Pointing Out The Obvious On Turkish-Israeli Reconciliation
November 26, 2012 § 9 Comments
Like clockwork every 6-12 months, this weekend brought the now familiar news story informing us that Turkey and Israel are holding secret talks aimed at reconciling. As usual, this one has all of the elements that we’ve come to expect: backchannel negotiations between relatively powerless envoys, breathless claims that the two sides are not that far apart despite all evidence to the contrary, leaks from one side or the other that have everything to do with domestic politics and absolutely nothing to do with the two countries’ relationship, and a political situation at the top that leaves the talks destined to fail. My reaction is the same this time as it has been every other time, which is that the talks have as much chance of succeeding as Dick Morris does of getting a political prediction right. One of these times I am going to be wrong, but let me explain why I don’t think today is going to be that day.
First, the fundamentals of the situation have not changed. Turkey is still making three demands: an apology over the deaths of nine Turkish citizens aboard the Mavi Marmara, compensation for their families, and an end to the Gaza blockade. It is this last one that is the sticking point, since Israel has no intention of ending its enforcement of the Gaza blockade, particularly since the UN Palmer Commission ruled that the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza is legal under international law. Israel also feels that the blockade is none of Turkey’s business, anymore than it would be Israel’s business to insist that Turkey undertake a more lenient policy toward the PKK as a condition of resuming ties. Ahmet Davutoğlu reiterated on Sunday, however, that Turkey’s three demands are not subject to negotiation and thus unless a creative solution can be found to break this impasse (more on this below), these talks will meet the same fate as their forebears.
Second, when Feridun Sinirlioğlu and Yosef Chiechanover worked out language over an apology in the summer of 2011, it was ultimately scuttled when Bibi Netanyahu decided that Avigdor Lieberman’s hardline position against an apology presented too much of a political threat to him. Netanyahu was afraid that Lieberman would hammer him from the right if he apologized for the IDF’s actions, so the whole thing went nowhere. Fast forward to November 2012, and Lieberman is now even more powerful than he was two summers ago since Likud and his own Yisrael Beiteinu party are running in the January elections on a joint list. If Lieberman had the power to sabotage even a partial agreement over the language of an apology back when he was a much derided and often ignored foreign minister, his opposition this time will make the entire thing a non-starter.
Third, the January 22 election makes the timing of this almost impossible to pull off. The objections to issuing an apology and compensation for the Mavi Marmara come from Netanyahu’s right, and in the aftermath of Operation Pillar of Cloud, rightwing nationalist parties are polling much stronger than they were before. One of the latest polls has Jewish Home and National Union at 13 seats and Strong Israel at 4 seats, and while those parties can be expected to join a Likud-led coalition after the election, Netanyahu cannot afford to have them attacking him from the right before the election, even if their support wanes (which is likely). Making concessions to Turkey plays right into their hands, and it is something that the ever-cautious Netanyahu will be loathe to do.
Finally, and this last one cannot be stressed enough, Prime Minister Erdoğan’s rhetoric during the Gaza operation was so over the top and outside the lines of acceptable discourse and basic civility that no government would be able to just set that aside and continue along as if nothing happened, irrespective of what the status of the negotiations was before Israel launched Pillar of Cloud. Calling Israel a terrorist state of baby killers and denying that thousands of rockets being launched at civilians creates any right to self defense is the kind of thing that is tough to move past. If Erdoğan thinks that Israel is going to come and plead with Turkey to reconcile after his tirade, then his grasp of how governments operate is, to put it delicately, less than sound.
It’s pretty clear that the sudden leaking of these talks is coming from the Turkish side as part of Ankara’s effort to demonstrate its relevance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One cannot help but note the amateurish display of Erdoğan originally stating that there are zero contacts between Israel and Turkey to then have Davutoğlu claim a few days later that Turkey was “actively involved” in trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and that Ankara and Jerusalem were talking as part of that involvement. The fact that Turkey has essentially made itself irrelevant when it comes to anything involving Israel has been widely noted and the absurdity of Erdoğan’s positions is being criticized by Turks as well. Erdoğan and Davutoğlu are now furiously trying to spin the ceasefire as partly a Turkish achievement, but that is only believable insofar as it can be demonstrated that Turkey has any sway left at all with the Israelis. Hence the timing of this leak and Erdoğan letting it slip that Mossad head Tamir Pardo and MIT chief Hakan Fidan met in Cairo. All of a sudden, claiming that Turkey has absolutely no contacts with Israel has become a political loser and a source of criticism, and so the Turkish government is now trying to make it seem as if reconciliation is a possibility when the reality is that rapprochement between the two sides remains a distant dream given how things currently stand.
