fewer than 191,000 Syrians have been accepted for resettlement in countries outside the region. At a conference in Geneva last week, the United Nations refugee agency said 28 countries had made firm commitments to accept 66,254 Syrian refugees, and 11 other countries were preparing to expand existing programs or were considering expanding them, bringing total new resettlement slots to above 100,000. The agency’s goal was to have countries accept 130,000 additional Syrian refugees in 2015 and 2016, and international aid agencies had pushed for an even higher total, 180,000 or more.
Those figures are a drop in the bucket when one considers that Syria’s civil war, now in its fourth year, has forcibly displaced millions of civilians, inside and outside the country. The overwhelming burden is borne by Syria’s neighbors — Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt — which together have absorbed roughly 3.8 million Syrian refugees. The situation is not only financially costly but politically destabilizing. And the refugee problem can only become more acute since there is no end in sight to the war. Clearly, more countries need to step up and share this load. Many have refused to take in a single refugee, thus failing any reasonable test of international citizenship and basic compassion. They include China and Russia and wealthy Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The refusal of China and Russia to reach out is especially galling, since they consider themselves world leaders and have fueled the conflict through resolute support for Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad. The Gulf states have also played a role by backing various militant groups in the war.
Even in Europe, which has more of a tradition of offering refuge to those fleeing conflict, only Germany and Sweden have responded in a generous way. Other European countries — Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal — have fallen far short. The United States, the biggest donor of humanitarian aid to alleviate the Syrian crisis at $3 billion, has taken in only 300 Syrian refugees so far. Anne Richard, a senior State Department official, told the conference last week that the government is reviewing the applications of 9,000 Syrians referred by the United Nations agency and expects “admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond.” Normally, the United States takes the majority of refugees referred annually by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; in 2013 this totaled 70,000 refugees from 65 countries — more than the rest of the world combined. But the approvals have become more time consuming as Washington seeks to screen out applicants with connections to militants. President Obama has promised to speed the process, but reforms have been slow. Prudence, obviously, is important, but not at the expense of common-sense changes that could accelerate the admission of legitimate refugees.
The need to resettle Syrians in countries outside the overburdened region is great and growing. In the past six months, increasing numbers have risked their lives trying to reach Europe in boats across the Mediterranean, with sometimes fatal results. Most Syrians, hoping one day to return to their country, will not choose to leave the region. But some of them wish to get on with building new lives and would like to leave. World leaders should listen to their pleas.
Israel Still Doing U.S. Dirty Work in Syria: Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary, Dec. 10, 2014—Over the weekend, the Syrian government reported that Israeli airplanes struck targets outside Damascus.
Al Qaeda-linked Syria Rebels Capture Two Military Bases From Regime: Dana Ballout & Mohammed Nour Al-Akraa, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 15, 2014 —An al Qaeda-linked rebel group in Syria said it captured two military bases in the northwest after three years of failed attempts to seize the strategic sites.
‘French Effect’ Hits Turkey as Jews Look to Future Outside of the Country: Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, Dec. 16, 2014—The “French effect” – increasing numbers of Jews leaving a country because of anti-Semitic harassment and hostility from the media and radical politicians – is now emerging in Turkey, where a Turkish-Jewish businessman has warned, in an oped for the Istanbul-based Jewish newspaper Şalom, that a growing number of community members are heading for the exit.
Erdoğan’s Grand Ambitions: Burak Bekdil, Middle East Quarterly, Winter, 2015—By June 2015, the Turks will have gone to the ballot box three times in a span of fifteen months: local polls in March 2014, the presidential race in August 2014, and parliamentary elections next June 2015.
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