Guest Post: An Alternate History of Israeli-Turkish Reconciliation
September 4, 2012 § 1 Comment
Dov Friedman (whose previous guest post can be found here) is taking over the reins of O&Z once again for an insightful counterfactual of what might have been had Shaul Mofaz used his time in the Israeli coalition to mend ties with Turkey. Dov thinks that Israel missed a golden opportunity with the release of the Lindenstrauss Report, and here’s why:
Though few realized it at the time, the day Israeli Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss released his highly critical report detailing the government’s mishandling of the Mavi Marmara raid—June 13th of this year—doubled as the best chance for Israel and Turkey to repair the countries’ damaged relations. Only four weeks prior, Shaul Mofaz had led Kadima into Netanyahu’s government. The expanded coalition had weakened the power of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a chief opponent of an Israeli apology. The Lindenstrauss Report revealed new information that would have made an apology credible—and restored relations possible. But Netanyahu dismissed the report, the public discourse faded, and a key opportunity was missed, the effects of which are still being felt by Israel—and by Turkey.
Upon the grand coalition’s forming, analysts offered various explanations for the surprise Netanyahu-Mofaz partnership. Many observers—including Jeffrey Goldberg, Amir Oren of Ha’aretz, and Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin—viewed the deal as increasing the likelihood of an Iran strike. David Horovitz argued optimistically that Netanyahu could use the coalition to advance talks with the Palestinians. Here at O&Z, Michael saw the deal as motivated by domestic issues, specifically the unconstitutional Tal Law.
Frozen relations with Turkey were an afterthought. The most recent attempt to broker a deal between the recalcitrant sides had dissolved the previous summer. The Lindenstrauss Report created an opening. Netanyahu was still motivated to protect his expanded coalition, and Likud-Kadima unity on an apology could marginalize radical coalition opponents.
Yet, Mofaz exerted no pressure to reengage Turkey. Turkey had spent the previous six months going out of its way to needle Israel, reminding it that the freeze had costs. In February, Turkey demanded that Israel not receive data from the NATO missile defense system housed by Turkey. In late April, Turkey rejected Israel’s participation in NATO’s May summit in Chicago. Unquestionably, rapprochement with Turkey would eliminate a considerable—and unnecessary—headache for Israel.
If Mofaz had pressured Netanyahu to resume negotiations with Turkey, the outlines of a deal were clear. Netanyahu’s government would have said that in light of its own internal report, Israel regretted the poor planning and lack of preparation that contributed to the loss of life, and it recognizes that the circumstances could have—and should have—been prevented. Turkey could then have returned its ambassador and pledged aid ships to Gaza—ships that would conveniently dock in Ashqelon, tacitly reaffirming Israel’s security interest in managing the flow of aid into the Strip.
Of course, that deal never materialized. Not three months after entering the coalition, Mofaz led Kadima out ashen-faced. Netanyahu balked at confronting the religious parties over the Tal Law, refusing to implement Yohanan Plesner’s recommendations for haredi national service. Mofaz—having cried wolf one too many times—had no appealing options.
While analysis of the collapse focused on the domestic political implications, it overlooked lost international opportunities. Undoubtedly, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Davutoğlu will seek—and relish—further opportunities to poke Israel in the eye. Israel wisely refrains from comment, but that hardly means it doesn’t smart from the blows. Turkey is still a NATO member, and it can create problems for Israel indefinitely.
However, Erdoğan and Davutoğlu err if they believe the standoff has not detrimentally affected Turkey. If the Netanyahu-Mofaz coalition and Turkey had hammered out a deal, the downed Turkish F-4 jet may never have flown. As friend of O&Z Aaron Stein noted in an incisive piece in World Politics Review, Turkey’s intelligence capabilities are decidedly limited. Israel’s are significantly less so. Israel maintains a fleet of satellites with broad intelligence-gathering capabilities. The Mossad is active in Syria, and the IDF has experience flying aircraft in and out unscathed.
The theory prevails that Turkey’s jet was testing Syria’s air defenses. One need not theorize that Turkey was out of its depth. If Israel and Turkey had ended their superficial feud, Turkey’s pilots might never have been asked to broach Syrian airspace.
Israel has suffered publicly from the downgraded relationship; however, Turkey has lost out as well, albeit less obviously. Because trade relations between the countries remain strong, neither has felt pressure to alter the status quo. Nevertheless, the sides continue missing opportunities to collaborate to mutual benefit. This alternate history merely illustrates that the full extent of the shared loss may be continually underestimated.
