The Syrian crisis and its implications for Turkish-Russian relations



Published by BitterLemons International, 08 March 2012

On Tuesday, during his weekly speech to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) group in the Turkish parliament, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated his strong statements on Syria. While his call for humanitarian corridors to bring aid to Syrian people captured international attention, his talk also included an indirect yet equally strong challenge to third party countries involved in the crisis.

After expressing his grave concern over the escalation of violence against civilians, the Turkish premier unleashed a heavy criticism of countries that "passively watch", "give permission to" or "encourage" what is happening in Syria. He warned that their hesitancy to provide a solution will be "a dark stain in their history" and that the "single drop of the blood of an innocent child is many times [more important] than any kind of strategy, power and self-interested ambitions."

While Erdogan and the Turkish government regularly make clear their stand on the atrocities of Syrian President Bashar Assad and overtly criticize the failures of international bodies, their references to specific countries behind such failures are almost always indirect--albeit increasingly strong and loud.
Turkish reluctance to publicly name these countries--i.e., Russia and Iran--is understandable. As Turkey tries to navigate through its soft cold war with Iran amidst attempts to galvanize nuclear negotiations, it simply cannot afford to clash with Iran publicly. A similar reason explains why Turkey has limited its criticism of Russian involvement with Syria to closed door conversations and indirect public language.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Turkey in 2004, he was the first Russian head of state to visit the country in 32 years. Subsequent high-level visits between the two countries resulted in the signing of a joint declaration in 2009 between Putin's successor President Dmitry Medvedev and President Abdullah Gul, as well as the creation of the High-Level Cooperation Council in May 2010.

The council aims to enhance economic, diplomatic and cultural relations between the two countries. In line with the aims of the council, in January 2011 foreign ministers Ahmet Davutoglu and Sergey Lavrov signed the Strategic Planning Group Meeting Protocol and, one year later, the second meeting of the planning group was held in Moscow with Davutoglu's participation.

All of these high-level structures are starting to show themselves in hard currency. The trade volume between Russia and Turkey rose from $11 billion in 2004 to $25 billion in 2010. Both countries have declared a commitment to increase trade to the value of $100 billion dollars by 2015.

However, just as the so-called "Arab spring" has soured the budding romance between Syria and Turkey, there are underlying anxieties over how long Turkey can keep calm about Russian involvement in Syria.

From the Turkish point of view, Russian interests in Syria are thin. A small symbolic naval base, seemingly lucrative yet limited arms sales, and assertion of the usual bravado of "standing against colonial western interventionism" are no compensation for what Russia stands to lose through its dangerous Syria policy.

In contrast, for Turkey, what happens next in Syria represents more than a distant humanitarian crisis. With a lengthy land border between the two countries, the implications of a large-scale refugee influx, the potential of a prolonged civil war, all the ills that come with having a failed state as a neighbor, and the possible spillover of Syrian unrest into Turkey, the Syria question is a top foreign policy concern for Turkey.

The AKP government adopted a strong public stand against the Assad regime and burned bridges painstakingly built since 1999 as soon as it became clear that the Assad family would not pursue reforms and stop its violence. Turkey embraced great economic losses in the process, but it has stuck to its position that the Assad regime must go and championed many of the international initiatives against the regime.

Will Turkey soon adopt a similar bold stand against Russia, which has direct culpability in the deaths of thousands of innocent Syrians? The answer is: not likely. Turkey is pursuing quiet and friendly pressure on Russia to change Moscow's position. The last example of this were the recent gentle statements by President Gul, who said that ultimately Russia will see that it has no choice but to join diplomatic efforts to force Assad from his post.

When Russia will finally accept this path and what kind of solution it will back is far from clear. Now that the predestined Russian elections are over, a teary-eyed Putin might indeed be moved to heed Erdogan's exhortation that the blood of an innocent child is much more valuable than any possible short-term benefits Russia might achieve from the suffering of Syrians. If this kind of argument does not work, Putin might otherwise soon accept that Russia stands to lose far more than it will ever gain by backing Assad.