All this aside, there seems to me to be an obvious out here. As I mentioned above, the real long term sticking point here is the demand that Israel end the Gaza blockade, but the imprecise language makes this a point that can easily be massaged. Israel is not going to end its naval blockade, particularly given the renewed focus on Iranian missiles that are being shipped to Sudan rather than directly to Gaza in an effort to avoid the Israeli navy. There is also, however, the land blockade that is enforced by both Israel and Egypt, and if Israel and Egypt jointly loosen restrictions on the land crossings to allow more goods in and out of Gaza, then Israel and Turkey can both reasonably claim victory, and it might pave the way for the countries to make up. Unless something changes though, feel free to ignore any and all news reports about secret talks and back channel negotiations between Ankara and Jerusalem.
Why Is Erdoğan Needling The EU?
November 14, 2012 § Leave a comment
Prime Minister Erdoğan seems to be going out of his way lately to push the European Union’s buttons. First, while in Berlin for meetings with Angela Merkel, he gave the EU an ultimatum that Turkey would halt its accession talks for good if it was not granted EU membership by 2023. Turkey’s frustration at being strung along is quite understandable, but there’s no doubt that Erdoğan’s threat to drop out of the process ruffled some European feathers. While in Germany he also made a strange reference to Turkey not adopting the euro but setting up its own “lira zone” which would presumably compete with the euro zone, thrilling a segment of Turkish nationalists who are convinced that the EU needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the EU but leaving many observers scratching their heads as the lira has a low trading volume and it is unclear which countries, if any, would ever join such a project.
The biggest salvo aimed at the EU, however, has been the prime minister’s recent comments on the death penalty. Erdoğan has now hinted that Turkey should reinstate the death penalty in a number of different forums, including an AKP meeting, a press conference, and on twitter, where he said that the state is not entitled to forgive a killer and that some killings may warrant the death penalty. Ahmet Davutoğlu and Sadullah Ergin both insist that Erdoğan was only referring to the Norwegian mass murdered Anders Breivik and that no preparations are being made for Turkey to reinstate the death penalty, but the issue rankles the EU nonetheless. While Turkey has not executed anyone since 1984, it officially abolished the death penalty in 2002 as part of its reforms aimed at joining the EU, and this issue is associated with EU reforms perhaps more than any other. That Erdoğan is now bringing up the death penalty is seen as a direct affront to the EU and is being taken by some as a signal that Erdoğan is trying to put some distance between Turkey and Europe. The prime minister’s comments prompted a swift response from Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, who stated in no uncertain terms that a Turkish move to reinstate the death penalty would deliver an enormous blow to Turkey-EU relations.
It seems strange that Erdoğan is going out of his way to upset the Europeans, and while the death penalty row is a patented Erdoğan technique for deflecting attention away from the government’s missteps by bringing up a controversial issue (see his comments on abortion sweeping the Uludere airstrikes right off the front pages over the summer), this time it fits into a larger pattern of implicit and explicit EU-bashing. I actually don’t think that what is going on is about the EU at all, but is a misguided effort on Erdoğan’s part to pressure European countries into being more active in solving the Syria mess. Erdoğan has been trying in vain to get the U.S. or NATO to intervene, so far to no avail, and not only has he not made any progress but has managed to annoy both the U.S. and NATO by keeping up the rhetorical pressure in public and constantly bringing up intervention in private. Instead of recognizing that this strategy has failed and coming up with a new approach, I think Erdoğan is trying something similar now with the EU but from a different direction. Ankara has made it clear that Syria is its absolute top priority right now, and Erdoğan is playing on European fears that the West is going to “lose” Turkey. By threatening to withdraw from the EU process and by implying that he will consider reinstating the death penalty, Erdoğan is trying to do whatever he can to get European states to act to bring back Turkey into the fold – a fold that Turkey has never actually left – and the easiest way to do that is to give Turkey a helping hand on Syria. Deploying Patriot missiles along the Syrian border is the U.S. and NATO response to keeping Turkey happy and by taking constant digs at the EU, Erdoğan is trying to coax some European action in order to pacify Turkey, whether it be greater rhetorical pressure on Syria and recognition of the Syrian opposition (as France did yesterday) or a renewed push in the Security Council for some sort of action. The question is whether Europe is going to play along or call Erdoğan’s bluff, and that remains to be seen. In any event, I don’t think that the recent attempts to imply distancing from Europe is about Europe at all, but like so much else going on with Turkey these days, is actually about what’s taking place with its next door neighbor.
