Turkey
and Russia: Cleaning up the mess in the
Middle East
The new Ottomans and the
new Byzantines are poised for an intercept
as the US stumbles in the current Great
Game, reports Eric Walberg
The neocon plan to transform the Middle East
and Central Asia into a pliant client of the
US empire and its
only-democracy-in-the-Middle-East is now
facing a very different playing field. Not
only are the wars against the Palestinians,
Afghans and Iraqis floundering, but they
have set in motion unforeseen moves by all
the regional players.
The empire faces a resurgent Turkey, heir to
the Ottomans, who governed a largely
peaceful Middle East for half a millennium.
As part of a dynamic diplomatic outreach
under the Justice and Development Party (AKP),
Turkey re-established the Caliphate
visa-free tradition with Albania, Jordan,
Lebanon, Libya and Syria last year. In
February Turkish Culture and Tourism
Minister Ertugrul Gunay offered to do
likewise with Egypt. There is "a great new
plan of creating a Middle East Union as a
regional equivalent of the European Union"
with Turkey, fresh from a resounding
constitutional referendum win by the AKP,
writes Israel Shamir.
Turkey also established a
strategic partnership with Russia during
the past two years, with a visa-free regime
and ambitious trade and investment plans
(denominated in rubles and lira), including
the construction of new pipelines and
nuclear energy facilities.
Just as Turkey is heir to the Ottomans,
Russia is heir to the Byzantines, who ruled
a largely peaceful Middle East for close to
a millennium before the Turks. Together,
Russia and Turkey have far more
justification as Middle Eastern "hegemons"
than the British-American 20th century
usurpers, and they are doing something about
it.
In a delicious irony, invasions by the US
and Israel in the Middle East and Eurasia
have not cowed the countries affected, but
emboldened them to work together, creating
the basis for a new alignment of forces,
including Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iran.
Syria, Turkey and Iran are united not only
by tradition, faith, resistance to
US-Israeli plans, but by their common need
to fight Kurdish separatists, who have been
supported by both the US and Israel. Their
economic cooperation is growing by leaps and
bounds. Adding Russia to the mix constitutes
a like-minded, strong regional force
encompassing the full socio-political
spectrum, from Sunni and Shia Muslim,
Christian, even Jewish, to secular
traditions.
This is the natural regional geopolitical
logic, not the artificial one imposed over
the past 150 years by the British and now US
empires. Just as the Crusaders came to wreak
havoc a millennium ago, forcing locals to
unite to expel the invaders, so today's
Crusaders have set in motion the forces of
their own demise.
Turkey's bold move with Brazil to defuse the
West's stand-off with Iran caught the
world's imagination in May. Its defiance of
Israel after the Israeli attack on the Peace
Flotilla trying to break the siege of Gaza
in June made it the darling of the Arab
world.
Russia has its own, less spectacular
contributions to these, the most burning
issues in the Middle East today. There are
problems for Russia. Its crippled economy
and weakened military give it pause in
anything that might provoke the world
superpower. Its elites are divided on how
far to pursuit accommodation with the US.
The tragedies of Afghanistan and Chechnya
and fears arising from the impasse in most
of the "stans" continue to plague Russia's
relations with the Muslim Middle East.
Since the departure of Soviet forces from
Egypt in 1972, Russia has not officially had
a strong presence in the Middle East. Since
the mid- 1980s, it saw a million-odd
Russians emigrate to Israel, who like
immigrants anywhere, are anxious to prove
their devotion and are on the whole
unwilling to give up land in any two-state
solution for Palestine. As Anatol Sharansky
quipped to Bill Clinton after he emigrated,
"I come from one of the biggest countries in
the world to one of the smallest. You want
me to cut it in half. No, thank you." Russia
now has its very own well-funded Israel
Lobby; many Russians are dual Israeli
citizens, enjoying a visa-free regime with
Israel.
Then there is Russia's equivocal stance on
the stand-off between the West and Iran.
Russia cooperates with Iran on nuclear
energy, but has concerns about Iran's
nuclear intentions, supporting Security
Council sanctions and cancelling the S-300
missile deal it signed with Iran in 2005. It
is also increasing its support for US
efforts in Afghanistan. Many commentators
conclude that these are signs that the
Russian leadership under President Dmitri
Medvedev is caving in to Washington,
backtracking on the more anti-imperial
policy of Putin. "They showed that they are
not reliable," criticised Iranian Defence
Minister Ahmad Vahidi.