Damage Caused by WikiLeaks to Human Rights Advocacy

 
Huffington Post, UK,  6 February 2012

The legacy of WikiLeaks on the practice of diplomacy is already clear: not much at all. Leaving aside the field day the media and civil rights groups had in bringing down the curtains on the secrets of the giant United States foreign policy machinery; in actuality, there was hardly anything that was not known by observers and the learned public. But, yes, we did have some juicy verbatim quotes about and from world leaders here and there.

All the leaks did was show that the US was more consistent in the way it pursued foreign policy than the conspirators had wanted to believe. While there have been some serious audits at the State Department and a host of other foreign ministries on how information should be gathered and sent back to base, and how and by whom it should be handled and consumed, the essential nature of diplomacy has not changed.

However, when the remaining documents were 'leaked' from WikiLeaks without deleting the names of sources, WikiLeaks tasted its own bitter medicine and risked the lives of hundreds of human rights advocates, researchers, lawyers and activists who live in precarious situations. Without much media attention, human rights activists found themselves facing intimidation and questioning and many sleepless nights.
Myself included, many professional researchers who spend their time conducting field research and documenting human rights issues around the world went through documents with the fear of seeing their names cited in cables. The fear was twofold: firstly, our research is often done under the radar, and public citations of our names as a source will likely result in our being banned from countries we work on; and secondly, our sources take tremendous risks by meeting us and providing us with information, thus leaking our names puts them in great danger.

In contrast to the shallow apologies and comments made by supporters of WikiLeaks on the documents posted online without editing out names and details of sources, the US has silently lived up to its responsibility. Away from the eyes of self-righteous crusaders of 'liberty', the US has provided legal advice and support, and in some cases has offered to relocate people who were facing danger.

So now, some researchers are wondering how many years of the careful process of conducting research, developing networks and gaining the trust of persecuted people have been damaged by the reckless and self-indulgent bravado of a few people living comfortably in the West. Contacts in the field worryingly joke about dreams of seeing their own names popping up in a cable online. Both diplomats and researchers say that people are more reluctant to speak, and some irreplaceable relations have been broken.

While protests in Western capitals or clicks on Facebook and retweets on Twitter might give some cases high profile attention, most specific cases of suffering are handled quietly behind closed doors, and with relationships based on trust and good rapport. Sensitive data about a person facing torture in country X is passed to a contact working for a country or body Y that has influence on country X, and country Y is urged to approach country X silently on that case. The reason is that by the time specific cases become international media sensations, it is often the very last attempt to help the person. Often widespread international media attention hardens the stance of the persecuting country and is therefore the last resort. Now, all of that process is disrupted.

So for some, WikiLeaks might have brought fame and a show on a shady Russian television channel, amid sympathetic cheers of courage to advance civil liberties in the West. For those who actually live in the world's most difficult places, and risk their lives to change the situation in their countries; and for those international actors, most of whose names are almost never cited or used in media reports, and with good reason - WikiLeaks brought nothing but damage and concern.

Would acknowledging past prevent new crimes?



Published by Today's Zaman, 27 January 2012

Armenia’s Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian commended the French attempts to criminalize denial that the events of 1915 constituted genocide by saying “it is a very important mechanism to prevent new crimes against humanity.”

This idea is commonly accepted in academic and public circles as plain truth. Some go even further, saying that if Turkey had acknowledged the events of 1915 as genocide earlier on, the Holocaust would not have happened. Hitler is said to have been inspired by the lack of attention shown to the fate of the Armenians as he hatched plans to exterminate the Jews.

Sadly, just as the shallow popular psychology books that argue facing your own past will always heal you is an argument that is not grounded in reality, neither is the argument that officially acknowledging historical atrocities will prevent new ones. It is only an emotive discourse.
First of all, world history is full of examples of how historical grievances and incidents have been used to justify war, violence and political domination. For example, Rwandan Hutus were mindful of the suffering they faced under Tutsis and this was used as a justification for the killing of Tutsis during what is called the Rwandan genocide. Serb nationalists regularly referred to their defeat to Ottoman forces at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 to reassure themselves that the time to set the record straight had come, as they marched on, killing Bosnian Muslims.

