Turkey must get its priorities straight and focus on ISIS*

Haaretz: The country is in a dire situation, and needs to get its act together and fight the real terrorists while holding talks with Kurds.


Louis Fishman, July 1, 2016

Tuesday night seemed like just another Istanbul summer evening as people hurried home after work to make it to the late evening Ramadan Iftar, leaving the city's famous traffic all but a myth. However, later on in the night people came out to stroll and enjoy the cool air. 

I was on the Asian side of Kadikoy enjoying the atmosphere. It seemed like the old days in Istanbul, as if the country had no problems: Lovers sitting on the shore, families eating ice cream and young people just hanging out.

However, this serene feeling was shattered once the news started to spread about a suicide attack that had just taken place at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. The trip back home to the European side in the minibus was eerie, with everyone sitting quietly. Finally, one person broke the silence and asked the driver to turn on the radio; silence continued as we listened in shock. 

Tuesday’s is but another in a long list of attacks that have occurred since last June, when an HDP (the mostly Kurdish leftist party) rally was hit by an ISIS sympathizer just days before the election, killing five and injuring hundreds.

In the following months, ISIS set off more blasts targeting both HDP members and other leftist groups: 33 were killed in Suruc last July, and 109 were killed at an Ankara rally in October. 

In the meantime, Ankara also saw two major bombings set off by TAK, an offshoot of the outlawed PKK (the Kurdish Workers’ Party). Since last summer, the Turkish government has once again become entrenched in all-out war with the group in the southeastern regions of the country. The TAK bombings in Ankara in February and March added 66 more civilians and security forces to the list. 

Lastly, ISIS struck in Istanbul, killing 13 German tourists in January and a group of four Israeli tourists in March. In fact, one Turkish online newspaper, Diken, has recorded a total of 15 bombings (including Tuesday’s attack) in the last 12 months, leaving 290 civilians dead and over 1,500 wounded.  

The year of violence has left Turkish citizens on edge. Tuesday’s bombings only reinforced the feeling that attacks can happen at any time and in any place. It also showed that ISIS, which is currently the main suspect, has become much more sophisticated, increasing fears of when and where it will attack next.

The Kurdish TAK, which could also attack at any moment, only adds to the growing atmosphere of terror.    

Further, Tuesday’s attack once again sent out a strong message to tourists to stay away from Turkey, which dampened the glimmer of hope that – following Turkey’s reconciliation with Israel and its apology to Russia for shooting down its military jet last November – quick and much-needed relief could be brought to a sector that is set to lose $15 billion this year alone (fortunately, following Erdogan’s conversation with Putin, the Russian president has lifted sanctions on tourism).

By hitting its airport, ISIS also struck at Turkey’s pride, damaging Istanbul's status as a major international hub due to Turkish Air. In fact, even when tourism dropped in Turkey due to fears of terrorism, many travelers continued to choose Turkish airlines.

However, Turkey’s problems do not start or stop with terror. Once placed within the current political state of instability, a much more volatile picture emerges. In fact, in addition to the 290 civilians killed (including foreigners) in terrorist attacks since June 2015, over 500 members of the security forces have been killed fighting the PKK. And, according to the Turkish government, at least 7,500 PKK insurgents (also Turkish citizens) have been killed as well. The deaths of civilians caught in the crossfire also reaches the hundreds, according to opposition parties.

In other words, Turkey is a state that is being torn apart at the seams and the numbers of dead when considered in total is simply astonishing. 

The Turkish government needs to reassess its domestic policy, like it did with Israel and Russia in terms of its foreign policy, and see where it is possible to create an atmosphere of dialogue in order to take on ISIS and TAK. The more it continues to deem human rights activists dangerous, like Reporters Without Borders, Erol Onderoglu, author Ahmet Nesin, and the Head of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, Sebnem Korur Financi, who were arrested earlier this month for spreading “terrorist propaganda,” the more it will continue on a path of instability.

This includes its treatment of opponents as terrorists, such as journalists and academics tried on terror charges, affiliates of the Gulen Movement (now declared a terrorist organization), or the HDP MPs who could face prison terms now that their parliamentary immunity has been lifted.

