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Turkish
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu recently visited Diyarbakir, the most
important Kurdish city in Turkey’s troubled Southeast. As the post-World
War I political structure of the Middle East buckles, Kurdish
separatist ambitions have become an increasingly important issue, not
just for Turkey, but for Syria and Iraq as well.
Mr.
Davutoglu’s solution to the Kurdish problem is to turn the clock back
100 years, to the time before World War I when the Ottoman Empire held
sway. Yet the minister is less likely to see a new era of
Turkish-enforced regional stability than something much less pleasing to
his taste.
Speaking at Dicle
University in Diyarbakir on March 15, Mr. Davutoglu called the past
century a “parenthesis”: a departure from the authentic political order
to which Kurds, Turkey and the Middle East will soon return. His talk,
titled “The Great Restoration: Our New Political Understanding from the
Very Old to Globalization,” was colored deeply by the “neo-Ottomanism”
that both he and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan champion.
The
departure, Mr. Davutoglu said, began with “the mold that Sykes-Picot
drew up for us,” referring to the agreement between the British and
French governments in 1916 that ended centuries of Ottoman domination of
the Middle East. With the Sykes-Picot agreement and the League of
Nations mandates, Mr. Davutoglu proclaimed, foreign hands had imposed a
political order alien to Middle Eastern traditions, one of “emergent
states based on nationalist ideology.”
Mr.
Davutoglu said this era is finally and happily coming to an end. “We
are now in a new era of restoration,” he proclaimed. “The real issue is
actually rebuilding the mentality that we have lost.”
In
this view, the unifying force of Islam will heal longstanding domestic
and international divides. This, coupled with Sunni Turkey’s political,
economic and military strength, will lead to Turkey being restored as
the natural, dominating leader of the region. A new political
understanding, Mr. Davutoglu said in Diyarbakir, will restore the
“ancient unity” that connects not only Turks and Kurds, but also
“Albanians, Bosnians and Arabs.”
The
foreign minister correctly underscores three important developments
affecting today’s Middle East. First, that the Western-inspired,
nationalist ideologies adopted in the wake of Sykes-Picot are waning. In
the states created as a result of the agreement—Iraq, Syria, Jordan,
and Lebanon—nationalist ideologies are giving way to ideologies of
Islamist inspiration.
This is
also the case in Egypt and Turkey, whose modern forms also date from the
end of the First World War. It’s true as well, of course, in Iran,
which since 1979 has shed Western tutelage for an Islamist ideology,
albeit one of a Shiite variety.
Second,
that certain political aspects of today’s Middle East could come to
resemble those from before World War I. Syria, Iraq and Lebanon may
eventually shatter into smaller states or quasi-states, resembling
provinces and districts of the Ottoman Empire. This will reflect and
encourage the more local attachments characteristic of that era.
Third,
that the dominant role of outside powers is ending. All Middle
Easterners are convinced—some with pleasure, others with regret—that
America is a fading force in the Muslim world. The U.S. may yet be
invoked to pressure Israelis, but Middle Easterners know of America’s
economic woes and its leaders’ distaste for confronting Muslims.
These
three developments won’t, however, restore the “ancient unity” that Mr.
Davutoglu so romantically invokes. Much more likely is an era of Middle
Eastern disunity and disorder.
The
unity of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as it was, derived from
Ottoman power, both Caliphate and Empire. Contemporary Turkey cannot
fill that role. Ankara’s frustrations in the Syrian civil war show that.
Worse
still, Turkey has a rival in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is
aided at times by Turkey’s ancient foe Russia. Prime Minister Erdogan
initially sought a virtual alliance with Iran based on common Islamist
orientations and distaste for the West. But that proved fanciful. The
new Islamist enthusiasm has heightened religious sensibilities, stoking
ancient rivalries of Sunnis and Shiites. A profound and violent fault
line runs through the region.
Indeed,
the Middle East may soon most resemble the ancient “disunity” of the
16th and 17th centuries, when Ottoman Sunnism contended with Iranian
Safavid Shiism. That time around, the Ottomans prevailed.
This
time, a nuclear Iran may dominate. Today Sunni Islamism is divided into
powerful and potentially rivalrous camps. Arab Salafists and their
Muslim Brotherhood cousins vie with the Turks for control. And
meanwhile, Kurds, so long abused by Ankara, may in two decades outnumber
Turks in Turkey. They may have their own state in Iraq sooner than
that.
Ironically, order and peace
in Mr. Davutoglu’s new era may still depend on the restraining hand of
outside assistance—and the natural partner remains the U.S. Turks have
relearned an ancient lesson recently: that it is unwise to rely on the
tender mercies of Russia or the staying power of Europeans. China and
India may seek economic advantage, but they have yet to invest in
establishing a Middle Eastern order. Both countries, moreover, have
their own Muslim problems.
Will
America resume a strong Middle East presence willingly? Or will it see
itself as forced into the role? To know that, we must ask when
Washington’s current foreign-policy “parenthesis” will end—and whether
it will end painfully or well.
Hillel Fradkin is a Senior Fellow and Director for the Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World at Hudson Institute.
Lewis Libby is Senior Vice President of Hudson Institute.
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