That is why yesterday’s victims can make the best of today’s perpetrators. As soon as a particular group internalizes the feeling of being wronged, it is vulnerable to suspending all further moral considerations or responsibilities and seeing itself as a legitimate user of power that can demand more significance and rights than others. See the crimes the US has committed following 9/11.

Secondly, even though the 20th century has left a legacy of memorializations of wars and genocides, they still do happen. World War I memorial sites had “never again” and “lest we forget” inscriptions on them, yet far from preventing further war, grievances from World War I were influential factors in the lead-up to World War II. So now, World War II memorial sites stand next to those of previous wars with the same inscriptions. Similarly, even though the Holocaust became a symbol of racial hatred and violence, genocides and racial violence continued and continue to happen today.

Thirdly, there is an extremely strong case to be made for letting go of the past. On the personal level, we know that dwelling too much on the past takes away our capacity to live in the present and achieve a better future. Nietzsche refers to this as plastic energy, meaning the capacity we have to remold ourselves, and warns that an obsession with the past will stop progress. In fact, individuals and countries regularly employ collective forgetting and amnesia to be able to start afresh and move on. This is all the more so in contexts of transitional justice, where countries are only able to stop conflict and coordinate a transition into peace by passing amnesty and amnesia laws.

The past does not exist. Its fragments are evoked, constructed and represented by us in the present tense. It is a neutral bag, full of bits and pieces that can be utilized for whatever narrative contemporary actors need for their purposes. Therefore, we have every right to be skeptical of any attempt to officially endorse and enforce a version of the past.

Saying this is not synonymous with promoting an “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,” as Alexander Pope put it. Just as one can be naive about facing the past, one can also be naive about the importance of letting go of the past.

The challenge is not simply remembering or enshrining the past today but acknowledging it in the right way in order to enable a better future. That is where the French attempt to criminalize discussions over 1915 has gone wrong. It is stifling any chance of the debate and discussion much needed for Turks and Armenians to hear each other and process the past together.

Loving Prophetic Voices of the Past but Hating Those of Today



Published on Huffington Post UK, 19 January 2012
This week, Martin Luther King Jr was remembered with great love and affection not only in the US but all around the world. His legacy continues to inspire and leads us to believe that we human beings can aspire to and achieve higher moral values and practice them in our societies to better the world.
Every generation needs its prophetic voices to reflect back to itself where it goes astray and what it needs to do to regain what makes us different from animals only guided by their evolutionary instincts to sustain their lives. In other words, being human is a process and cannot be taken for granted. We have to fight to remain human in the face of strong impulses to dominate, exclude, consume and posses. Thus, remembering the prophets of old days is integral for our present as well as the future.
However, something more sinister might be at play in our memorialization of long dead prophets and the issues they fought to change. We know from the experiences of truth and reconciliation commissions and mundane politics that every new regime will seek to hang out all of the dirty laundry of the previous ones to establish their own legitimacy. By dwelling on how the previous governments and generations got it wrong, political and social actors are able to tame the past and seize a powerful moral tool that can be used as a shield against anyone suggesting that the same problems old prophets fought against still continue.
Take the issues Martin Luther King Jr fought against. It is true that the African American community is not facing blatant racism it faced when he was alive. Yet, even the fact that Barack Obama received more death threats than any other previous US President as soon as he took office signals to the deep undercurrents that still exist.
The core element of racism - exclusion of a particular group on assumed reasons of difference - always remains within all of us and our societies. It only changes its properties and objects, but mechanisms of exclusion are very much alive and kicking. Today, it shows itself not so much on biological qualities of skin colour, but in properties of belonging. You are either with 'us' or with 'them'. You are either 'in' or 'out'. 'Your' life and rights can be overridden if it is not in 'our' interest. 'You' can be denied to live among 'us', who have unlimited access to roam around the world including 'your' country.
In other words, the reason why the prophets of Old Testament protested by walking around naked, covering themselves in ashes, preaching a message of repentance from injustice and exclusion of the weak and vulnerable is still valid today as it was then.
It is easy to love the long dead prophets and seek to affirm moral decency based up on social ills we think to be long gone. But, it is extremely hard to love today's prophets who speak up for today's ills. They disturb, shame and challenge us by their mere presence.
That is why we prefer hearing stories of abusive priests, corrupt politicians, incompetent NGOs and selfish celebrities, rather than saints and selfless people out there who are not part of the rat race we find ourselves in. They make us feel dirty and judged, even though the last thing on their minds are us but the suffering, excluded and needy. Thus, we remain cynical of anyone with any claim of morality, but not because we do not believe in morality. In fact, we demand people to treat us morally. Yet, the moral truth that we see in the lives of prophetic voices of today disrupt our self image. That is why we only wholeheartedly and en masse celebrate the dead, not the living.
Voices such as Martin Luther King Jr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Nelson Mandela or many others who stood boldly when their countries were being carried away with poisonous currents are not and cannot be reduced to history lessons, cold stone memorials, school trips and quick quotes to remove our own guilt and responsibility. They are messages of repentance, reminding all of us to look deep into our own hearts, not some distant future. They demand action, change and courage from us, today, here and now.