Patriot Games
November 8, 2012 § 6 Comments
I was talking with my good friend and colleague Steven Cook about the news that Turkey was planning to request that NATO deploy Patriot missiles along the Syrian border, and since we both had nearly identical thoughts on the subject, we thought we’d link O&Z and From the Potomac to the Euphrates together and write a joint post. You can read it here or on Steven’s blog (where he has a cool picture of a Patriot missile battery up top).
Wednesday saw a strange confluence of events surrounding Turkey and its oft-stated determination to intervene in Syria with the help of its Western allies. It began with an unnamed Turkish Foreign Ministry official – presumably Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu – revealing that there have been talks between Turkey and the United States about deploying Patriot missile batteries on the Syrian border. According to this report, the purpose of the Patriots would be to create a safe zone inside of Syria as a way of supporting a limited no-fly zone. This report would have been unusual by itself given that Patriot missiles are an odd vehicle to use for creating a no-fly zone, but it was particularly puzzling given Prime Minister Erdoğan’s statement the day before explicitly disavowing any Turkish intentions to buy Patriot missiles. More drama ensued after Davutoğlu was identified as the official claiming that a NATO deployment of Patriots was imminent, with the Foreign Ministry subsequently denying that Davutoğlu had ever made such a claim.
There are a couple of things here that don’t quite seem right. First, Patriot missiles are not what one would typically use to enforce or support a no-fly zone. Patriots are defensive weapons, designed to shoot down incoming missiles and not fix-winged aircraft or helicopters. Their deployment would only make sense if Ankara were concerned about a barrage of Syria’s Scud missiles tipped with chemical weapons—a largely theoretical threat. Second, despite the calls for intervention in Syria from some quarters of Washington, the Obama administration has been reluctant to get involved in Syria beyond technical support that may or may not include small arms. Anonymous reports coming out of Turkey the day after the election claiming that the U.S. and NATO are now about to prepare for staging a no-fly zone seem a little more than idle chatter. Neither the White House nor the State Department nor the Pentagon have demonstrated any appetite for getting involved in Syria, with its layers of political, sectarian, and regional complexities that could suck Washington into yet another long-term military and diplomatic commitment in the Muslim world. Against this backdrop, the recent meeting that the United States orchestrated in Doha to broaden the Syrian opposition was an effort to preclude a greater American involvement in Syria’s civil war.
The deployment of the Patriots is likely a precursor to no new initiative, but rather has more to do with U.S. and NATO relations with Turkey. Ankara, incapable of managing the Syrian crisis on its own, has continually sought to involve Western powers in a greater way. For much of the past year, Prime Minister Erdoğan has been attempting to drum up support for outside intervention by threatening to unilaterally create a buffer zone inside Syria, making noise about invoking NATO Article 5, calling out the U.S. for dragging its feet while Assad butchers his own people, and implying that NATO is in danger of losing its credibility as the Syrian civil war drags on. Despite a combination of public and private cajoling, Erdoğan has made little headway, and Wednesday’s barrage of leaks and half-truths fits into the pattern of doing anything possible to pull the U.S. into Syria one way or another. By making it seem as if a no-fly zone is a fait accompli, Ankara is hoping to create enough momentum to spur some real action. Yet rather than respond to the Turkish government’s posturing and efforts to shame the United States and NATO into taking Turkey’s preferred course, Ankara’s allies have sought to placate it with a symbolic dispatch of largely useless weapons.
Overall, the announcement that Patriots will be deployed to Turkey fits a pattern that has developed in Turkey’s relations with its traditional partners, who have sought to keep Ankara minimally satisfied without actually having to commit much of anything to Syria. If scattering Patriot missile batteries along the Turkish-Syrian border is the price of keeping Turkey temporarily happy, it’s a pretty small price to pay, and certainly nothing compared to the cost of actually intervening in Syria.
