I’m reprinting here my most recent Tomdispatch essay for The Nation Institute, on the possible emergence of a centrist Sunni bloc that aims to offset Israeli power in the region. Check out, as well, Tom Engelhardt’s essential introduction, here.

At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: the Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary stated foreign policy goal has been to rally its partners in the region to cooperate with the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu while upholding a “rules-based” international order and blocking Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason. President Biden’s Achilles heel has been his “bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, while launching a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza in the wake of the horrific October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Biden also signed on to the Abraham Accords, a project initiated in 2020 by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and special Middle East envoy of then-President Donald Trump. Through them the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco all agreed to recognize Israel in return for investment and trade opportunities there and access to American weaponry and a U.S. security umbrella. Not only did Washington, however, fail to incorporate Saudi Arabia into that framework, but it has also faced increasing difficulty keeping the accords themselves in place given increasing anger and revulsion in the region over the high (and still ongoing) civilian death toll in Gaza. Typically, just the docking of an Israeli ship at the Moroccan port of Tangier this summer set off popular protests that spread to dozens of cities in that country. And that was just a taste of what could be coming.

Breathtaking Hypocrisy

Washington’s efforts in the Middle East have been profoundly undermined by its breathtaking hypocrisy. After all, the Biden team has gone blue in the face decrying the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine and its violations of international humanitarian law in killing so many innocent civilians there. In contrast, the administration let the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu completely disregard international law when it comes to its treatment of the Palestinians. This summer, the International Court of Justice ruled that the entire Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal in international law and, in response, the U.S. and Israel both thumbed their noses at the finding. In part as a response to Washington’s Israeli policy, no country in the Middle East and very few nations in the global South have joined in its attempt to ostracize Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Worse yet for the Biden administration, the most significant divide in the Arab world between secular nationalist governments and those that favor forms of political Islam has begun to heal in the face of the perceived Israeli threat. Turkey and Egypt, daggers long drawn over their differing views of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist movement that briefly came to power in Cairo in 2012-2013, have begun repairing their relationship, specifically citing the menace posed by Israeli expansionism.

The persistence of Secretary of State Antony Blinken in pressing Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. security partner, to recognize Israel at a moment when the Arab public is boiling with anger over what they see as a campaign of genocide in Gaza, is the closest thing since the Trump administration to pure idiocracy. Washington’s pressure on Riyadh elicited from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman the pitiful plea that he fears being assassinated were he to normalize relations with Tel Aviv now. And consider that ironic given his own past role in ordering the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In short, the ongoing inside-the-Beltway ambition to secure further Arab recognition of Israel amid the annihilation of Gaza has America’s security partners wondering if Washington is trying to get them killed — anything but a promising basis for a long-term alliance.

Global Delegitimization

The science-fiction-style nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East is starkly revealed when you consider the position of Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel. In early September, its foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned that any attempt by the Israeli military or its squatter-settlers to expel indigenous West Bank Palestinians to Jordan would be considered an “act of war.” While such anxieties might once have seemed overblown, the recent stunning (and stunningly destructive) Israeli military campaign on the Palestinian West Bank, including bombings of populated areas by fighter jets, has already begun to resemble the campaign in Gaza in its tactics. And keep in mind that, as August ended, Foreign Minister Israel Katz even urged the Israeli army to compel Palestinians to engage in a “voluntary evacuation” of the northern West Bank.

Not only is the expulsion of Palestinians from there now the stated policy of cabinet members like Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir; it’s the preference of 65% of Israelis polled. And mind you, when Israel and Jordan begin talking war you know something serious is going on, since the last time those two countries actively fought was in the 1973 October War during the administration of President Richard Nixon.

In short, Netanyahu and his extremist companions are in the process of undoing all the diplomatic progress their country achieved in the past half-century. Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s domestic Shin Bet intelligence agency, warned in August that the brutal policies the extremists in the government were pursuing are “a stain on Judaism” and will lead to “global delegitimization, even among our greatest allies.”

Turkey, a NATO ally with which the U.S. has mutual defense obligations, has become vociferous in its discontent with President Biden’s Middle Eastern policy. Although Turkey recognized Israel in 1949, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the pro-Islam Justice and Development Party interactions had grown rocky even before the Gaza nightmare. Still, until then their trade and military ties had survived occasional shouting matches between their politicians. The Gaza genocide, however, has changed all that. Erdogan even compared Netanyahu to Hitler, and then went further still, claiming that, in the Rafah offensive in southern Gaza in May, “Netanyahu has reached a level with his genocidal methods that would make Hitler jealous.”

