by Dore Gold
In the last two weeks
there have been a number of reminders of how the configuration of the
Middle East is in the process of dramatically changing. Over the last 10
days, in particular, Turkish artillery has been firing into northern
Syria, in the aftermath of a mortar strike against the Turkish border
town of Akcakale by the Syrian Army that killed a family of five.
Damascus charges that Turkey is supplying the forces attacking the
regime of Bashar al-Assad through this area. In the meantime, the
Turkish Parliament just approved a bill authorizing the Turkish Army to
engage in cross-border military operations into Syria.
As both armies
exchanged fire for a week, Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, warned that
"the worst case scenario we have all been dreading" was unfolding.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: "... we are also not far from
war." Syrian spokesmen sought to stress that Turkish power was looming
over the Arab states as a whole from the north. As Turkey began to make
political recommendations about the composition of a post-Assad
government, Syria's information minister responded by playing on old
Arab fears that Turkey wanted to control the Arab world by naming "the
custodians" of Damascus, Mecca, Cairo and Jerusalem. He rebuked Ankara
by also remarking: "Turkey is not the Ottoman Sultanate."
Syria is not alone in
looking suspiciously upon the reassertion of Turkish power. On Oct. 2,
the Iraqi cabinet decided to annul all agreements which provided the
basis of the Turkish military presence in Iraq that has lasted for 16
years. Turkey has maintained bases in Iraq since 1997, as well as
armored artillery units. The U.S. military in Iraq provided an important
buffer between Iraqi and Turkish forces, especially in the sensitive
Kurdistan region. With the U.S. out of Iraq, Turkish forces are now
being asked to withdraw.
While Turkey's role in
the future Middle East has been made into a major subject of discourse,
particularly by events along the Syrian border, on Oct. 2, The New York
Times focused on another great power that was also seeking to dominate
the Middle East from the east, namely Iran. The newspaper carried a
story about Major General Qassam Sulaimani, the commander of the Quds
Force of the Revolutionary Guards, under the headline: "Iran's Master of
Iraq Chaos Still Vexes the U.S." According to the article, which was
based on internal American cables, Suleimani was the senior Iranian
official responsible for Tehran's influence in the internal politics of
Iraq and the provision of military support for the Assad regime in
Syria.
Last year, The Guardian
reported that a senior Iraqi politician gave General David Petreaus a
text message in 2008 from Suleimani that read: "General Petraeus, you
should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with
respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan."
This story was partly
verified this January, when the Iranian news agency, ISNA, reported that
in a speech about Lebanon and Iraq, Suleimani asserted: “These regions
are one way or another subject to the control of the Islamic Republic of
Iran and its ideas.” Last month, Iran admitted for the first time that
the Quds Force had been deployed in both Lebanon and Syria. Thus,
evidence is growing of the increasing military encroachments of both
Turkey and Iran in the heartland of the Arab world.
This change amounts to a
new reconfiguration of the politics of the Middle East. For most of the
period after World War II, it was common for intellectuals and
politicians in the Arab world to blame the lack of progress in their
countries on the presence of the forces of Western imperialism, which
first entered the Middle East with the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in
1798. But once France left Algeria in 1962 and the British announced
their withdrawal "east of Suez" in 1968, the main Western forces
remaining were those of the U.S. Now it is broadly assumed in the Middle
East that the U.S. is finally about to withdraw from the region as did
the British and French. But rather than the Arab world being left to
itself, it is discovering that it will have to face the very two
hegemonic powers that dominated the area for centuries before Napoleon's
armies arrived: Iran and Turkey.
Iran and Turkey will
not admit that this is their plan. True, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu has been charged by critics of being influenced by
"neo-Ottoman fantasies." In Oct. 2009, he spoke in Sarajevo and claimed
that “the Balkans, Caucasus, and Middle East were all better off when
under Ottoman control or influence." Looking at the spread of wars in
these regions, he announced "Turkey is back," implying that it would
have a more activisitic role in these conflicts.
The ideological
component of Turkish policy sometimes slips out through statements by
its leaders. At a meeting two weeks ago of his AKP Party, Erdogan
presented himself as a leader of the Muslim nation, even invoking the
names of the great Sultans of Ottoman history, like Muhammad the
Conqueror Selim I, and Suleiman. True, Turkish officials speak of using
"soft power" for influence, but their government is getting drawn more
deeply into Syria's internal war, against the wishes of Turkish public
opinion.
The machinations of the
Iranians across the Middle East have also become transparent as they
have been growing beyond Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza from the Shiite revolt
in Bahrain, the Houthi revolt on Yemeni Shiites, and their military
involvement against the uprising of the Syrian Sunni population. Saudi
Arabia understood very early that the 2003 Iraq War would lead to Iraq
coming under Iranian domination. In fact, King Abdullah once complained
to a high-level U.S. official: "You have allowed the Persians, the
Safavids, to take over Iraq." The Saudi king was referring to the
Safavid Empire which ruled Iran from 1501 until the dawn of Western
expansionism in the 18th century. With the West pulling out, from the
Saudi view, the Safavids were back.
As the Middle Eastern
great powers of the 18th century return to dominate the region due to
what many in the Arab world expect to be a likely American pullback, it
will be critical for both Turkey and Iran to divert the attention of the
Arab states from this changing balance of power. Both Erdogan's Turkey
and Khamenei's Iran need the struggle against Israel to keep the Arab
states distracted from influence they seek to build and exercise.
It will not be so
simple to wave the flag of the Palestinian issue in order to cover up
their own encroachments on the rest of the Middle East. Many Sunni Arabs
understand that Iranian special forces were involved in the massacres
of their people in Syria, which were part of the spreading of Iranian
power across the region. Pointing to Israel will not change what Iran
did in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. Ironically, Israel and
the Arab states have growing mutual interests in seeing that their
region is not dominated by either Turkey or Iran, but whether they can
draw together to block these two powers remains to be seen.
Dore Gold
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2678
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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