Iran, Armenia and Armenians


Published by the Commentator, 10 January 2012..  To read the article in Russian; Иран, армяне и Армения

The news that the Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar will be visiting Armenia mid-January might come as a surprise to some. Yet, Iran has always seen its Armenian population as well as its links with Armenia as an important asset.
Armenians are the most favoured and relatively privileged of all non-Muslim communities in Iran today. It is tricky to establish the exact number of ethno-religious minorities in the country since the official numbers are politically shaped and minority communities guard such details and often are not clear themselves.
However, various sources estimate that there are around 300,000 Baha'is, 110,000 Armenian Orthodox, 13,000Asyrian, Greek and Armenian Catholics as well as 10,000 Greek and Assyrian Orthodox Christians. In addition, there are somewhere from 10,000 to 20,000 Protestants and Evangelicals, most of whom are first generation Muslim converts to Christian faith. While Iran regularly speaks of a sizeable Jewish community of more than 10,000, in actuality, their numbers are now thought to be in hundreds and they live their lives in shadows.
The largest non-Muslim community in the country, Baha'is, face an aggressive policy of extinction. Iran denies them every human right imaginable from denial of education and economic opportunities to denial of holding religious services and regularly detains and imprisons community leaders and activists on fatal charges of espionage and national security.
Similarly, Muslim-background Christians are regularly detained and threatened with the death penalty and often released after paying hefty bails and turning over the deeds of their houses.
In contrast, Armenians are allowed to live relatively untouched. They have full freedom of worship and can consume alcohol and hold social events in designated clubs. They have schools for their children and by and large have not been the victims of the brutal regime. There are two seats reserved for Armenians at the Iranian Parliament.
However, just because Armenians do not suffer the same level of abuse as other religious minorities does not mean that their lives are a sunny walk in the park.
Throughout the years, Armenian clubs have been raided, Armenian businessmen and families have been threatened by police and members of Basij seeking to get extortionate bribes. In Armenian schools, they are not allowed to teach Armenian culture, religion or language at adequate levels and schools include Muslim directors and staff members.
Most disturbingly, the text books that are used in the religious education classes are written by the Iranian ministry of education and rather than enabling Armenian children learn about their faith, they are coerced into Islamic thought by text books citing the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammed without ever stating what the Holy Book or who the Prophet that is being cited are.
Ironically, Ahmedinejad has allowed more hours of Armenian language teaching and granted significant state funds to enable Iranian Armenians to partake in international cultural exchanges and especially with Armenia.
But receiving Ahmedinejad's blessings have a price tag, of course. Helping Armenians is seen as a public diplomacy tool which enables a good word about his regime in Latin America, France and US. Ahmedinejad regularly uses the state of their welfare to bolster his image as a benevolent and tolerant leader.
Good treatment of Armenians in Iran also opens the door for economic engagement with the diaspora’s homeland. As sanctions hit Iran more and more, it desperately needs partners that can be a market for Iranian products but most importantly can supply Iran with needed goods and be a middle-man for some not-so-straightforward financial transactions.
Armenia too, suffering from the blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey, needs a way out of the over dependence to the Georgian border and the taxes and vulnerabilities that come with it.
So when the Iranian minister arrives in Yerevan, he will be cautiously but warmly welcomed. What is at stake for Armenians is the vulnerable lives of more than 100,000 compatriots living in the country and the desperate needs of the Armenian economy.
While Iran loves to play the card of the strong and mighty benefactor who should not be crossed. In fact, it is vulnerable and desperate for any friendship it can have.

