CrossTalk: Syrian War Outcome

‘Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. What could the possible outcome regarding the Syrian Civil War be? Does the US really want Russia to be part of a negotiated settlement? Is the Syrian opposition becoming more dangerous to the US and its allies? CrossTalking with Ariel Cohen and Nabil Mikhail (15 May 2013)’.

Op-Ed: Pipelineistan and Turkey: The Geo-Political Realities behind Resource Rivalry and the Looming Climate Catastrophe

Recently, I wrote a piece of possibly wider interest for my column ‘The Erimtan Angle’ in the Istanbul Gazette.

In the 21st century, humanity has suddenly come face to face with the stupendous power of nature again. In the latter part of the previous century warnings regarding man-made or anthropogenic climate change started being voiced – arguably commencing in earnest with Professor Hansen’s testimony in front of the U.S. Senate during the summer of 1988. These dire words of caution arguably culminated in Al Gore’s sensational and “inconvenient” 2006 film. The Industrial Revolution and humanity’s subsequent immoderate burning of fossil fuels leading to a disproportionate increase in so-called greenhouse gases appear to be at the root of this apparently unnatural fluctuation in global temperatures – fluctuations which can lead to extreme weather events, such as hurricanes or floods. Very recently, in the first week of March this year actually, researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) and HarvardUniversity seem to have delivered the final verdict on anthropogenic climate change. They namely published the conclusions of their latest study in the journal Science, broadcasting to the wider world their concern with the state of the earth. Their findings reveal that our planet is warmer today than it has ever been during 70 to 80% of the last 11,300 years. As a result, the search for alternative fuels, fuels that would not lead to more greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere, should be the world’s leadership’s top priority given the looming threat of climate catastrophe that will eventually turn earth into a planet uninhabitable by humanity. In contrast, geo-political concerns and the simmering resource wars are such that attention remains focused on the remnants of earlier geologies. As a result, the consumption of fossil fuels continues unabated and the search for more hydrocarbon reserves follows suit – meaning that more and more greenhouse gases will keep on being added to the atmosphere for years and possibly decades to come. The war that in many ways started the 21st century can also be interpreted as having a close relationship to man’s endless thirst for ever-more fossil fuels.

The start of the invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 was presented as an act of war in direct response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11. But there is a back-story to Bush’s relationship with the land of Afghanistan. As such, the Taliban, in charge of the country since 27 September 1996 when they conquered the capital Kabul, sent a delegation to Texas in 1997. In Texas, the then-governor George W. Bush was instrumental in arranging meetings with the Texas oil firm Unocal. Quoting from a piece I wrote in 2010:

Unocal and its partners planned to build a 1,000-mile gas pipeline from resource-rich Turkmenistan to Multan in Pakistan [and then to India], passing through the Taliban heartland of Kandahar. In the waning years of the 20th century, the BBC dutifully reported that this deal was part “of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.” In other words, the Unocal deal with the Taliban was instrumental in the 21st-century development of what the Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid has termed the “New Great Game,” in reference to the 19th-century rivalry between the Russian and British empires for supremacy in Central Asia . . . In the south [of Afghanistan], Kandahar is [now] awaiting the completion of the TAPI pipeline, which will traverse the province on its way to Pakistan and India. In meetings held in the Turkmen capitol of Ashgabat [on] April 17-18, [2010] the go-ahead was given and work on the lucrative project started in May, with 2015 as the provisional completion date when Turkmenistan’s liquid gas will start flowing southward. The US government is one of the strongest backers of this project. How do these machinations surrounding the pipeline project relate to the [still ongoing] war in the Hindu Kush region? According to former Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik, approximately two months prior to 9/11, the Bush administration had already decided to topple the Taliban regime and install a more amenable transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place. In July 2001 a four-day meeting was held in Berlin under the portentous heading of “brainstorming on Afghanistan.” The TAPI project was undoubtedly high on the session’s agenda. Literally one week after the attacks, the BBC’s former Pakistan correspondent George Arney related that Naik had “no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.” And Niaz Naik proved right. Was he therefore really a man who knew too much? In early August 2009, Naik was tortured and murdered in his residence in Sector F-7/3 of Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad.

