Transcript and Audio, Part One: From Doha To Jeddah – – An Arab Spring Revival. Taped interview with Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince. Recorded June 16, 2023.

The Changing Middle East – An Alternative View

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Video

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Transcript (edited) – Part  One

The Jeddah meeting (of the Arab League) was a strategic defeat for both U.S. and Turkish plans, nothing less. As Washington’s war in Syria using Turkey as it main proxy failed, Turkey as responded by “shifting gears” so to speak, changing its geopolitical orientation away from Washington to one that is much more in coordination with both Russia and China.

Rob Prince

Nations, like Turkey that were once great empires (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) often exhibit an inflated sense of their “heyday” making their citizens easy to appeal to the past. We seen such thinking in the United States, United Kingdom, and other places. Unfortunately, this appeal to the past renders the population vulnerable to being manipulated by politicians, the media.

When it comes to the study of Turkey this romantic view of the collapsed Ottoman Empire continues to shape how Turkey views its place in the world today. Understanding the past is critical to understanding the current geodynamics of Turkey.

Ibrahim Kazerooni

Rob Prince: We’re on the air. It’s a pleasure to be with you friends, once again.

I’m here with Ibrahim Kazerooni, longtime friend and colleague. Ibrahim’s family roots are in Iraq although he’s lived for many years in the United States. We were both at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies together, Ibrahim as a student getting a joint Phd from Korbel and the Iliff School of Theology, myself then as Senior Lecturer of International Studies there.

What is it that we attempt to do in these programs?

We first deconstruct what are referred to as mainstream narratives on the events transpiring in the Middle East; then we attempt to reformat the events into a more honest, objective narrative based on both media from the region and alternative media here in the United States.

Tonight we want to talk about Turkey. We have entitled this program “From Doha to Jeddah – An Arab Spring Revival

Doha is the capitol of Qatar. In 2012 a meeting was held there that brought together most of the Arab countries – minus Syria – along with Turkey and the United States. The U.S. conceived plan was to utilize Washington’s regional proxies to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad and thereafter, to partition the country in such a way that it would never be a regional force again.

Jeddah is a Saudi city sitting on the western edge of the country on the edge of the Red Sea. There, just a month ago, in mid May, 2023. There, Syria was re-welcomed back into the Arab League. This even marks the failure of the U.S. plans to overthrow the Damascus government. It also marks the failure of Turkey’s neo-Ottomanism, its plans to extend its influence and essentially recolonize the Arab World.

The Jeddah meeting (of the Arab League) wass a strategic defeat for both U.S. and Turkish plans, nothing less. As Washington’s war in Syria using Turkey as it main proxy failed, Turkey as responded by “shifting gears” so to speak, changing its geopolitical orientation away from Washington to one that is much more in coordination with both Russia and China.

This is what we want to discuss today, put the “Turkish tango” in its historical perspective and discuss what Turkey’s shift might indicate for the future of the Middle East.

Turkey is a very interesting country – 80 million people, strategically located between Europe, Asia, the Middle East, close to Africa as well, rich history. It has gone through a transition from a strong NATO member – it remains in NATO and we’ll discuss this – to one that sees its future looking East – towards China, Russia, India and Iran.

With all this in mind, Ibrahim, we’ve used the term “the Turkish model” … to what are we referring by using this term? As a part of your response, can you talk about what we experienced, in terms of Turkey, at D.U.’s Korbel School in 2008-9, just prior to the onset of the Arab Spring.

Ibrahim Kazerooni: Well, good evening everyone, good evening Rob

Before getting to your last comment regarding Korbel when both of us were present at the time, I need to outline a few points that are fundamental to the study of Turkey needed to understand its geopolitical shifts, as well as its overall foreign policy.

Nations, like Turkey that were once great empires (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) often exhibit an inflated sense of their “heyday” making their citizens easy to appeal to the past. We seen such thinking in the United States, United Kingdom, and other places. Unfortunately, this appeal to the past renders the population vulnerable to being manipulated by politicians, the media.