In fact, it has become clear as day that the United States and Europe are hesitant to move forward building coalitions with Turkey to fight terror as long as there are fears its opponents are being unfairly tried. 

Turkey is in a dire situation. If it doesn't get its act together, set its priorities straight and fight the real terrorists, while reigniting peace talks to reach a just solution to the Kurdish question (or at least work to ease the tension), it seems it will be doomed to continue to see more unrest. Within this greater polarization, the ground could become even more fertile for terrorism to wreak more havoc and chaos among its citizens.

This article appeared in Haaretz on July 1, 2016. Click here for the link

Netanyahu's Turkish coup: How Erdogan realized he really does 'need Israel'*

Haaretz: Rooted in the AKP's staunchly anti-Israel past, often tainted with blatant anti-Semitism, rooted in internal Turkish politics, Erdogan has always treated Turkey's relations with Israel with disdain. What changed?

Louis Fishman, June 27, 2016

The renewal of ties between Turkey and Israel marks a major turning point in this history of their bilateral relations, frozen since the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident, in which nine Turkish citizens died. Since then, Turkey has demanded an official apology from Israel (that came at President Obama’s urging in 2013), and financial compensation to be given to the families of the victims.

However, the major stumbling block was Turkey’s demand that Israel lift the Gaza blockade, something that Israel insisted was unacceptable, as it was an issue directly related to its security. 

For the last six months Turkey and Israel have worked on reaching a compromise concerning Gaza. Turkey has received guarantees that it will be able to supply humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, and in addition it will also be able to build a hospital, supply much needed electricity and clean water to the Strip, in addition to other steps aimed at improving the lives of Palestinians there.

Netanyahu snatches victory from the jaws of crisis 

While Turkey’s achievements are impressive, Turkey’s acceptance of Israeli monitoring of these goods and services is an achievement for Israel, since it essentially is de facto recognition of the Gaza blockade itself, and something Israel has offered in one way or another since the crisis broke out. Israel received assurances that Hamas would not act against Israel from Turkish territory, allowing Turkey to save face as well, by not having to expel them. Importantly, it also received assurances that IDF soldiers who participated in the Flotilla Raid will be free from criminal charges in Turkish courts.  

Putting aside the details of the agreement, the real story however is how Israel was able to transform the international crisis it found itself in following the raid into a diplomatic victory. It’s one that should be fully credited to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Essentially, this agreement has the potential to create a new regional reality, advancing relations not based on the glory of the once strong Turkish-Israeli military alliance of the 1990s, but a new paradigm in sync with an understanding of Turkey’s current political situation.    

Turkey’s political Islamist: Disdain for Israel – and Jews 

Since the AKP came to power in 2002, its influential leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has always treated his country’s relations with Israel with disdain. This view was tied not only to his party’s staunchly anti-Israel past, often tainted with blatant anti-Semitism,  but was rooted in internal Turkish politics.

During the 1990s, criticism of Turkey’s alliance with Israel was to a great extent taboo. In fact, one of the events that hastened the 1997 military coup, which led to the resignation of Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, was when Turkish military tanks rolled into the Ankara neighborhood of Sincan where an Islamist evening of solidarity with Palestine, the al-Quds (Jerusalem) Night, was taking place; the mayor, among others, was arrested.

However, even after the coup, the secular establishment continued to weed out Islamists from the system. In 1999, Erdogan, who was then Istanbul’s influential young mayor and a member of Erbakan’s party, served a four-month prison term for the public reading of a poem deemed anti-government and was suspended from politics.

Few could imagine that the same jailed politician just five years later would lead the country on a new revolution (much to the dismay of his opponents who in the last few years are experiencing increasingly oppressive measures) Since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan succeeded in ending the days of military tutelage and continues to transform the country into what he defines as the “New Turkey.”

During the first years of power, he did give Israel a grace period, visiting Israel in 2005, but Erdogan never paraded his relations with Israel and from 2007 onwards relations quickly deteriorated.   

The Erdogan about-face on Israel 

Today’s agreement is the first time that Israel has reached an agreement with the “New Turkey,” and it is Erdogan who is for the first time treating Israel as an equal partner. So, what has changed?