Did the TAPI project really play such an important role in the decision to invade Afghanistan? Was the outset of the continuing war against the Taliban (and “its Al-Qaeada allies” as the oft-repeated phrase goes) rather a calculated move to gain the initiative in the Central Asian resource war? Central Asia is a territory literally inundated with pipelines and in this context the investigative reporter Pepe Escobar coined the phrase Pipelineistan to refer to the CaspianBasin and the whole of Eurasia basically. And not just the West is addicted to fossil fuels being transported through this network of pipelines, the other global power which is China in equal measure relies on hydrocarbon assets being moved through Pipelineistan, converging in its Wild West, Xinjiang. From there, these assets are transported to mainland China in the east to fuel the ever-growing economy that has by now become the second-largest in the world. As for the TAPI pipeline, when the go-ahead, backed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), was given for the construction of this huge pipeline, measuring a staggering 1,735 kilometres, Turkey’s State Minister Zafer Çağlayan had also been present in Turkmenistan.

On Pipelineistan’s western edge, Turkey is now actively operating to be included in the scramble for the massive Turkmen gas reserves, located at the Dovletabad and the Galkynysh (‘Southern Yeloten – Osman’) deposits. In early 2012, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov was in Turkey, visiting Ankara and Istanbul, and meeting Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül. And also signing a document containing this declaration: “The parties [, i.e. Turkey and Turkmenistan] confirmed the need for continuing work on the development of regional projects aimed at restoring the development of socio-economic spheres [in] Afghanistan. In this regard, the Turkish side expressed its interest in major projects, including the Turkmenistan – Afghanistan – Pakistan – India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, increasing supply of Turkmen electricity to Afghanistan, as well as projects of transport infrastructure development and expressed its support for these projects” – Turkey now clearly also wants to reap some benefits from the pipeline to transport Turkmen gas to the Arabian Sea.

Turkey also has its own stakes in the infrastructure of Pipelineistan. For starters, there is the BTC or Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline transporting Caspian oil to the Mediterranean. In 1992, the Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel first proposed the construction of such a pipeline connection. In the further course of the 1990’s, the pipeline project was personally supported by U.S. President Bill Clinton. And finally, on 18 November 1999, when the Ankara Declaration was signed by Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, Clinton’s Energy Secretary Bill Richardson called the event “a major foreign policy victory” for the U.S. – a statement indicative of the continuing geopolitical importance of Turkey as a bridge between east and west. In the first instance, the sanctions on Iraq following the first Gulf War (2 August 1990-28 February 1991) meant that the Kirkuk-Yumurtalık pipeline was no longer able to transport Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean, thereby crippling the Turkish economy and depriving the world economy of an important source of oil, given that Ceyhan was (and still is) a world-class facility able to supply large tankers. In addition, the fall of the Soviet Union subsequently also meant that the vast Caspian oil and gas reserves could now be integrated into the West’s energy supplies’ system. On 25 May 2005, the BTC pipeline was inaugurated at the Sangachal Terminal on the Caspian by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili and Turkey’s President Ahmet Sezer, joined by President Nursaltan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and United States Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman. The pipeline now daily transports 1 million barrels of Capian oil to the Mediterranean.

Another outlier of Pipelineistan present in Turkey is the Nabucco gas pipeline project, which has been in the works since 2005 and aims to be “the new gas bridge from Asia to Europe and the flagship project in the Southern Corridor”, connecting the EU with the major hydrocarbon sources in the Caspian and the Middle East. The project, aimed at liberating Europe from Russia’s energy stranglehold, has been beset by many problems and financial woes – with the German investor backing out last December. At the beginning of this month, the consortium backing the projected Nabucco pipeline signed a memorandum of co-operation with the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), basically cutting the length of the Nabucco pipeline in two and limiting the cost considerably. Originally, the Nabucco pipeline was supposed to start its route from central Anatolia, but now the pipeline will only start its westward journey through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria at the Turco-Bulgarian border, relying on TANAP to supply gas from the Caspian and the Middle East. This shortened version has been called Nabucco West and would constitute a major rival for Russia’s South Stream pipeline project. And once again, Turkey’s trans-Atlantic friend is all but supportive as voiced by US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland last year: “We strongly support Nabucco. We think it’s a very important project. It’s going to bring energy diversification on both sides and market diversification”. In other words, the interpersonal relations between Tayyip Erdoğan and Barrack Obama have not been futile. The U.S. clearly supports Turkey’s new pseudo-Ottoman programme, as a stable Turkey could very well become another foundation for America to build its renewed bridges into the Arab world, following the recent ‘spring weather’ and its ‘unexpected’ consequences. The Obama administration’s support for the west-bound section of Pipelineistan that is Nabucco also seems congruent with the U.S. and Turkey’s joint stance on the Assad regime, Turkey’s erstwhile friendly neighbour.