What Turkey Can Learn From Minnesota
August 31, 2012 § Leave a comment
I spent most of yesterday being inundated with Minnesota and Minneapolis-St. Paul corporate and government propaganda (for those of you who aren’t regular readers, this is why), so you’ll excuse me if I sound as if I work for the Twin Cities Chamber of Commerce, but it occurred to me over the course of the day that there are actually some important lessons for Turkish politics that can be gleaned from observing the North Star State, and that bringing a group of emerging Turkish leaders here is a good thing.
First, Minnesota has an unusually high level of civic engagement and corporate innovation. We were told a couple of times that it has the highest voter turnout rate of any state, and I checked every election from 2000 through 2010 and that held true for all of them. Minnesota voters turn out to the polls in larger numbers than their fellow citizens and the lesson of civic engagement and the important of voting is a good one, particularly given that the small and nonrandom sample I took today of my Turkish colleagues indicates that they do not feel terribly connected to their politicians. A number of the people we spoke with today waxed effusive about a sense among Minnesotans that politics is not only important but that politics can be a real driver of change and that local politics here is extremely responsive to its citizens. It is a good model for the Turkish visitors to observe, because it shows the importance of political engagement and the less cynical side of what can be accomplished through the political system. Minnesota also has the largest number of Fortune 500 companies per capita, which is a good reminder that innovation and corporate success do not have to be limited to the east and west coasts. Much of Turkey’s economic growth over the past decade has come from outside the big cities, and Minnesota mirrors that while illustrating that economic dynamism will flourish with an educated populace (which Minnesota has, with Minneapolis-St.Paul having the highest percentage of any metropolitan area in the country of adults with a diploma at 90%).
Second, Minnesota state politics is a great example of a diverse system that is not captured by one party and that tolerates, and even embraces, divided government. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, represents a district right next door to Michele Bachmann, who is currently notorious for her anti-Muslim witch hunt targeted at Huma Abedin. Two years ago, a Republican governor and Democratic legislature flipped completely, and Minnesota now has a Democratic governor and Republican legislature. Minnesota votes for Republican governors like Tim Pawlenty and complete wildcard governors like former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura at the same time that it votes for extremely liberal senators like Paul Wellstone or Al Franken. The state is hard to characterize politically and reveals a real openness to a wide spectrum of political ideas and personalities. Turkey, on the other hand, is a country that right now effectively operates as a one-party state given the AKP’s dominance and the CHP’s feckless impotence. As I’ve noted in the past, an unhealthy political system is ultimately going to hamper Turkish economic and political development and harm Turkey’s status as a geopolitical power. Minnesota presents a great demonstration for this next generation of Turkish political, business, and press leaders of a political system that is not captured by any one party or set of policies and that does not stagnate as a result of stale politics or a static political environment.
(This post has been brought to you by the State of Minnesota. The brainwashing will cease soon.)
Turkish Parties Looking To The Future
July 17, 2012 § 6 Comments
There has been a fair amount of maneuvering by Turkey’s political parties in the last couple of weeks, suggesting that the AKP is trying to determine how best to extend its dominance – or perhaps more accurately, Prime Minister Erdoğan’s dominance – while the CHP senses an opportunity to cut into AKP gains for the first time in a decade. First, there was Erdoğan’s invitation to the HAS Party (Voice of the People) to merge with the AKP. HAS was founded by Numan Kurtulmuş, who, unlike Erdoğan, stuck with former PM Necmettin Erbakan following the ban on the Fazilet Party and then eventually broke with Erbakan to form HAS. Erdoğan and Kurtulmuş both grew up within Turkish political Islam, but they had very different styles. Whereas Erdoğan was, and is, more bombastic and a lot savvier politically, seeing the opportunity in breaking with his mentor and forming the AKP as a more moderate and reformist version of an Islamic-inspired party, Kurtulmuş stuck with Erbakan a lot longer and only founded HAS in 2010 after being forced out of Saadet by more conservative elements.