When it comes to the study of Turkey this romantic view of the collapsed Ottoman Empire continues to shape how Turkey views its place in the world today. Understanding the past is critical to understanding the current geodynamics of Turkey.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s approach to global and regional affairs represents what appears at first to be contradictory tendencies: both a continuity of the past desire to return to the Ottoman Empire’s “glory days”, the period of greatness – as well as an example of taking a more modest, practical approach today.

Since 1923, at the moment when, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey began to reinvent itself under the leadership of Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish leaders initiated a shift to downplay prior cultural, social – even religious – issues that characterized the Ottoman period and redirect Turkish efforts to model Turkish society more on a Western (Europe, N. America) model.

To this end, Turkey adopted a Western constitution, familiarize themselves with Western languages, change from using Arabic script to the Roman alphabet. This was done in an attempt to use Western models to reinvent the Ottoman Empire in a new way: copy the Western model in order to re-establish the lost empire.

Erdogan wanted to do both. He wanted to reconstitute his understanding of the period of collapsed Ottoman greatness on the one hand but to do so in a way that continued a close relationship with Western Europe and North America. From 2003 when he first came to power to approximately 2010 which marked the beginning of the Arab Uprising (the Arab Spring), Erdogan still continued along the path of continuing within the framework of European modality.

Around 2010-2011, the more secular mindset of Erdogan’s approach dramatically contracted, especially after Erdogan was able to “defang” the Turkish military (with its close ties to Washington, London and Brussels). At that point, Turkey was able to create its own development model as a way of returning to that Ottoman Empire heyday by attempting to become the leader of the most influential country in the Middle East.

That approach of a Turkey that was at the same time both secular and religious served U.S. interests as well as those of the European countries. This is why that during that period 2009-2011, when the Arab Spring began, we could hear “Korbel voices” – left, right and center – both your and my colleagues – were taking students to Turkey to expose them to the ‘Turkish model” as a way of indicating to them that a “synthesized secular-religious” model worked and that such a model could further U.S. interests in the region.

That was Erdogan’s plan up until 2011. He hoped to reconstruct a renewed Ottoman Empire in the Middle East through closeness to the West.

Then he shifts gears and that rather dramatically.

After many failed attempts to join the European Union Erdogan’s strategy shifts slightly. A review of Turkish foreign policy follows. Shifting away from Europe, Erdogan uses the Arab Spring uprisings as a springboard for achieving Turkish goal of reinventing the Ottoman Empire, this time, on the back of the Arab Spring.

This is why Turkey supported the Muslim Brotherhood, made a rapproachment with Qatar … A triangular coalition of power was created in which Qatar provided the financing, the Muslim Brotherhood provided the ideological perspective and Turkey dictated the overall regional policy as well as the military punch to achieve its regional goals. All this was coordinated, of course, from a far, by the Obama Administration.

Unfortunately for Turkey, that modality failed, because, so to speak, they, the Turks, “put all their eggs in one basket” by only supporting the Moslem Brotherhood. When the Moslem Brotherhood “moment” in Egypt failed, all the hope for Turkey to become the new Ottoman Empire of the region collapsed, went down the drain, with it.

Once again, Erdogan needed an alternative strategy that would somehow compensate Turkey for its failure (in Syria). Although Erdogan’s Turkey was the key element in Washington’s attempt to overthrow the Assad government and partition Syria – with the help of Qatar and the Moslem Brotherhood in creating the Doha Protocol – but once the Syrian project failed Erdogan began to search, yet again, for an alternative approach. It is at that point that Turkish policy shifts yet again, with Erdogan beginning to get closer to Russia, changing Turkey’s Iran policy, with Syria.