In fact, the recent civil war in Syria has actually ensured that the Nabucco pipeline project was given another lease of life. The protests against the Assad regime started in March 2011 turning violent the next month, while backdoor negotiations between Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus were underway. These talks led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for the construction of a pipeline designed to deliver Iran’s natural gas to Iraq and Syria in the next three to five years at a cost of about $10 billion. From Syria, this pipeline could possibly also deliver gas to Lebanon and even to Europe in the future, securing a Mediterranean outlet for embattled Iran fighting sanctions and public disapproval. Now, the anti-Assad violence has ensured that this potential rival to Nabucco would not be able to emerge on the energy scene. Originally, Turkey planned to include Iran as a gas supplier to the pipeline, but the geo-political realities of the day and particularly the Obama administration’s continuation of the Bush era sanctions against Tehran, have managed to exclude Iran from the project. As a result, with the projected Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, Tehran would still have been able to supply the global market. In spite of Iran’s rich oil and gas holdings, the country is effectively excluded from the confines of Pipelineistan.

The leadership in Tehran, however, seems to be persistent in its effort to find alternative ways to find outlets for its hydrocarbon reserves. Now, Iran’s leadership is looking to the east. Recently, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari attended a ceremony at the Iran-Pakistani border, unveiling a plaque and inaugurating the construction of a pipeline ar a cost of some $1.5 billion. A joint statement read at the ceremony stated that “The completion of the pipeline is in the interests of peace, security and progress of the two countries. It will also consolidate the economic, political and security ties of the two nations”. Iranian gas is supposed to start flowing towards Pakistan at the end of next year. The Iranian gas would be most welcome in Pakistan as the country faces a shortfall of 2 billion cubic of natural gas feet per day and is actually going through a serious energy crisis at the moment. Pakistan is without electricity for up to six hours a day— leading to the loss of export revenues, the closure of tens of thousands of factories, and, most importantly, the loss of millions of jobs.

While the world’s leaders and oil corporations are devising more and more schemes to flood the global energy market with oil and gas to be burnt, the world actually appears to be approaching climate catastrophe at an increased pace. In his 2011 book Deep Future, the climatologist Curt Stager maintains that the effects of current climate change will persist for much longer than we can imagine – he paints the best-case scenario as a world that won’t fully recover from the effects of the burning of fossil fuels for tens of thousands of years, and possibly much longer. Still, the long-term has never been a great concern for Turkish, or any other, policy-makers and the decisions taken today, the pipelines built now and tomorrow, and the fossil fuels consumed in the years to come will change the world beyond recognition. Geo-political interests and the ongoing resource rivalries resulting from humanity’s acute addiction to fossil fuels, coupled with profit-hungry corporations eager to benefit from any kind of fossil fuels found anywhere, now seem to condemn humanity to a bleak future for the sake of short-term profits and power.[1]

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[1] C. Erimtan, “Pipelineistan and Turkey: The Geo-Political Realities behind Resource Rivalry and the Looming Climate Catastrophe” ‘The Erimtan Angle’, The Istanbul Gazette (15 March 2013). http://istanbulgazette.com/pipelineistan-and-turkey-the-geo-political-realities-behind-resource-rivalry-and-the-looming-climate-catastrophe/2013/03/15/.

Cross Talk: Syria as Proxy

‘Israel launched air strikes into Syria in response to border fire from the Golan Heights. What is Israel’s role in the Syrian civil war? What is their hidden agenda? And what about the future of the Golan Heights? CrossTalking with Sabah Al-Mukhtar, Dan Arbell and Nabil Mikhail (27 March 2013)’.

