Mick Hartley

Turkey has already replaced Iran as the hidden power behind the new Syrian regime, with Turkish politicians claiming, for instance, that the Syrian city of Aleppo “is Turkish and Muslim to its core”. It’s all part of Erdogan’s vision of a new Ottoman Empire, under the banner of Sunni Islam. Now, as Jonathan Spyer tells it in the Spectator, the new battleground is over the future of Gaza. Israel, naturally, is very much opposed to Turkish involvement:

The Israeli system considers that Turkey’s consistent pattern of anti-Israel activities forms part of a larger, assertive and expansive regional strategy. It fits comfortably with Turkey’s military incursions into Iraq and Syria over the last half decade, its deployment of drones and proxy fighters in Azerbaijan and Libya in support of allies’ wars, its efforts to build influence in Lebanon, the West Bank and Jerusalem, its burgeoning alliance with Qatar, and its ‘mavi vatan’ (blue homeland) strategy in the Mediterranean, in which it seeks to lay claim to expanded exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the eastern Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas.  

In all this, Israel sees a combination of political Islam and Neo-Ottoman revanchism, exemplified by a statement by Erdogan earlier this year that Turkey’s ‘spiritual geography’ extends to ‘from Syria to Gaza, From Aleppo to Tabriz, From Mosul to Jerusalem’.

Israel suspects that Turkey wishes to make use of the ISF in Gaza as a platform by which it can reinsert Turkish troops into the Israeli-Palestinian context and use their presence in turn to leverage influence, probably through tacit cooperation with its Hamas ally.  

Unfortunately, Trump sees things differently.

The current US administration shares little or none of Israel’s perception of Turkey. Rather, it sees Ankara as a strong, stable and welcome partner, able and willing to play an important role in securing the region. President Trump describes Erdogan as a ‘great leader’. The White House has rushed to embrace the new Sunni Islamist president of Syria. As Trump has noted, the victory of Ahmed al-Sharaa and his rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the Syrian civil war was equally an achievement for Turkey, which created the conditions for the Sunni Islamist fighters to prepare before they marched on Damascus late last year.  

The administration appears to have taken Turkey as a kind of guide on regional matters, accepting the notion that Turkish power can guarantee Syria and continue to prevent an Isis resurgence. In a recent briefing to the Middle East Forum thinktank, Turkish researcher Sinan Ciddi also noted that, during his September visit to the White House, Erdogan committed to giving the US access to Turkey’s deposits of lithium and other critical mineral deposits in the country.  

The combination of strong, authoritarian rule, an apparent ability to achieve goals and a willingness to make available natural resources appear to have won Trump’s favour. Turkey’s close alliance with Qatar, which similarly backs Sunni political Islam across the region, forms part of the same general orientation. 

It’s Trump’s love-of-the-strong-man syndrome. And his belief – seemingly undented by his dealings with Putin – that a deal can be struck. He entirely misses – just doesn’t get – the role of ideology: for Putin, a rancid Russian fascism based on a fantasy history of ancient Rus, and for Erdogan a neo-Ottoman dream underscored by political Islam.

The view of Middle Eastern affairs diplomacy as a real estate deal so prevalent in Trump’s White House is programmed to regard such elements as politicised religion or nationalist revanchism as surely verbiage only, perhaps to be used to fire up the base, but hardly likely to motivate or direct behaviour at the state level. Here is the gap in understanding. Prior to 7 October, many in Israel also dismissed these elements, convinced that the shared motivation of self-interest would solidly undergird relations and that, therefore, for example, the Hamas leaders in Gaza could be bought off with money and material inducement.

For now at least, in Israel, no one believes that any more. But that is the principle that appears to be underlying much of the current US orientation in the pivotal Middle East region. The problem is that the Middle East is notably different from the real estate world in a number of key details. Recent experience suggests that those who try to ignore this may eventually learn it through bitter experience.

We’ve come a long long way from Ataturk.