The Western Condition - St Antony's College - University of Oxford

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The Western Condition: Turkey, the US and the EU in the New Middle East latter are not natural allies. Egypt’s new Islamist rulers, like Turkey’s AKP, have toned down prior anti-Israeli rhetoric. Egypt promised to abide by the 1979 peace treaty with Israel – a US red line 15 – and has limited the flow of goods and arms through the underground tunnels to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. At the same time, on the domestic front, Egypt had to combat Saudi-funded Salafist groups that have been carrying out attacks against the Egyptian military in the Sinai Peninsula and defying Hamas to launch missiles into Israel from Gaza. 16 Under considerable financial duress from a mismanaged economy that has suffered from chronic corruption and lost tourism revenues since the beginning of the uprisings, Egypt faces sustained international pressure from the IMF and the US while dealing with the political and security challenge posed by the Salafists. Under these circumstances, the leadership of the Brotherhood seems to have concluded, reluctantly or otherwise, that their best bet to remain in power was to maintain the status quo ante in Egypt’s economic and regional orientation. 17 In response, the US government has agreed to cut on Egypt’s debt and promised investment and economic cooperation with its government. 18 Mindful of the growing intra-Islamist rivalry between the Salafists and more centrist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood and an-Nahda, the US strategy has been to favour the latter group, and through a combination of threats and promises, ensuring that they remain ‘moderate’, at least on the strategic policy areas of Israel, and economic policy. 19 To be sure, the lack of progress towards an independent Palestinian state remains the core hindrance in this strategic calculation. Considering this state of affairs by the beginning of 2013, we could argue that the conflict in Syria and the early transitional phase in Egypt have emphasised the overlaps between the two dimensions of the ‘Turkish model’ discourse and practice, that is its use as referent for domestic governance and its standing in the West as a flag bearer for ‘moderate Islamism’, thus bolstering Turkey’s regional leadership ambitions. As members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (and 15 Matthew Lee, ‘Clinton: US pleased so far by new Egypt president’, Associated Press, 27 June 2012 16 In one such attack on 5 August 2012, Salafist militia in Sinai killed 16 Egyptian soldiers. ‘Egypt and Gaza: A honeymoon that wasn’t’, Economist, 29 September 2012; Jon Donnison, ‘Israel seeks to contain Gaza's Salafi-jihadist threat’, BBC News, 15 October 2012; ‘Hamas disinclined to face Salafists: Israeli official’, France 24, 17 October 2012. 17 In this sense, the Brothers already appear to be emulating the Turkish experience during the early 2000s, when the newly elected AKP government, facing severe economic problems, pressure from the western security alliance and internal socio-political challenges to its authority, found itself working closely with Israel, the US and the IMF. There are, unsurprisingly, critical voices within or close to the Brotherhood for this dramatic turnabout. For one such criticism, see Ibrahim El-Houdaiby, ‘Will Egypt's Islamists make the same mistakes as previous regimes?’, Ahram Online, 16 October 2012. 18 The promise of investment and economic cooperation was made during the visit of a large group of high profile US officials and businesspeople in Cairo in September 2012. An article on the Financial Times, reporting on the visit, commented gleefully that the new Egyptian government would adhere to the neo-liberal economic programme started under its predecessor: “Despite rhetorical calls for social justice and a few gestures such as raising civil service and soldiers’ salaries, Egypt’s Brotherhood is a steady advocate of free-market policies. Mr Morsi’s government appears set to continue Mr Mubarak’s economic agenda, albeit with a stated commitment to fight corruption.” Borzou Daragahi, ‘US delegation to Egypt vows more investment’, Financial Times, 9 September 2012; Steven Lee Myers, ‘To Back Democracy, U.S. Prepares to Cut $1 Billion From Egypt’s Debt’, New York Times, 3 September 2012. 19 For more on the intra-Sunni rivalry, see Jonathan Brown, ‘Salafis and Sufis in Egypt’, Carnegie Papers, December 2011 and Khalil al-Anani, ‘Dynamics of Inter-Islamist conflict’, Ahram Weekly, Issue no. 1099, 24 – 30 May 2012. 15
On the strategic use of the ‘Turkish model’ other ascendant Islamist movements such as Tunisia’s an-Nahda) praise Turkey’s leaders and ostensibly strive to emulate its ‘governance model’, they also contribute to the AKP’s regional leadership agenda. At the same time, the Brothers hope to conform sufficiently to the politicoeconomic and security demands of the US and its regional allies to be categorised as ‘moderate Islamist’, like their Turkish counterparts. Are these synergies sustainable? A growing number of factors suggest otherwise, and these might become more prominent in the longer term. The Plot: Contradictions and limits to the model discourse First, there may be good reasons to question the long-term compatibility of Turkey’s regional leadership ambitions and the reception of this agenda in the Arab Middle East. To interpret Turkey’s regional popularity as an appetite for the emergence of a new hegemon in the region seems problematic, particularly if the potential hegemon in question is not only not Arabicspeaking, but also perceived as neo-Ottoman. 20 Despite the affinities between the AKP and various ascendant Islamist movements across the Arab world, Turkey remains an external actor in the Arab geography. And while in public Turkish officials emphasise a shared social, cultural and historical heritage and downplay any hegemonic agenda, references to the Ottoman Empire do not usually evoke the same lofty memories as in Turkey itself of harmonious co-existence among former Ottoman subjects in the Middle East and the Balkans. In the minds of AKP cadres, as well as of the mainstream Islamist constituency in the country, the bloody final decades of the empire, oppression, ethnic cleansing and genocide simply do not feature very highly. This is not so for those, particularly in the Balkans, but also in the Arab nation-states, for whom the Turkish domination remains a relatively recent and vivid collective memory. Moreover, as Reem Abou El-Fadl argues, expressions of popular Arab approval for Turkey tend to imply “certain expectations and demands made of Arab leaders, rather than purely representing an analysis of Turkish behaviour.” 21 In other words, especially before the uprisings Turkey has been seen as filling a vacuum in the absence of strong Arab leadership in the region. 22 But the prospective emergence of such leadership would challenge Turkey’s regional popularity and ambitions. Egypt, with its well-substantiated claim to leadership of the Arab world, is once again the most likely contender for that title. To the extent that the country manages to move 20 The observation that Turkey’s regional popularity has continued to rise following the outbreak of the Arab uprisings is based on two annual surveys in the region: ‘Euro-Mediterranean Policies and the Arab Spring’, Euromed Survey of Experts and Actors 2011, European Institute of the Mediterranean, Barcelona, 2012; Mensur Akgün and Sabiha Senyücel Gündoğar (eds) Ortadoğu’da Türkiye Algısı 2011 (TESEV Yayınları, January 2012). 21 Reem Abou-el-Fadl, ‘Arab Perceptions of Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy: Cautious Engagement and the Question of Independence’, p. 247. 22 See Azmi Bishara, ‘Turkey’s Recent Stances are Party Choices, not those of the State, Islam Online Interview (Arabic), 10 March 2009; Gamil Matar, ‘Turkey Returns to the Arabs’, Al-Shorouk (Arabic), 5 December 2009; Salama Ahmed Salama, ‘Admiration for Turkey: Why?’, Al-Shorouk (Arabic), 18 January 2010; Talal Salman, ‘Waiting for an Arab Erdoğan’, As-Safir (Arabic), 31 March 2010. 16
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