The Role of the U.S. in Syria: Training and Non-Lethal Aid???

Last year, I posted this: ‘Over the past months, Turkey has been one of the most vocal critics of the Assad regime. Tayyip Erdoğan has more than once called for Assad’s removal. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on the other hand, has instead called for calm and deliberation in dealing with Damascus, insisting on the implementation of the Annan Plan. Earlier this year, the recently much-publicised U.S. whistleblower Sibel Edmonds declared publicly that her sources indicated that the Syrian armed opposition has been receiving logistic aid and military training since April 2011. Edmonds also declared that the U.S. and Turkey had been cooperating on this, and that the U.S. Air Force base in İncirlik (Turkey) is used  as a training facility for the so-called Free Syrian Army and other opponents of the Damascus regime. At the same time, reports have surfaced that Libyan fighters from Misrata went to Syria in an effort to support attempts to overthrow Assad. In addition, rumours have equally abounded about Saudi Arabia and Qattar’s mobilization of  Jihadi fighters to undermine the secular Baath regime in Syria’.[1]

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[1] “Op-Ed: The Road to Intervention in Syria” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (06 June 2012). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/op-ed-the-road-to-intervention-in-syria/.

TRNN: Turkey, Israel and the Wider Middle East

‘Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Israel needed Obama to broker Turkey deal as Netanyahu’s policies and unstable region put Israel in a precarious position (25 March 2013)’.

Turkish Premier’s #MyJihad or Slander Across the USA

The pro-government daily Today’s Zaman reports that a ‘pro-Israeli, anti-Islamic extremist group, known for running anti-Muslim ads in the New York subway, has depicted Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a terrorist in ads targeting the concept of jihad in Islam. The anti-jihad ads were designed by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) as a response to “MyJihad,” a public education campaign that seeks to share the proper meaning of jihad as believed and practiced by the majority of Muslims. MyJihad has been running various ads on buses and trains in cities across the US, in which it has tried to show the global values of Islam with such slogans as “My Jihad is not to judge people by their cover. What’s yours?” and “My Jihad is to build friendships across the aisle. What’s yours?” The AFDI, widely known for its controversial attacks on Islam, apparently designed its ads in the same way but with the opposite aim. One of the ads shows the angry face of Erdoğan next to a passage from a poem by Ziya Gökalp, a Turkish sociologist and writer, that Erdoğan famously recited in 1998. The poem reads, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers,” and next to this, the AFDI had added the sentence “That’s My Jihad. What’s yours?”’. [1]

As long ago as 2010, I wrote in the same newspaper that “[n]owadays the term jihad is much bandied about and used and/or abused at will by Muslims as well as non-Muslims the world over. The historian and Islam specialist Mark Sedgwick maintains that the concept of jihad was developed in the eighth century, when it basically functioned as a “mixture of the Army Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, appropriate for the circumstances of the time.” At the time of the Islamic conquests (seventh-eighth centuries), the world was divided between the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb) and international relations between both spheres were primarily military in nature. But as the centuries progressed and relations between Muslims and the outside world achieved a quasi-peaceful status quo, punctuated by commercial exchanges and trade links, the idea of jihad changed as well. There is the well-known distinction between the greater jihad (al-jihad al-akbar) and the lesser jihad (al-jihad al-asghar), between a personal struggle in the way of Allah (crf. Surah 29:69) and an armed struggle to protect believers against oppression and violence perpetrated by unbelievers. In other words, jihad evolved from a code of war into a defensive mechanism, tantamount to a religious duty leading to religious rewards”.[ii]  So much for the meaning of Jihad, either greater or lesser. Returning to Tayyip Erdoğan’s countanace in ads in the New York subway: in ‘1999, Erdoğan served four months in jail after being convicted of “Islamist sedition” for reading Gökalp’s poem at a political rally in Siirt when he was the mayor of İstanbul for the now-defunct Welfare Party (RP). His conviction came two years after an unarmed military intervention on Feb. 28, 1997, often dubbed a postmodern coup, which resulted in the fall of a coalition government led by RP leader Necmettin Erbakan . . . Apart from the attack on Erdoğan, the AFDI created similar ads, with the alleged words of Osama Bin Laden and Times Square bomber Faisal Shazad, and an alleged anti-Semitic sentence from a Hamas-owned TV channel. A lawyer from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) recently sent a letter to the AFDI claiming ownership of the MyJihad ads and stating that the AFDI is violating MyJihad.org’s common law trademark and trade dress, or design, rights’.[3]