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Worse yet, the Turkish president, referred to by friend and foe as the “sultan” because of his vast power, has now gone beyond angry words. Since last October, he’s used Turkey’s position in NATO to prohibit that organization from cooperating in any way with Israel on the grounds that it’s violating the NATO principle that harm to civilians in war must be carefully minimized. The Justice and Development Party leader also imposed an economic boycott on Israel, interrupting bilateral trade that had reached $7 billion a year and sending the price of fruits and vegetables in Israel soaring, while leading to a shortage of automobiles in the Israeli market.

Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party represents the country’s small towns and rural areas and its Muslim businesses and entrepreneurs, constituencies that care deeply about the fate of Muslim Palestinians in Gaza. And while Erdogan’s high dudgeon has undoubtedly been sincere, he’s also pleasing his party’s stalwarts in the face of an increasing domestic challenge from the secular Republican People’s Party. In addition, he’s long played to a larger Arab public, which is apoplectic over the unending carnage in Gaza.

The Alliance of Muslim Countries

Although it was undoubtedly mere bluster, Erdogan even threatened a direct intervention on behalf of the beleaguered Palestinians. In early August, he said, “Just as we intervened in Karabakh [disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia], just as we intervened in Libya, we will do the same to them.” In early September, the Turkish president called for an Islamic alliance in the region to counter what he characterized as Israeli expansionism:

“Yesterday, one of our own children, [Turkish-American human rights advocate] Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, was vilely slaughtered [on the West Bank]. Israel will not stop in Gaza. After occupying Ramallah [the de facto capital of that territory], they will look around elsewhere. They’ll fix their eyes on our homeland. They openly proclaim it with a map. We say Hamas is resisting for the Muslims. Standing against Israel’s state terror is an issue of importance to the nation and the country. Islamic countries must wake up as soon as possible and increase their cooperation. The only step that can be taken against Israel’s genocide is the alliance of Muslim countries.”

In fact, the present nightmare in Gaza and the West Bank may indeed be changing political relationships in the region. After all, the Turkish president pointed to his rapprochement with Egypt as a building block in a new security edifice he envisions. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made his first visit to Ankara on September 4th (following a February Erdogan trip to Cairo). And those visits represented the end of a more than decade-long cold war in the Sunni Muslim world over al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against elected Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, whom Erdogan had backed.

Despite its apparent embrace of democratic norms in 2012-2013, some Middle Eastern rulers charged the Brotherhood with having covert autocratic ambitions throughout the region and sought to crush it. For the moment, the Muslim Brotherhood and other forms of Sunni political Islam have been roundly defeated in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and the Persian Gulf region. Erdogan, a pragmatist despite his support for the Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas, had been in the process of getting his country the best possible deal, given such a regional defeat, even before the Israelis struck Gaza.

Netanyahu’s Forever War in Gaza

For his part, Egypt’s al-Sisi is eager for greater leverage against Netanyahu’s apparent plan for a forever war in Gaza. After all, the Gaza campaign has already inflicted substantial damage on Egypt’s economy, since Yemen’s Houthis have supported the Gazans with attacks on container ships and oil tankers in the Red Sea. That has, in turn, diverted traffic away from it and from the Suez Canal, whose tolls normally earn significant foreign exchange for Egypt. In the first half of 2024, however, it took in only half the canal receipts of the previous year. Although tourism has held up reasonably well, any widening of the war could devastate that industry, too.

Egyptians are also reportedly furious over Netanyahu’s occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor south of the city of Rafah in Gaza and his blithe disregard of Cairo’s prerogatives under the Camp David agreement to patrol that corridor. The al-Sisi government, which, along with Qatar’s rulers and the Biden administration, has been heavily involved in hosting (so far fruitless) peace negotiations between Hamas and Israel, seems at the end of its tether, increasingly angered at the way the Israeli prime minister has constantly tacked new conditions onto any agreements being discussed, causing the talks to fail.

For months, Cairo has also been seething over Netanyahu’s charge that Egypt allowed tunnels to be built under that corridor to supply Hamas with weaponry, insisting that the Egyptian army had diligently destroyed 1,500 such tunnels. Egypt’s position was given support recently by Nadav Argaman, a former head of Shin Bet, who said, “There is no connection between the weaponry found in Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor.” Of Netanyahu, he added, “He knows very well that no smuggling takes place over the Philadelphi Corridor. So, we are now relegated to living with this imaginary figment.”