Honouring Turkish Schindlers of 1915

Picture; Industrialist Mehmet Efendi, A Turkish businessman who risked his life to save his Armenian friends. Article published on Huffington Post UK blog, 3 January 2012

In almost every memorial site dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust, one finds sections honoring non-Jews who saved Jews from extermination. They are referred to as 'righteous among the nations' or righteous gentiles. The movie Schiendler's List was one account of such a story. A new book, the Lion's Shadow, recounts the story of another righteous gentile, Abdol-Hossein Sardari, an Iranian Muslim diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from a certain death.

Honouring heroism of non-Jews universalises the memory of the Holocaust and ensures that we do not simply see horrific events of WWII as an episode of evil Germans killing Jews. It helps us locate it within its historical setting and draw lessons for the future; lessons of how a continent can get carried away and lead millions of people to their deaths and how even in the most coercive settings, we human beings can rise up to a higher moral level.

Sadly, I have never seen any such section honouring Turks who risked their lives to save their Armenian friends and neighbors in all of the Armenian memorial sites I have seen. There were, however, sections honouring non-Armenians who have helped the Armenian cause in raising the issue of 1915 massacres. Only a handful of Armenian historians mention them, often in passing. Yet, we do see their traces in almost all biographies written by surviving Armenians.
Whenever I raised this with various Armenian activists and academics, I got two main responses. The most common one was relativization; well, yes, there were very few Turks who helped Armenians, but most of them did so to make money or even adopt the young kids so as to use them as free labor. Thus, their acts or their presence in the complex web of history was placed back into the neat and clear category of the eternal perpetrator Turk.

The second most common one was refusal; as long as Turks refuse to acknowledge what happened in 1915 as genocide, no one should ask Armenians to honour or sing praises of Turks; to do so will be glorifying the Turks and victimizing the Armenians further. Sadly, the same refusal to break down the a-historical category of the 'evil' Turk we see in relativization is also at play in refusal, albeit in a morally coated discourse.

Both of these responses are fundamentally flawed. First of all, the greatest portion of Armenians who survived the massacres and deportations did so with the help of people around them, may they be Turks or Kurds . And yes, while surviving children and woman might have been remarried or as it is with every orphan or poor kid in rural life worked as part of being offered shelter, there were many who simply had no motivation other than the desire to protect innocent people.

Secondly, at the pure moral level, it is a complete moral failure not being able to thank or respect or honour those who chose to do right thing and took serious personal risks. To say that one will do the morally right thing if only when someone else do a morally right thing completely undermines and destroys the morality it demands to start with. An act is moral and worthy on its own, not because another act is required in return.

Thirdly, honouring such Turks does not take away or diminish the depth and scope of hundreds of thousands Armenians who perished during the turbulent collapse of an empire. Far from it; it enables their suffering to be part of a common human history that can be shared and mourned for and remembered by not only Armenians today, but also the entire world, including the Turks. This makes sure that history does not remain the collective memory of a particular group in conflict with another's, but an episode, which we can co-process and own.

Currently the Armenian activists seem more resolved to communicate their hurts and pasts to everyone in the world but the Turkish public. Yet, they don't realize that unless the Turkish public sees their pain and urges the Turkish government to act, no Turkish government can ever address 1915 and no amount of legislations passed at world parliaments will bring us a step closer to absolution and acknowledgement. Their misguided efforts find their mimesis in over zealous Turkish activists, who see demonizaton and judgment of an entire group of people in calls for facing the past and vehemently refuse to accept it.

