Turkey masses its forces on its border with Syria. Iran masses its forces on its borders with Afghanistan. Although each of these troop movements had its particular local and/or regional causes, one wonders whether there were hidden threads linking them, with each other and with events elsewhere in the world, notably Serbian military operations in Kosovo.
Turkey, besides sharing borders with this region, has important and diverse geopolitical and economic interests in the Arab world. In addition to its dependency upon Arab oil, it is bound to the Arab world by numerous strategic and security considerations. Arab-Turkish relations are deeply rooted in history; neither side could escape the bond, however much it might want to. Of course, over the course of history, various forces have acted to bring both sides closer together or to drive them apart. In recent times, two factors, one regional and one international, have had a profound impact on this relationship. The first is the creation of the state of Israel; the second, US policies and interests in the Middle East.
The creation of Israel in 1948 introduced a new dynamic into Arab-Turkish relations, by virtue of the regional problems it generated, above all the Arab-Israeli conflict. From this point forward, Turkey's relations with the Arabs began to flounder, due to Turkey's relations with Israel and its involvement with Western policies and interests in the Middle East, which, more often than not, did not coincide with the policies and interests of the Arabs.
Preoccupied with modernisation and Westernisation, the Turkish political elite paid little heed to the problems facing the Arab world. The Arabs, for their part, harshly criticised the radical secularism of these elites as well as their policies toward Iraq and Syria. These policies have, of late, acquired a marked Israeli taint. Turkey acquired a more prominent role in the region in the '90s, particularly during and after the Gulf War. It participated in the international effort to liberate Kuwait, placing its air bases at the service of Western air forces.
The Arab-Israeli peace process got underway in Madrid in 1991. From this point forward, Turkish-Israeli relations have grown increasingly warm, culminating in the strategic alliance of 1997. As Turkey regained its strategic importance and moved to carve out for itself a pivotal role in the regional framework that was emerging through the negotiating process, it began to kindle disputes with certain Arab countries. The Turkish water projects on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as well as its military assaults against the Kurds in northern Iraq, were certain to antagonise Syria and Iraq. Its support for Israeli strategies has angered the entire Arab world, which perceives in the Turkish-Israeli strategic alliance a deliberate bid to manipulate the Syrian-Israeli track of the negotiations, in particular, to Israel's advantage.
When the Arabs and Israelis were at war, Turkey attempted to remain impartial. The Middle East peace process, however, relieved Turkish foreign policy makers of the onerous strategic and political calculations they had to make at every step they contemplated in the Middle East. With the peace process, they believed, they could develop Turkish relations with Israel while maintaining minimum ties with the Arabs. This shift in orientation brought about the strategic alliance with Israel. It also brought into being a form of bilateral strategic cooperation with the US, through which Turkey hopes to become a key player in the strategic arrangements in the region.
In fact, Turkey's alliance with Israel, the US's primary strategic partner in the region, has been a step towards actualising its cooperative arrangement with the US; its policy on Iraq and the sustained political and military pressures it has exerted on Syria are two others. One of Turkey's conditions for easing its military threat against Syria was that Damascus cease criticising the Turkish-Israeli alliance. While closer relations between Turkey and Israel and Turkey and the US clearly serve Israeli and American designs in the region, they also reflect Turkey's own desire to exert pressure on Syria with which it has water and border disputes. Toward this end, it exploited the Kurdish issue as an excuse to ignite the recent crisis with Syria. Simultaneously, of course, this crisis was timed to coincide with the stalling of the peace process in order to divert international attention away from the Israeli intransigence that threatened to jettison the entire process. Interestingly, the end of the crisis coincided with the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian interim accord in Washington on 23 October.
In this connection, we must acknowledge the important part played by President Hosni Mubarak, in his capacity as the chairman of the recent Arab summit, and by Iranian President Mohamed Khatami, chairman of the current session of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, in bringing about the meeting of the Turkish-Syrian Security Committee in Turkey, which ended the crisis triggered when Ankara accused Damascus of supporting Kurdish rebels. The agreement concluded at the meeting is intended to restore normal relations between the two countries, and stipulates several practical measures and mechanisms towards this end.
The only sour note in this achievement was Ankara's declaration that it reserved the right to take military measures in the future if Damascus failed to implement the provisions of the agreement. This caveat -- only too reminiscent of the way Israel has dealt with the Palestinians -- has given rise to suspicions that regional or international powers may wish to use Turkey against Syria.
In the Asian arena, Iranian forces have been laying in wait on Iran's border with Afghanistan since the murder of two Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif last August by members of the Taliban movement. This incident triggered an increasingly acrimonious exchange of accusations between Tehran and the Taliban, who control most of Afghanistan. The spectre of war between Iran and Afghanistan threatens the stability of a broad stretch of territory extending from central Asia to the Middle East. The connection between the mobilisation of Turkish forces on the Syrian border and the Iranian mobilisation of forces on the Afghan border could be coincidental, but it is nonetheless interesting.
Iran's dispute with the Taliban is not necessarily religious or ideological. In fact, it is first and foremost a political dispute fueled by foreign elements.
With the collapse of the eastern bloc and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the US assumed sole leadership of the international order. The US is only too aware that such a unique situation is ephemeral, and that its position must inevitably be challenged by other emerging powers. For this reason, it is currently pressing its advantage as the sole power in the world today capable of political, strategic and military action to redefine the international map and institute various regional arrangements conforming with its current and future interests. In order to secure its leadership of the world for the longest time possible, the US is continuing to enhance its might, particularly its military power. It is also seeking to encompass its rivalries with other international blocs within frameworks beneficial to American political and strategic interests. The Gulf War was a model of this strategy: political and military might allowed the US to place its economic rivalries with Europe and Japan within a framework devised by the US in accordance with its perception of its interests in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The US is simultaneously working to create and prop up regional powers (Israel in the Middle East, South Korea in Asia) which support US interests so that it can rule the world from Washington. Again, in dealing with the conflicts that have emerged as a result of the formation of the new world order, the US will either intervene itself or bring to bear the mechanisms of the international community in order to resolve those conflicts which it deems beneficial to subdue quickly. Conversely, it will refrain from intervening to resolve those conflicts which the US deems will help other countries it wishes to support and strengthen.
Thus, while the US has been keen to promote the Middle East settlement process in favour of Israel, it has remained aloof from the current conflict between Iran and Afghanistan, not to mention the civil war that has been raging in former Yugoslavia since the beginning of the '90s; it only activated the mechanisms of the NATO alliance after the Serbs achieved their objectives. Finally, in its handling of regional conflicts, the US has adopted new mechanisms for intervention. Thus, rather than intervening directly, the US now brings to bear a panoply of political and economic pressures, not to mention extensive intelligence activities, in order to effect the political alterations that suit its own interests. It is in these strategies that we see the hidden threads linking the events in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans.
*The writer is a strategy expert at the National Centre for Middle East Studies.