Why has Erdogan, the man who never missed an opportunity during the last few years to regularly berate and curse Israel at political rallies, and turned to a cheek to the blatant anti-Semitism filling the pages of Turkey’s pro-government press, suddenly changed to a leader that just last January stated, “Israel is in need of a country like Turkey in the region. We have to admit that we also need Israel”? 

Since the days of the Gaza flotilla, Turkey has found itself more and more isolated in the Middle East. From its failed policy in Egypt, to its miscalculations in Syria, Turkey is desperate not just for friends, but also to regain some of its political clout in the Middle East. Turkey’s potential role in Gaza will bring it a step closer to reaching this goal. More importantly, Turkey’s falling out with Russia only highlighted its deep need to diversify its natural gas resources, and any deal with Israel cannot move forward domestically without dealing once and for all with the flotilla Incident.

The very fact that Erdogan has at last come to the conclusion that Turkey is in dire need with relations with Israel is what makes this agreement even more agreeable to Israel.

During the last six years, Israel waited patiently for Turkey to come around and bowed its head at regular outbursts of Turkish hate (although some Israeli politicians took the chance to reciprocate by slinging mud at their Turkish counterparts .

Public hostility, private understandings 

However, Israel, like Turkey, was well aware that the public image of Turkey defying Israel stood in stark contrasts to the booming trade between the two countries over the last six years.

It continued its diplomatic work in Istanbul and Ankara, and even in the worst of days, during the 2014 Gaza War, it continued to present a public face; its Consul General even appeared on Turkish television to explain the Israeli side of the conflict.

While it is still too early to see if this new phase in relations will usher in a reformatted strategic alliance between the two countries, it is clear that Israel has succeeded in shifting its relations with Turkey’s former military secular elite on to the new political elite, which despite its historical hostility to the Jewish state is now paving the way for stronger mutual ties. 

*This article appeared in Haaretz on June 27, 2016. Click here for the link

Death Watch for Democracy in Israel and Turkey?

Haaretz: "By methodically eroding liberal democracy, Netanyahu and Erdogan could endanger their states' domestic and international legitimacy. At least if the current diplomatic moves bear fruit they’ll have each other."

Louis Fishman, May 25, 2016-Haaretz

For six months Turkey and Israel have been negotiating to normalize the relations that deteriorated so swiftly following the controversial 2010 Turkish flotilla to Gaza, in which nine Turkish citizens died in clashes with Israeli naval commandos. As the sides inch ever closer together, both countries’ leaders—the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu—seemed to have come to the conclusion that regional interests must trump their own, considerable personal and national pride. What the two leaders don’t explicitly acknowledge is the growing – and depressing - similarity between the two countries’ political culture.
   
The renewal of ties that now appears on the horizon comes at a time when both countries are showing worrying signs of the erosion of their democratic character. Over the last few weeks, the news reports emerging from both Turkey and Israel point to governments that have crossed red lines, with failed oppositions unable to keep the system in check. In fact, both countries, which for years were propped up by the U.S. as the only two “democracies” in the Middle East, are at a critical turning point, despite differences in scope and substance. 

When Netanyahu recently ousted his Defense Minister, Moshe Yaalon, in favor of ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman, Yaalon returned the favor in his resignation speech, highlighting what he called the “extremist and dangerous elements [that] have taken over Israel and the [governing] Likud Party.” He vowed to return to politics after a time-out “to compete for the national leadership of Israel.” Following on, former PM Ehud Barak declared that Israel “has been infected with the seeds of fascism.”

The recent straws that broke Yaalon’s back relate to signs that the social and political consensus upholding critical liberal values (such as the fair and equal application of the law, the disavowal of racist attitudes and legislation) seem to be breaking down.

The most dramatic example was the wave of public and lawmaker support enjoyed by a soldier involved in the extrajudicial killing of an incapacitated Palestinian. Disgusted, Yaalon spoke out against the shows of solidarity that reached up to the PM himself.

The validity of Yaalon’s assessment has been strengthened by Lieberman’s first legislative focus in office: the introduction of the death penalty for terrorists but only to be applied to military courts, effectively excluding its application against Jews. The areas of culture, education and civil society are also under ideological surveillance: the funding for leftist and human rights organizations is being targeted, and “loyalty bills” proposed which aim to cut funds to artists and theaters who criticize the state.