It is high time to bring the conversation to Anatolia, not to Washington DC or Paris, and find ways to make the past an integral part of the story of this land. And in that process, honoring Turks who saved Armenians would be a major break through. It will depolarise an extremely intense conversation and help us to discover the deep common humanity we all share.

Please do visit the small blog where I gather such stories and do share if you know or read other ones; http://www.projectcommonhumanity.net

UK and Turkey: A New Alternative European Alliance?

Last week's fall out between the UK and the EU caused divided opinions about the EU in Britain, as well as the deep political divides between other EU countries to surface once again. While neither Britain nor the EU is in a position to give up on the other, the UK will be looking to strengthen bilateral relations with strategic countries to ensure its economic and foreign policy interests in the likelihood of growing tensions with the EU machinery. At that point, recent investments made to enhance ties with Turkey will be proven to be much more important than previously thought.
At the most superficial level, growing economic relations between Turkey and the UK will be providing a hungry market for British investors and products. The signs of the lucrative Turkish market being noticed by British investors become clear when one considers that the trade volume between the two countries went from a humble $141 million in 2003 to $1.3 billion in 2008 and a whooping $11 billion in 2010! By 2015, we will see a doubling of the latest figures. As the Turkish economy continues to grow along with its consumer confidence and as the Turkish government remains keen to attract foreign direct investment to the country, Turkey is going to be an important trade partner at a time when the European market is facing major challenges.
At a deeper level, the fact that the UK has always been a keen supporter of Turkish accession into the EU and that the two countries are in agreement on almost all of the issues surrounding the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) means that the UK enjoys a good rapport with the country. Good relations with Turkey mean that the UK has a partner to enter places it cannot do on its own and can secure diplomatic and economic footholds in areas from which it has previously been excluded. Turkish engagement in MENA, the Balkans, Central Asia, and now increasingly in Africa, is providing opportunities for British diplomats and companies to work alongside and through Turkey and Turkish firms. This is especially important given that the UK's influence in those regions is limited and even, in some cases, absent.
However, a new level can be added to these obvious areas of vital importance for good relations between the two countries. Both are at the peripheries of the EU power, even though one is just outside and the other just inside of it. The centre stage is obviously dominated by the German and French alliance with increasing signs of cracks that the one with the bigger economic power (i.e. Germany) will not be playing the role of equal partner for much longer. The Franco-German partnership has tended to see the UK's stance as a nuisance all along. It is no surprise that the same alliance has been key in blocking Turkish accession into the EU, not least by quietly encouraging Cyprus to seek a vindication against Turkey at every possible turn.
Given that similar power games seek to push both Turkey and UK to the edges of Europe, and that closer economic and diplomatic relations between them will provide UK openings in MENA of a kind that the EU does not currently have; and given that Turkey is ready to give up on EU accession efforts but not on bilateral links with Europe generally; and given that the UK is seen increasingly as a trusted ally, we should expect to see a new power block emerging on the horizon. A strengthened and harmonious relationship between Turkey and the UK will have substantial economic and political muscle to play a major role in the EU's future, or even its survival, in the 21st century.
While the weaker coalition partner Nick Clegg believes that being at a more central point in EU gives Britain a larger influence and maintains the diplomatic and economic attractiveness of the UK for the US, he does not need to panic! The EU's political and economic ills -- to say nothing of its total lack of foreign policy vision and influence, and its tepid support for many US interests in its neighbourhood -- meant that a long time ago US administrations stopped seeing the EU as a key arena in which to assert influence.
On the contrary, Turkey is seen as sine qua non by the US for all of its regional goals. So, a closer link between the UK and Turkey, especially at a time when Euro-scepticism is at its highest globally, will not only have the blessing of the US but place the UK at a truly advantageous place ahead of most of the EU countries. It will also provide the many EU members with an important counterweight to the unhealthy German and French dominance.
Ten years ago, such prognostications might have seemed almost a joke, but it seems that an Anglo-Turkish alliance might be the best thing that happened to Europe in a long time and could be the key to ensure that the crucial vision behind the founding of the EU is actualised in the 21st century.