There is speculation that the reason Erdoğan has now invited HAS into the fold has to do more with Kurtulmuş than with HAS itself. As he announced yesterday, Erdoğan is only going to run as AKP leader one more time, which means that he needs a way to remain as the dominant figure within his party. While everyone anticipates that the new constitution spearheaded by the AKP will transform Turkey into a presidential system and that Erdoğan will run to be Turkey’s first newly powerful president, that does not mean that his path forward is completely clear. Should Turkey’s current president, Abdullah Gül, make a bid to be PM, then Erdoğan will have a serious and credible rival standing opposite him within his own party. Gül is a popular politician, a serious thinker, and less divisive than Erdoğan, and it is unclear that a President Erdoğan would be able to dominate a Prime Minister Gül. Kurtulmuş, on the other hand, is another story. He is exactly the type of PM that a President Erdoğan would want, since he is pliable and less likely to seek to carve out an independent power base from which to challenge Erdoğan. In fact, when the HAS Party was formed, some of its members were concerned that Kurtulmuş was not tough enough and that his lack of an “authoritarian mentality” would be a weakness compared to the leaders of other parties. Should HAS merge with the AKP, and all signs so far point to this happening, look for Kurtulmuş to slowly emerge as Erdoğan’s favored candidate to replace him as PM.
The other development is with regard to the CHP, which appears to be asserting itself more and more as it sees some crucial openings with which to challenge the ruling AKP. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has announced that the CHP will intensify its efforts to become a true social democratic party which not coincidentally coincides with a growing chorus of criticism over the AKP’s sometimes authoritarian impulses and actions. More interestingly, Kılıçdaroğlu’s speech to the CHP convention today hammered the government on foreign policy as well, suggesting that the CHP sees Turkey’s approach to the world (and more specifically, its policy on Syria) as becoming a political albatross. Given the way in which Turkey’s international status has grown amidst a nearly universal glowing reputation for Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and the manner in which Erdoğan has all but accused the CHP of treason for criticizing government policy on Syria, this is a bold strike on Kılıçdaroğlu’s part. It remains to be seen if it will work, but the CHP is clearly banking its chips on the notion that Turks are beginning to get fed up with the AKP on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts. Should the more direct confrontation with Erdoğan and the clearer contrast between the two leading parties goad Erdoğan into some more intemperate statements, he might make the CHP’s point that it is time for a change all by himself. No matter what happens, we are in for some interesting months ahead on the Turkish political front.
Labeling Turkish Political Parties
July 12, 2012 § 2 Comments
Issandr El-Amrani has a terrific post over at The Arabist on the various labels that people assign to Arab political parties, and he makes the case that there is too much inappropriate conflation between different types. For instance, he says that all non-Islamists in the recent Libyan election were dubbed as liberals, when in fact that group included many parties and that were neither economically liberal or socially liberal. Similarly, secularists and liberals are often used interchangeably, when in fact secularists might be moderate Islamists or decidedly non-liberal conservative felool. He also argues that the term Islamist is overly broad (an argument that most knowledgeable observers have made and would agree with) but dives down even deeper than the Salafi/non-Salafi divide, asserting that in Egypt one can speak of Ikhwani Islamists, Salafi Islamists, and Wasati Islamists. He has a lot more in there, and you should go read the whole thing for yourselves.
It got me thinking about Turkish politics and the labels that outsiders tend to use with regard to Turkish parties. You almost universally see the AKP referred to as Islamist, but this is wrong in many respects. To begin with, the AKP itself rejects the Islamist branding, and looking at virtually every other Islamist party in the world, it is easy to see why. The AKP does not advocate for disbanding the secular state or legislating according to the principles of sharia, and it has not made any overt moves to do so. The AKP governs not as an Islamist party, but as a secular party whose members are personally devout. The fears that many expressed upon the AKP coming to power in 2002 have not come to pass, and even if the party has led the way toward a more visibly pious or conservative Turkish society, nobody can credibly argue that it has done this through legislative government action. Compared to Arab Islamist parties, the AKP is not even in the same ballpark, and should reasonably be characterized as a socially conservative party rather than a religious one. Prime Minister Erdoğan won himself no Islamist fans in Egypt when he traveled there last fall and lectured a Muslim Brotherhood audience about the vital need for a secular state, which is a strange move for the head of a supposed Islamist party to make.
Similarly, the terms secular and liberal have not traditionally coincided in Turkish politics. The current incarnation of the CHP under Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has tried to remake itself as a socially liberal party, but historically the CHP’s fealty was to Kemalism above all else. Atatürk and Inönü were not liberals in the sense we use the term today although they were (to turn a phrase) religiously secular and carried out socially liberal reforms that conformed with their secular vision, and the CHP and other secular parties abetted much illiberal behavior on the part of politicians and the army. Turkey’s military coups were carried out by staunch secularists, but the coups were the very apotheosis of illiberal behavior. The 1982 constitution enshrined military-imposed secularism basically at gunpoint (yes, I know that there was technically a referendum, but that was not exactly what we would call a free and fair election free from coercion), which may have enshrined principles that we associate with liberal governance but was certainly not a liberal document. The nationalist party, the MHP, is also a secular nationalist party that is not a liberal one, and thus the secular-liberal fusion that we are used to in the West does not apply to Turkey quite so neatly.