The Labor party’s inability to offer an alternative to the Likud and its coalition, thanks to its own infighting and desperately weak electoral traction, means there are fewer obstacles preventing the deterioration towards an oppressive state.

In this sense, the Labor party greatly resembles the Turkish opposition in parliament, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The CHP attracts a solid 25% of the Turkish electorate but has no mandate and no leverage thanks to its inability to attract communities beyond its core secular Kemalist base.

Although Israel is progressing down the path Turkey has already trod – towards silencing the opposition and hounding competing ideologies out of the system – the comparison breaks down when it comes to the figure of the head of the government/state. PM Netanyahu is not working for a complete transformation of the system: Rather, after two decades of political maneuvering, he has managed to solidify a strong hold over the state’s institutions. This is quite different from Erdogan’s quest to rewrite the constitution and transform the state into a presidential system, in what many critics, both in Turkey and abroad, describe as a complete transformation of Turkey to an authoritarian state.

For these critics, Erdogan’s recent replacing Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu with his confidante Binali Yildirim was just another sign that Turkey’s days as a democracy are numbered.

But the kiss of death for Turkish democracy could actually come from another legislative effort. The government succeeded last Friday to pass a bill lifting the parliamentary immunity of lawmakers facing legal challenges, primarily aimed at prosecuting the 59 MPs of the mostly Kurdish HDP party, the third largest party in parliament. There are numerous current cases that accuse the HDP of supporting terrorism and working against the state. Readings of the bill were marked by fist fights within the legislative chamber itself. Even though some opposition CHP parliamentarians could also be subject to prosecution for the crime of insulting President Erdogan, some CHP MPs themselves voted for the bill, presenting the ruling AKP with a major victory (some explained that this was a tactical move aimed at blocking it from going to a national referendum).

Not surprisingly, right-wing parties in Israel too have sought—albeit unsuccessfully—to lift the immunity of Arab MPs, such as Haneen Zoabi, whose candidacy was saved by the Supreme Court after the Election Committee tried to ban her from running. Just as in Turkey, center-leftist nationalist—or if you prefer Zionist—MPs voted with the government against Palestinian lawmakers. Three Arab MPs including Zoabi were suspended by the Knesset two months ago for meeting with the families of slain Palestinian terrorists (in a precise parallel one of the HDP members faces charges relating to her visit to a family of a Kurdish suicide bomber).

Here, regarding relations with each state’s ethnic national minority, Turkey and Israel are the most comparable: Most Jews in Israel don’t recognize the possibility of building political coalitions with the state’s Palestinian citizens and Turks in Turkey likewise regarding ethnic Kurds. In both countries these minorities are often perceived as tantamount to a fifth column. However, a center-left party solely made for Jews, or one that gives precedence to Turks, limits its own electoral base, in turn strengthening the rising trend of exclusion, privilege and fascism in both countries.

Until now, the only party that worked to break this mode in Turkey was the HDP, built on various coalitions of Kurds and Turks, Muslims and Armenians (with Jewish and Greek support as well), Greens, Socialists and LGBT activists. Its remarkable success last June however was met with a campaign of delegitimation and their MPs in the very near future could even find themselves behind bars.

Nevertheless, its model of coalition building can provide some hope for Jews and Arabs supporting a new political and social discourse in Israel, working together for a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Arab-dominated Joint List in Israel has worked to fill this gap, however, it still lacks the dynamism which led the HDP to its original victory, and like Turkey, Israel does not seem ready for real change. As long as the opposition Labor Party and the far-left Meretz are unable to reconceptualize Israel as a state of all its citizens, it too, like the Turkish CHP, will remain largely irrelevant and on the way to oblivion.

While both countries can never claim to have been perfect democracies in the past as well —with Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands now going into its 49th year, and Turkey’s long history of oppressing the Kurds—the recent rise of intolerance in their societies, marked by a methodical disregard for human rights and democratic values by their governments, could end up endangering the international and domestic legitimacy of both states. But at least, if the current diplomatic moves bear fruit, they’ll have each other.


This article appeared in Haaretz on April 25, 2016. Click here for the link