Turkey has no interest in peace in the Eastern Med

AUGUST 31, 2020 21:10

Turkey’s recent antics in the Eastern Mediterranean are giving serious cause for alarm to both Israel and the wider region’s key powers, as it seeks to outcast itself from any sort of cooperation. Instead it has sought to aggravate the already heightened geopolitical tensions in the region, exacerbated by shipments of arms and jihadists to Libya and deliberately provocative naval sabre-rattling toward Greece. Sadly, diplomacy, stability and peace are the last things on Turkish President Recep Erdoğan’s agenda.

Compare and contrast his approach with the United Arab Emirates-Israel deal, bringing about a renewed sense of hope and a step further in the direction of stability and prosperity for the region.

US President Donald Trump’s brokering of the deal welcomed positive comments from other Western allies such as the UK, and even from the US opposition candidate Joe Biden who said it was a “brave, and badly needed act of statesmanship.”

Turkey has made no secret of the fact that it seeks to quash this hope as much as it can. A day after the announcement, it threatened to suspend its diplomatic relations with the UAE and recall its envoy. This, of course, is despite Ankara having diplomatic relations with Israel for over half a century

The country’s pro-government channels have also been wielding their influence, broadcasting news about rejecting the normalization in the Middle East, using, in particular, Muslim Brotherhood affiliates.

Erdoğan’s recent meeting with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh presented an opportunity for Haniyeh to praise Turkey for rejecting the normalization, giving further weight to the notion that Turkey is lobbying the Palestinian cause through an Islamist-extremist focus in its associations with the terrorist group.

The presence of large numbers of Brotherhood members in Turkey, and the close relations between the group’s leadership and the Turkish ruling faction mean that events and politics in Turkey are a key driver of the country’s increasingly hard-line direction.

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It is thought that the number of Egyptian Brotherhood members in Turkey is around 20,000. This drift away from secular ideals and toward dogmatic Islamism makes Turkey’s reckless foreign policy difficult to ignore. It is symptomatic of Ankara’s promotion of a Pan-Islamist, Neo-Ottoman ideology with dangerous repercussions for the regional stability.

This misguided vision of Pan-Islamism brings with it a culturally dominant form of political Islam and militant Jihadism, something the US failed to effectively resist or call out in the recent past.

ONE CAN’T FORGET that part of the root of this conflict can be traced back to the Obama administration post-2011, which, as former White House officials have highlighted, seemed to regard the Muslim Brotherhood as an “unsavory but inevitable byproduct of democracy in action.”

The US decision to sit back and enact a do-nothing foreign policy with regard to the rising Islamist forces in the early 2010s is also a decision that questions the line between inaction and complicity. Its consequences, in part, can be seen through the Muslim Brotherhood diaspora in today’s 2020, where Erdoğan has sought to provide a safe haven for persecuted members of the movement.

The seizing of the agenda across the region and the failure of the US to recognize the threat an increasing Islamist tide poses are, in part, some of the reasons for the hard-line Turkey we have today. One would hope that the US has learned its lesson in that it is impossible for an international actor as powerful as the US to stay neutral in the region.

Erdoğan’s threatening and mocking tone at Greece convening its National Security Council, warning it not to pursue a “Greek tragedy,” accusing it of playing “Greek theater through diplomacy,” epitomized his disdain for efforts toward a diplomatic and peaceful solution. In turn, France has felt forced to provide hard military backup to its allies in Athens in the form of two warships.

French President Emmanuel Macron has also referred to Turkey’s international relations as “expansionist policy” that “mix[es] nationalism and Islam,” highlighting that it embodies the opposite of European interests. Elsewhere, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Turkey that any drilling in Greek maritime space and in the Exclusive Economic Zone of Cyprus is illegal, and that if it continued its actions, Turkey would have problems with the whole of Europe.

Despite this, Turkey will likely plow ahead regardless of heightened tensions down the road. While efforts are being made elsewhere in the region to strike peaceful alliances, Erdoğan is seeking scapegoats and external opposition in order to maintain his dwindling power. He is stoking irresponsible military conflict and championing a misguided political Islam in an effort to distract from a worsening economic position at home. It therefore suits him to avoid de-escalation and diplomacy, no matter the cost.

The writer has a PhD from Bar-Ilan University. He is a researcher at the BESA Center, author of The Holocaust in the Eyes of Mahmoud Abbas (Hebrew), and specializes in inter-Arab relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, terrorism and Jewish communities in the Arab world.