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[1] “Anti-Islam extremist group depicts Erdoğan as terrorist in public ads” Today’s Zaman (05 March 2013). http://www.todayszaman.com/news-308855-anti-islam-extremist-group-depicts-erdogan-as-terrorist-in-public-ads.html.

[2] C. Erimtan, “The war in Afghanistan: jihad, foreign fighters and al-Qaeda” Today’s Zaman (29 September 2010). http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?load=detay&link=222918.

[3] “Anti-Islam extremist group depicts Erdoğan as terrorist in public ads”.

Red Lines & Patriots: Iran, Turkey and Syria

On Sunday, 20 January, the news agency Reuters reports that a ‘senior aide to Iran’s supreme leader warned against the overthrow of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, saying his fate was a “red line”, in one of the Islamic state’s strongest messages of support for the Damascus government. Iran has steadfastly backed Assad’s rule since an uprising against his rule began almost two years ago and regards him as an important part of the axis of opposition against arch-foe Israel’.[1]  Following President Obama’s much-publicised declaration that Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his adversaries would constitute a red line, now finally, President Assad’s only regional allies have come out with their own declaration. Speaking on Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen satellite television, Ali Akbar Velayati, who could very well be Ahmadinejad’s successor in June, declared the following: “If the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is toppled, the line of resistance in the face of Israel will be broken . . . We believe that there should be reforms emanating from the will of the Syrian people, but without resorting to violence and obtaining assistance from the (United States of) America”.[2]

It is assumed that about 60,000 people have perished in Syria as a result of the violent opposition to the Assad regime, which the mainstream media are at pains to portray as yet another chapter in the ongoing saga of the Arab Awakening. As I pointed out in a piece published in Hürriyet Daily News, it would even be foolhardy to regard these uprisings across the wider Arab world as spontaneous emanations of any popular will.[3]  Even so, it seems to me that the situation in Syria is in many ways similar to the violent “Assisted Rebellion” in Libya, as an orchestrated uprising that could be seen as a proxy-conflict in the New Cold War between the U.S., its NATO allies and the up and coming superpowers of Russia and China, while at the same also targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran.[4]

At the same time, Turkey, that appears to have been part of the Syrian conflict since the very beginning,[5] is now in the process of receiving the promised Patriot missiles to “protect” its borders against Syrian incursions: ‘Germany has sent 240 soldiers to southern Turkey as part of a NATO mission using Patriot missiles to deter cross-border airstrikes from war-torn Syria. Units are also being provided by the Netherlands and the US. The main German contingent flew out of Berlin Sunday [, 20 January], headed for Kahramanmaras, 100 kilometers (62 miles) inside Turkey’s border with Syria, where two German Patriot units are to be fully operational by early February [2013]. An advance Bundeswehr team is already on site and the missiles with launch equipment arrived by ship in Turkey on Monday [, 21 January]. The deployment will number some 350 German soldiers, including medics’, as reported by the Deutsche Welle.[6]  Using a somewhat warped form of logic, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere explains that these Patriot missiles are supposed to produce a “deescalating effect” on the Assad regime. The Minister explained further that “We learnt during the Cold War that deterrence can only function when in doubtful moments one is ready to use the weapons . . . Should Syrian rockets be fired at Turkey then NATO will use the Patriot missiles”.[7]

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[1] “Assad’s overthrow “red line” for Iran: supreme leader’s aide” Reuters (20 Jan 2013). http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/20/us-syria-crisis-iran-idUSBRE90J08320130120.

[2] “Assad’s overthrow “red line” for Iran: supreme leader’s aide”.

[3] Cfr. C. Erimtan, “Behind the scenes of Egypt’s revolution”. http://tiny.cc/fz7tf.