In the Turkish capital, Ankara, Al-Sisi insisted that he wanted to work with Erdogan to address “the humanitarian tragedy that our Palestinian brothers in Gaza are facing in an unprecedented disaster that has been going on for nearly a year.” He underscored that there was no daylight between Egypt and Turkey “regarding the demand for an immediate ceasefire, the rejection of the current Israeli escalation in the West Bank, and the call to start down a path that achieves the aspirations of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state on the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” He also pointed out that such positions are in accord with U.N. Security Council resolutions and pledged to work with Turkey to ensure that humanitarian aid was delivered to Gaza despite “the ongoing obstacles imposed by Israel.”

To sum up, the ligaments of American influence in the Middle East are now dissolving before our very eyes. Washington’s closest allies, like the Jordanian and Saudi royal families, are terrified that Biden’s bear hug of Netanyahu’s war crimes and the fury of their own people could, in the end, destabilize their rule. Countries that, not so long ago, had correct, if not warm, relations with Israel like Egypt and Turkey are increasingly denouncing that country and its policies. And the alliance of U.S. partners in the region with Israel against Iran that Washington has long worked for seems to be coming apart at the seams. Countries like Egypt and Turkey are instead exploring the possibility of forming a regional Sunni Muslim alliance against Netanyahu’s geopolitics of Jewish power that might, in the end, actually reduce tensions with Tehran.

That things have come to such a pass in the Middle East is distinctly the fault of the Biden administration and its position — or lack of one — on Israel’s nightmare in Gaza (and now the West Bank, too). Today, all too sadly, that administration is wearing the same kind of blinkers regarding the war in Gaza that President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top officials once sported when it came to the Vietnam War.

Copyright 2024 Juan Cole

Featured Image: “Erdogan and al-Sisi,” Digital, Dream /Dreamland v3 / IbisPaint/ Clip2Comic, 2024

(The Conversation) – Turkey tends to march to its own drum in international affairs.

Take the United Nations vote on Dec. 14, 2022, when the body’s General Assembly approved a resolution in favor of a New International Economic Order. Some 123 member states – largely the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America – voted in favor; only 50 cast a ballot against. Turkey was the only abstention – emblematic of the foreign policy of a country that strides the divide between Europe and Asia, East and West, North and South.

Or consider the most recent expansion of the NATO military alliance: Turkey held back its support for the entry of Sweden for nearly two years, much to the chagrin of fellow members.

It was nonetheless a remarkable moment when Turkey formally announced in September 2024 that it was applying to join the BRICS Plus group – the first time a NATO member country has requested membership in a club born in 2006 out of dissatisfaction with Western-dominated global governance mechanisms and that has since expanded from its original lineup of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

With NATO being the bulwark of the Western alliance, and BRICS seen as a key challenger to that established order, this is no minor matter – especially in a year in which BRICS is chaired by Russia, currently at war with Ukraine, and at a time when NATO members are scrambling to support Ukraine in whichever way they can.

The move by Ankara, which the United States has by now decided to live with, suggests Turkey is increasingly wary about achieving its foreign policy goals primarily through the West’s institutions.

Between two worlds?

Turkey’s interest in joining BRICS does not come out of the blue. As far back as 2018, after being invited to attend that year’s BRICS annual summit meeting, Turkey had been toying with the idea of doing so. Looking back, it was only a question of time for full membership to happen.

Straddling the European and Asian continents, Turkey has long been attracted to the European Union, the world’s largest single market and a key Western institution, and has made repeated attempts to join the body during the 21-year rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Yet, the EU has been adamant that it is not ready to accept it as a full member.

Trade agreements? Yes. Military cooperation through NATO? No problem. But full membership that grants voting rights in the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament? Nope, not yet.

With a population of over 85 million, Turkey would be the largest country in the EU if it joined – surpassing Germany, with about 84 million – and would thus play a key role in its governance and leadership.

Yet amid a surge of Arab and African migration to Europe – and a concomitant rise in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment – European acceptance of a nonwhite, Muslim-majority nation in its midst seems less likely than ever.

As has been apparent in the contrasting reactions to the war in Ukraine and to the one in Gaza, many Europeans have come to define the continent as “white and Christian.” They see Europe as under siege from the rest of what it considers to be an uncivilized world.

This notion has been reinforced by the rise of the far right in recent European elections and is even reflected in some of the rhetoric coming out of senior policymakers in Brussels. The European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell, for example, said in a 2022 speech to young European diplomats: “Europe is a garden. We have built a garden, where everything works,” but “most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.” It was a comment for which he later apologized.