None of these ideas are new, but they bear repeating. It is considered common knowledge in most of the world, and even within some quarters in Turkey, that the AKP is Islamist, which is what drives much of the talk about applying the “Turkish model” to Arab states where Islamist parties are strong. It is also assumed that any secular parties in government will automatically be less authoritarian and more committed to liberal democracy than the AKP appears to be at times. Both of these assumptions are fallacies, and those of us who work on Turkey might want to take El-Amrani’s words to heart and be a lot more careful about the terms we use and what those terms imply when we discuss Turkish politics.
The Gülen Invitation
June 19, 2012 § 4 Comments
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a big splash last week with his very public (albeit veiled) call for Fethullah Gülen to leave his self imposed exile in Pennsylvania and return to Turkey, and Gülen made just as big a splash with his tearful video announcing that he is staying right where he is. The entire incident was very strange, as it comes on the heels of an increasingly confrontational clash between Erdoğan and the AKP on one side and the Gülenists on the other. The Gülen movement was an early and important supporter of the AKP, but tension has been building between the two camps and is finally out in the open in the fight over Turkey’s special authority criminal courts, which have been the vehicle used to prosecute military officers and journalists and which are presumed to be controlled by Gülenists. Erdoğan has been annoyed since a Gülenist prosecutor attempted to question Hakan Fidan, his national intelligence chief, and a couple of weeks ago the prime minister opined that the special authority courts have gone too far and need to be curbed, accusing them of acting as if they are above the state. This criticism was unmistakably aimed at the Gülenists, and it prompted a furious backlash from the movement. Today’s Zaman, which is the English language version of the Gülen movement’s flagship newspaper, ran two articles recently that were extraordinary in their criticism of Erdoğan and the AKP, blasting the party as authoritarian and accusing it of endangering Turkish democracy. From a paper that has spent the five years since its founding boosting Erdoğan and the AKP relentlessly, this is a remarkable turn of events.
Against this backdrop came Erdoğan’s invitation for Gülen himself to come back to Turkey. The timing seems strange, and there are a lot of theories flying around as to why he did it. It might have been to demonstrate that, rifts with the Gülen movement aside, Erdoğan is still on good terms with Gülen himself; or to highlight Erdoğan’s self-confidence; or to begin repairing the divide between the AKP and the Gülenists. I, however, have a different theory. Ever since Fidan was targeted, Erdoğan has been pushing back strongly against what he sees as a movement that has grown too big for its britches. In a major show of power, the government last week abruptly removed the chief prosecutors from the Ergenekon, Sledgehammer, and soccer match-fixing cases – all of which have been driven by Gülenists – and reassigned them to different posts. While the three were all technically promoted, the message sent was crystal clear: the AKP, and not the Gülen movement, controls Turkey, and this includes the police and the judiciary, which are Gülen strongholds. Erdoğan also threatened to eliminate the special authority courts entirely, and has recently been standing up for the military, which is the béte noire of the Gülen movement.
I think that Erdoğan’s invitation for Gülen to return was an effort to put Gülen himself squarely in the prime minister’s crosshairs. It is difficult to target a phantom presence, and Erdoğan’s confidence and position as the colossus of Turkish politics leaves him unable to abide the power, whether real or perceived, of a legendary imam who is basically untouchable at this point. If Gülen returns to Turkey, much of his mystique evaporates, and it lets Erdoğan tackle him on more equal footing. Gülen will be out in the open and viewed as a normal (while still revered) public figure, subject to political caricature and debate. Erdoğan knows that he cannot really tangle with Gülen while he is in seclusion in the Pennsylvania woods since it risks debasing the prime minister’s image and won’t get him anywhere, but a Gülen who is back in Turkey is a different matter. This is why Erdoğan wants him back in Turkey, and why Gülen will never consent to returning. Erdoğan’s invitation was a poison pill, designed to mortally wound Gülen if he accepted it. It was a typically clever political move by Erdoğan, and combined with the other shots he has taken recently at the Gülen movement, it puts them on notice that he is not to be trifled with. It is understandable that the Gülenists have been spinning this as a sign of the deep respect that Erdoğan has for Gülen, and the prime minister is smart not to contest that interpretation of events, but viewed in context with chain of events from the past few months, I think that Erdoğan wants to take the leap from criticizing the Gülenists to challenging their spiritual leader as well. If Gülen ever returns to Turkey, it makes that possibility ever so much easier.