[4] Cfr. C. Erimtan, “The Arab Awakening and the never-ending Cold War”. http://tiny.cc/p7q3b.

[5] Cfr. “Op-Ed: The Road to Intervention in Syria” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (06 June 2012). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/op-ed-the-road-to-intervention-in-syria/.

[6] “German Patriot missile troops arrive in Turkey” Deutsche Welle (21 Jan 2013). http://www.dw.de/german-patriot-missile-troops-arrive-inturkey/a-16536356.

[7] “German Patriot missile troops arrive in Turkey”.

Tayyip goes to Africa: Rising MIST!!!

On Monday, 7 January 2013, one can read in Hürriyet Daily News that ‘Turkey aims to increase its trade volume with African countries to $50 billion by 2015, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told journalists at Istanbul Atatürk Airport before his departure to Gabon. “Turkey has been exerting efforts in the development of Africa,” Erdoğan said. The prime minister will visit Gabon, Niger and Senegal in his first foreign trip abroad in the new year, where he will meet with heads of state, chair meetings between the countries’ officials, participate in business forums and sign several agreements during the six-day African tour. In Gabon, Erdoğan is set to meet with Gabonese President Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba and the country’s prime minister, Raymond Ndong Sima, as well as appear in a joint press conference. Accompanied by a large delegation of Turkish businesspeople, Erdoğan will speak at a Turkish-Gabonese business forum that would seek opportunities for cooperation in trade and investment. Erdoğan will then visit Niger on Jan. 8 on the second stop of his African tour and meet with President Mahamadou Issoufou. On Jan. 10, the last stop of the tour, Erdoğan is set to arrive in Senegal to meet with President Macky Sall and Prime Minister Abdoul Mbaye. Turkey’s exports to Senegal stood at $109 million in the January-October period of 2012, down from $116 million over the same period a year earlier. Turkey has opened embassies in 19 African countries in the last three years to bring the total number of its top diplomatic missions in the continent to 31’.[1]

The Financial Times’ Turkey correspondent Daniel Dombey puts forward that over “the past three years, Turkey has opened 19 embassies on the continent [of Africa]. It now has 26 south of the Sahara and will have opened delegations in Chad, Guinea and Djibouti by the end of January [2013] as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister, visits Gabon, Niger and Senegal”.[ii]  Dombey explains further that these diplomatic efforts are “part of a concerted push by Turkey deep into Africa, as it follows China, Brazil and India in seeking to secure economic and political influence on the continent. As Ankara looks to diversify away from the stuttering European economy, it is searching not only for new markets but also a more prominent role on the world stage”.[3]

And this is part of yet another trend, step aside BRIC here comes MIST: ‘Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who came up with the now-mainstream “BRIC” catch-all for four quite different economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – has done it again. “MIST” – or Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey – is O’Neill’s latest rhetorical agglomeration, pulling four more far-flung countries together and talking-up the next tier of large “emerging economies”. Pundits might have a field day with this, with MIST obviously more vapid and perhaps lacking the solidity of its BRIC antecedent. Still, all four have in common a number of factors: a large population and market, a big economy at about 1% of global GDP each, and all are members of the G20’.[4]

As an up and coming MIST country, Turkey is attempting to crack the African market now. In previous months, Turkey’s commitment to Somalia was apparent as part of its more overt Islamic image; but now, the cold reality of economics seems to be taking a front seat. But, the ever-diplomatic Turkish PM instead appears to use his trip to criticise Europe for its colonial legacy, highlighting Turkey’s difference and suitability as an equal business partner with no harmful colonial heritage. In Niger, for example, attending a Turkish-Niger Business Forum in Niamey, he stated plainly: “That is why we are in Niger today. We do not aim to take this country’s oil, gold and diamonds, but to show how we can build brotherhood, make an effort to advance development and fight for freedom of a colonial logic that has endured here for centuries”.[5]  According to Today’s Zaman, ‘Erdoğan said [further that] Ankara will continue supporting Turkish small businesses to increase their investment in Niger and that Turkey will be delighted to see its construction companies take part in Niger’s development projects’.[6]  But Turkey is not just an interesting destination for smart investors and relaxing tourists, ‘up to 50 intrepid Arab tourists arrive in Istanbul every day to undergo [a certain] procedure [to do with facial hair]. Moustaches are seen as a sign of virility and seniority in many Middle Eastern countries, and visitors are arriving in Turkey in droves for procedures designed to provide thick and impressive hair on their upper lips. The surgery is performed under local anesthetic, with doctors taking hair follicles from more hirsute areas of the body and implanting them in the face. Costing anywhere up to $7 000, the procedure has seen a spike in popularity in patients from the Middle East. In fact the job has become bread and butter work for Turkish cosmetic surgeon Dr. Selahattin Tulunay, based in the fashionable Nisantasi district, the so-called Beverly Hills of Istanbul, and who performs up to 60 follicular transplants a month’.[7]  In fact, about a month ago, the Young Turks did a piece on this very topic.