Looking beyond the West

In addition to facing a cold shoulder from the EU, Turkey also seemingly feels hampered by the broader Western-dominated global order. The Erdogan government blames the West, and especially the U.S., for holding back the growth of its defense sector, and its industry in general, and for not allowing the country to take the place it deserves in world affairs as a rising middle power.

For example, Turkey’s 2019 acquisition of the Russian S-400 missile defense system led to a prolonged spat with the U.S., which blocked Turkey from acquiring F-35 fighter jets as a result. And Washington only reluctantly gave the green light to Turkey’s purchase of 40 F-16 fighter jets earlier this year, a transaction that met significant opposition in the U.S. Senate.

Beyond the differences with Western entities of various kinds, Turkey also has grievances about the existing global order. A particular pet peeve for Erdogan is the composition of the United Nations Security Council and its five veto-wielding permanent members – the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia – something he feels does not reflect the geopolitical realities of the 21st century.

To be sure, Turkey has concluded that it will stick with NATO and continue to do much of its foreign trade with Europe, where its main export markets are. But in the wake of what some refer to as the Asian century, Turkey sees the world as moving in a different direction.

Joining BRICS would thus open new opportunities both on the economic and the diplomatic front. In fact, such a move would put Turkey in a key position as a diplomatic bridge between East and West, as well as between North and South, with a foot in each of these camps, while also bolstering its position in all.

“Turkey can become a strong, prosperous, prestigious and effective country if it improves its relations with the East and the West simultaneously,” Erdogan said in early September. “Any method other than this will not benefit Turkey but will harm it.”

The evolution of BRICS

BRICS has come a long way from the days of its founding in 2006, when many commentators in the Western media dismissed the organization as an entity that talked a good game but didn’t get much done.

It now has its own bank, the New Development Bank, based in Shanghai, with an initial capital allocation of US$50 billion, and whose performance in its first decade of existence has been well evaluated by credit agencies and the press. BRICS also has a Contingent Reserve Arrangement to provide member states with protection against global liquidity pressures.

“Tayyip Erdogan and Xi Jinping,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3/ Clip2Comic, 2024; (reference –the two met on July 4, 2024 at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference in Astana).

From the original four members – Brazil, Russia, India and China – to which South Africa was added in 2010, the group now has nine members. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined in 2024, while Saudi Arabia has mulled accepting the invitation it was extended at the BRICS summit held in Johannesburg in August 2023. Now dubbed “BRICS Plus,” the body represents 46% of the world’s population, 29% of the world’s GDP, 43% of oil production and 25% of global exports.

The BRICS economies clearly complement Turkey’s. Half of Turkey’s natural gas imports come from Russia, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative aims to connect the world’s fastest-growing region, East Asia, with the world’s biggest single market, Europe, with Turkey positioned as a key distribution hub for the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

A bigger platform

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the BRICS group would provide Turkey with a bigger diplomatic platform from which to air its demands and leverage its influence. This should not be surprising from a country that believes, as many others in the Global South, it has gotten a raw deal from the West and is keen to reform the existing order.

Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani famously argued that the Asian century started on March 13, 2015 – the day a Conservative government in the U.K. applied to join the Beijing-based Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank, defying the express wishes of Washington.

Without putting too fine a point on it, one could well argue that a page has been turned in the transition toward a less Western world when the first NATO member, in this case Turkey, applied to join BRICS.

Jorge Heine, Interim Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – The current phase of fighting in the Middle East began almost a year ago, with the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the subsequent pummeling of Gaza by Israel. But to many academics, foreign policy experts and international observers, what is taking place is also the latest episode in the decadeslong conflict commonly referred to as the “Arab-Israeli conflict.”

The experience of the past 11 months has led many experts on the region like myself to reassess that term. Is “Arab-Israeli conflict” an accurate reflection, given that the active participants are no longer just Arabs and Israelis? Should we retire that term for good now that the conflict has widened, drawing in the United States and Iran – and potentially Turkey and others in the coming years?

How it all began

The Arab-Israeli conflict began after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. In what is now Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, but was then the Palestine mandate under British rule, sporadic disputes over land ownership led to violence between the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities.

When Israel declared independence in 1948, the conflict expanded into an interstate war between Israel and several Arab countries – Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Hence it was named the Arab-Israeli War by both the media and political leaders at the time.

This name remained accurate for several decades as the conflict remained geopolitically and geographically confined to the Arab countries and Israel.