Concerning the “Turkish model” – we can divide it into a number of phases:
– the first phase is the same old effort to become the influential neo-Ottoman rulers – or at least a substitute for the same old Ottoman rulers in the region through a close relationship to the West.
– once it failed to achieve its goal, the strategy changed, as you correctly indicated, moved towards the East. This is why Turkey began to buy Russian weapons, S-400 systems, opened a period of collaboration with Iran, China.

I realize that this is a very short, condensed answer to your question but when we refer to the Turkish Model, or Erdogan’s Model, the first phase goes from 2003 to 2010. The second phase begins in 2010 and goes until up until recently – 2016 or 2017. Then particularly when Erdogan realizes that the Russians have come to Syria and that the disintegration of Syria is not going to happen – with the help of Hezbollah, Iran and others – that Syria is going to survive – so the strategy changes towards the East and some kind of rapproachment with others.

I realize that this is a very short, condensed answer to your question but when we refer to the Turkish Model, or Erdogan’s Model, the first phase goes from 2003 to 2010. The second phase begins in 2010 and goes until up until recently – 2016 or 2017. Then particularly when Erdogan realizes that the Russians have come to Syria and that the disintegration of Syria is not going to happen – with the help of Hezbollah, Iran and others – that Syria is going to survive – so the strategy changes towards the East and some kind of rapproachment with others.

Rob, do you want to add anything?

Rob Prince: Yes, I want to add a couple of points here.

You’re referring to the Ottoman Empire. Early on, what we heard about Erdogan and his visions of empire, it is referred to as “neo-Ottomanism,” the new Ottoman Empire.

Part of the goal of that neo-Ottomanism was to expand Turkish influence into Turkish speaking areas of Central Asia, but also for Turkey to move back into the Middle East as a dominant regional power, and particularly into Syria and Iraq, in an effort to annex segments of both countries. That was a part of the deal in terms of the Turkish orchestrated invasion of mercenaries in northwestern Syria (Idlib Province).

I was reminded of an expression I heard years ago.

It is that so many countries have “both a map on the wall and another one in the drawer.” The “map on the wall” indicates their present boundaries but the “map in their drawer” is essentially their wish list of how they would like to expand. Erdogan’s “map in the drawer” was basically to engineer the overthrow of Assad and to take hunks of Syria and Iraq. This policy of his utterly failed.

Ibrahim Kazerooni: Remember Rob, that between 1919 up until 1929, 1930 that the original map of Syria included regions that were annexed by Turkey (Iskenderun or as the Arabs call it Alexandretta). It was annexed by the Turkish government at the time. The Syrian government wasn’t strong enough to get it back, and the French – that controlled Syria at the time – didn’t want to fight for it. That annexation was only a part of the story. The “map in the drawer” included Turkish plans to annex yet more chunks of Syrian territory once the plans to overthrow the Assad government and partition Syria could be achieved. The “Doha Plan” was for the Assad government to disintegrate and for Syria to be divided, yet again, into small enclaves. Such weaken enclaves would not be able to support “the integrity of the land” which would permit the Turkish government to annex yet further chunks of in the north of Syria as the Israelis did to Syrian’s southern regions of the Golan Heights. The Turks also had plans to annex territory in northern Iraq as well.

The Turks also had plans to annex disputed territory in northern Iraq as well. But it didn’t happen. The plan still exists; the desire, the will of Turkey to return to the boundaries, the influence of the old Ottoman Empire still exists but it became untenable as a result of the new dynamics that are shaping the contemporary regional policy in the Middle East. The Turks had no other alternative but to “zigzag” and try to maneuver between these various possibilities with the intention of probing what is the best deal Ankara can achieve under the circumstances.

Rob Prince: There is something important that has to be added to your comments Ibrahim and that is that the role that Turkey was playing in the Middle East was essentially as a proxy for Washington at a time when Washington and Turkey’s interests converged. Turkey was one of a number of Washington proxies in the Middle East. What is going to change is Turkey’s relationship to Washington over the years since 2010.

Turkey is not playing the “proxy” role to the extent that it was thirteen years ago anymore.

End of Part One.