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[1] “Turkish PM Erdoğan sees $50 billion in African trade” Hürriyet Daily News (07 Jan 2013). http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-pm-erdogan-sees-50-billion-in-african-trade.aspx?pageID=238&nID=38502&NewsCatID=344.

[2] Daniel Dombey, “Turkey flexes economic muscle in Africa” FT (06 Jan 2013). http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d9b175de-4849-11e2-8aae-00144feab49a.html#axzz2HHH5gKqZ.

[3] Daniel Dombey, “Turkey flexes economic muscle in Africa”.

[4] Simon Roughneen, “After BRIC comes MIST, the acronym Turkey would certainly welcome” The Guardian (01 February 2011). http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/feb/01/emerging-economies-turkey-jim-oneill.

[5] “Erdoğan: Turkey desires lasting cooperation with Africa” Today’s Zaman (08 Jan 2013). http://www.todayszaman.com/news-303502-erdogan-turkey-desires-lasting-cooperation-with-africa.html.

[6] “Erdoğan: Turkey desires lasting cooperation with Africa”.

[7] “Moustache hunters travel to Turkey for facial hair implants” AFP Relaxnews (06 Jan 2013). http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/2013/01/06/moustache-hunters-travel-to-turkey-for-facial-hair-implants.

The War in Syria: Foreign Fighters and Sectarian Divisions

Over the past months, I have oftentimes spoken about the numerous foreign fighters active in Syria. Now, Jason Ditz details on the website AntiWar that a “report by the UN says that rebel fighters have come from 29 countries, and are overwhelmingly Sunnis flocking to the nation to fight against the Alawite President Bashar Assad”.[1]  The Turco-U.S. and Saudi-Qatari axis has been providing support for activists bent on turning the conflict into sectarian battle between Sunni Muslim opposed to the Alawite rulers of the Syrian Republic. Ditz, in turn, relies on Reuter’s appropriately titled piece ‘Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria’. The authors, Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay state that the “deepened sectarian divisions in Syria may diminish prospects for post-conflict reconciliation even if President Bashar al-Assad is toppled. And the influx of foreign fighters raises the risk of the war spilling into neighbouring countries”.[2]  Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon now do really appear to be in the firing line. Turkey’s long-standing conflict with the PKK could get a shot in the arm by the Kurdish fighters in Syria and the stance taken by the neighbouring KRG. Iraq, on the other hand, is experiencing its own tensions between Shi’ite and Sunni elements, Arab and Kurdish leaders against the backdrop of the unevenly divided oil wealth underground. Lebanon has been a powder keg for years and any spark could trigger a new civil war or power struggle. And then there is Israel and the Palestinians who are also being sucked into the fight.