Russia is
fence-sitting on this tricky dilemma. It
is also siding, so far, with the US and the
EU in refusing to include Turkey and Brazil
in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear
programme. "The Non-Aligned countries in
general, and Iran in particular, have
interpreted the Russian vote as the will on
the part of a great power to prevent
emerging powers from attaining the energy
independence they need for their economic
development. And it will be difficult to
make them forget this Russian faux pas,"
argues Thierry Meyssan at voltairenet.org.
Whatever the truth is there, the cooperation
with Iran and now Turkey, Syria and Egypt on
developing peaceful nuclear power, and the
recent agreement to sell Syria advanced
P-800 cruise missiles show Russia is hardly
the plaything of the US and Israel in Middle
East issues. Israel is furious over the
missile sale to Syria, and last week
threatened to sell "strategic, tie-breaking
weapons" to "areas of strategic importance"
to Russia in revenge. On both Iran and
Syria, Russia's moves suggest it is trying
to calm volatile situations that could
explode.
There are other reasons to see Russia as a
possible Middle East powerbroker. The
millions of Russian Jews who moved to Israel
are not necessarily a Lieberman-like
Achilles Heel for Russia. A third of them
are scornfully dismissed as not sufficiently
kosher and could be a serious problem for a
state that is founded solely on racial
purity. Many have returned to Russia or
managed to move on to greener pastures.
Already, such prominent rightwing
politicians as Moshe Arens, political patron
of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, are considering a one-state
solution. Perhaps these Russian immigrants
will produce a Frederik de Klerk to re-enact
the dismantling of South African apartheid.
Russia holds another intriguing key to peace
in the Middle East. Zionism from the start
was a secular socialist movement, with
religious conservative Jews strongly
opposed, a situation that continues even
today, despite the defection of many under
blandishments from the likes of Ben Gurion
and Netanyahu. Like the Palestinians, True
Torah Jews don't recognise the "Jewish
state".
But wait! There is a legitimate Jewish
state, a secular one set up in 1928 in
Birobidjan Russia, in accordance with Soviet
secular nationalities policies. There is
nothing stopping the entire population of
Israeli Jews, orthodox and secular alike,
from decamping to this Jewish homeland,
blessed with abundant raw materials, Golda
Meir's "a land without a people for a people
without a land". It has taken on a new lease
on life since the collapse of the Soviet
Union. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev
made an unprecedented visit this summer, the
first ever of a Russian (or Soviet) leader
and pointed out the strong Russian state
support it has as a Jewish homeland where
Yiddish, the secular language of European
Jews (not sacred Hebrew), is the state
language.
There has been no magic hand guiding Turkey
and Russia as they form the axis of a new
political formation. Rather it is the
resilience of Islam in the face of Western
onslaught, plus -- surprisingly -- a page
from the history of Soviet secular national
self-determination. Turkey, once the "sick
man of Europe", is now "the only healthy man
of Europe", Turkish President Abdullah Gul
was told at the UN Millennium Goals Summit
last week, positioning it along with the
Russian, and friends Iranian and Syrian to
clean up the mess created by the British
empire and its "democratic" offspring, the
US and Israel.
While US and Israeli strategists continue to
pore over mad schemes to invade Iran,
Russian and Turkish leaders plan to increase
trade and development in the Middle East,
including nuclear power. From a Middle
Eastern point of view, Russia's eagerness to
build power stations in Iran, Turkey, Syria
and Egypt shows a desire to help accelerate
the economic development that Westerners
have long denied the Middle East -- other
than Israel -- for so long. This includes
Lebanon where Stroitransgaz and Gazprom will
transit Syrian gas until Beirut can overcome
Israeli-imposed obstacles to the
exploitation of its large reserves offshore.
Russia in its own way, like its ally Turkey,
has placed itself as a go-between in the
most urgent problems facing the Middle East
-- Palestine and Iran. "Peace in the Middle
East holds the key to a peaceful and stable
future in the world," Gul told the UN
Millennium Goals Summit -- in English. The
world now watches to see if their efforts
will bear fruit.
***
Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can
reach him at
http://ericwalberg.com