UN human rights investigators led by Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro have now stated that the “battles between government forces and anti-government armed groups [now] approach the end of their second year, [and currently, ] the conflict has become overtly sectarian in nature”.[3]  According to some, such as the outspoken critic Sibel Edmonds and the investigative Voltaire Network‘s Thierry Meyssan, the whole struggle against Assad has been an orchestrated affair from the very beginning with outside players, like the Sunni states Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey overtly and/or covertly supporting a U.S.-led agenda to effect regime change in Syria. After two years of a primarily undecided armed confrontation, the true colours of the “foreign” forces at work against secular and Alawite-led Baath regime in Syria are beginning to shine through. Karen Abuzayd, a member of the group of UN human rights investigators, characterises the anti-Assad foreign fighters in the following way: “They come from all over, Europe and America, and especially the neighbouring countries”.[4]  Conversely, the Baath regime is also able to count on some supporters: the report notes that ‘the Lebanese Shia group, Hezbollah . . . confirmed that group members were in Syria fighting on behalf of Assad’, while ‘reports of Iraqi Shia coming to fight [in Syria have also been heard, while] . . . Iran, a close ally of Assad, confirmed in September [2012] that its Revolutionary Guards were in Syria providing assistance’.[5]

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[1] Jason Ditz, “UN: Syria’s Rebels Come From 29 Countries” AntiWar (20 Dec 2012). http://news.antiwar.com/2012/12/20/un-syrias-rebels-come-from-29-countries/.

[2] Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay, “Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria” The Independent (20 September 2012). http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/foreign-fighters-fuel-the-sectarian-flames-in-syria-8427986.html.

[3] Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay, “Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria”.

[4] Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay, “Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria”.

[5] Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay, “Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria”.

Turkey-Syria Update: Panetta, Robert Ford and Francis Ricciardone

‘US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta landed Friday [, 14 Dec] at the Incirlik air base in Turkey that hosts US troops, as part of a tour that has also taken him to Afghanistan and Kuwait. The visit by the US defence chief comes a week after NATO approved Turkey’s request for Patriot missiles to defend its border with its war-torn neighbour Syria. A report in the New York Times on Friday said that the US plans to send two Patriot missile batteries and 400 personnel to Turkey’.[1]

‘The Times said the move is part of a larger effort to beef up Turkey’s defenses as the civil war in neighboring Syria grows more violent, with another four Patriot batteries expected to be supplied by Germany and the Netherlands. The report comes after US officials said Syria launched a number of Scud missiles in recent days, and amid heightened fears that it could resort to using its vast chemical weapons arsenal against advancing rebels. Turkey has strongly backed the 21-month-old rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but fears he could lash out against it in desperation if the conflict grinds on. US officials could not immediately be reached to comment on the Times report’.[2]

How will stationing these Patriots on the Turco-Syrian border affect the actions of either the Assad forces or the “rebel” (read ‘terrorist’) FSA???  And what would be the likelihood of the conflict spilling over into Turkish territory???  One of the main U.S. actors in this conflict, Ambassador Robert Ford, also made a brief appearance on Turkish soil on that same Friday, the 14^th: Robert Stephen Ford flew in from Damascus to meet with the U.S. Ambassador in Ankara, Francis Ricciardone. Together these men reiterated the U.S. position that Assad has to go, nothing less will do.[3]  According to Hürriyet’s Zeynep Şafak, Robert Ford stated that Assad does not shy away from killing his own people and that his swift exit from the scene would be desirable, the sooner the better, as it seems clear that he is in no position to win the on-going conflict. Ford added that up to 210 million U.S. $ have so far been deployed, in conjunction with the United Nation, the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent, to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people.[4]

Ambassador Ford’s propagandistic statement ring particularly hollow against the backdrop of atrocities committed by the Western-backed FSA and other opposition forces. Here is, for example, a report filed by the generally anti-Assad Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera: ‘In Syria, Al Jazeera has visited a village in Idlib province which was once home to the Alawite community, the sect of President Bashar al-Assad. They fled when opposition forces pushed into their territory, the fighters say the Alawites have been working with the government, and have blood on their hands as well. Zeina Khodr reports from the IdlibProvince inside Syria (16 Dec 2012)’.

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[1] “U.S. Defense Secretary visits Turkey’s İncirlik base” AFP (14 Dec 2012). http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/us-defense-secretary-visits-turkeys-incirlik-base.aspx?pageID=238&nID=36830&NewsCatID=338.

[2] “U.S. Defense Secretary visits Turkey’s İncirlik base”.

[3] Zeynep Şafak, “ABD Büyükelçileri konuştu” Hürriyet (14 December 2012). http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/22160574.aspç

[4] Zeynep Şafak, “ABD Büyükelçileri konuştu”.