After the initial 1948 war, the unresolved conflict resulted in several other wars between Israel and Arab countries. Some oil-exporting Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, also became indirectly involved by providing financial support for the front-line Arab states and declared oil embargoes against the West during the 1967 and 1973 wars.

Iraq was also directly affected by this prolonged conflict in the 1980s when Israel destroyed its nuclear facilities. Subsequently Iraq targeted Israel with missiles several times in 1991 during the first Gulf War.

Going beyond the Arab world

The phrase “Arab-Israeli conflict” isn’t heard as much these days, but it’s still commonly in use, including by the United Nations, the United States government, media outlets and many scholars of the region.

Usage of ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’ has declined in recent years

However, reference to “Arab-Israeli conflict” obscures the active role of several other participants, particularly in recent decades.

The U.S. diplomatic support for Israel began with President Harry Truman’s decision to be the first to recognize the new state in May 1948. This was followed in the 1960s by an increase in U.S. military and financial support during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.

Substantial U.S. arms transfers to Israel also occurred in September 1970 when, at President Richard Nixon’s request, Israel mobilized its forces to save King Hussein of Jordan from a Palestinian uprising aided by Syrian forces.

In the following decades, however, the role of the U.S. has expanded into direct involvement in air defense operations against missile and drone attacks against Israel. The U.S. Army air defense units, for example, were used to defend Israel against Iraq’s scud missile attacks as early as the 1990-91 Gulf War.

This U.S. participation has been in evidence since the Oct. 7 attacks, too. In the months after the attacks, U.S. operations have been conducted against missile and drone attacks launched toward Israel by the Houthis in Yemen and by Iran.

By all accounts, the U.S. military support for Israel has played a crucial role in Israel’s military superiority over its neighbors. Therefore, an appropriate name for the broader conflict, I would argue, should reflect this active U.S. participation.

On the “Arab” side of the conflict, too, the adversaries of Israel are no longer limited to Arab nations. Iran is now an active participant; Tehran not only provides military support for groups hostile to Israel, including Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah, but it has had direct military exchanges with Israel during the current Gaza war.

Furthermore, Iran and Israel have been involved in covert operations and cyberwars against each other for the past 15 years, which have only intensified since the Israel-Hamas war.

Risk of Turkish involvement?

And with no resolution to the current fighting in sight, the chances of widening the conflict further shouldn’t be dismissed. Two possible scenarios that can widen this conflict are a serious escalation between Israel and Iran, and the active participation of Turkey.

The intense Israeli bombardment of Gaza and the resulting high casualties have escalated tensions between Israel and Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and politicians from various Turkish political parties have been very vocal in their criticism of Israel’s military operations.

Public anger and anti-Israeli sentiments in Turkey have reached high levels, partly as a result of the extensive coverage of the carnage and human suffering in Gaza. There is even a small possibility that an unexpected event, such as an encounter between the Israeli navy and a Turkish ship approaching Gaza to defy Israel’s naval blockade, might lead to a military exchange between Turkey and Israel. While the likelihood of such an exchange remains small, a military escalation between Israel and Turkey could also be triggered by a major Israeli operation in Lebanon, according to some experts.

“Turkey’s Erdogan meets Iranian Leadership,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

How did Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan go from labeling Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi a ‘murderer’ to referring to him as a brother?

Istanbul (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – On Wednesday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made a historic visit to Turkey. This is the first time in 12 years that an Egyptian president has traveled to the country.

After years of tension, it appears that Cairo and Ankara are beginning to bury the hatchet. During Sisi’s visit, the two countries signed 18 memoranda of understanding on cooperation in various fields, including energy, defense, tourism, health, agriculture, finance, culture, education, and transport.

But why did Turkey and Egypt have a rift initially, and how did they manage to reconcile?

Timeline of Turkey-Egypt Rapprochement

After the 2011 revolution in Egypt, Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government supported the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the election of Mohamed Morsi as Egypt’s president in 2012. Relations between Egypt and Turkey flourished since AKP had ideological affinities with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The relationship took a sharp downturn after Egypt’s military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, ousted President Morsi in July 2013. Turkey strongly condemned the coup, with President Erdoğan labeling Sisi’s government as ‘illegitimate’ and refusing to recognize the new administration.

After the coup, supporters of Morsi began protesting and demanded his reinstatement. On August 14, 2013, Egyptian security forces intervened to disperse the demonstrators at Rabia al-Adawiya Square (named for a female Muslim saint) and Nahda Square in Cairo. The crackdown resulted in a high death toll; estimates vary, but Human Rights Watch reported that at least 817 to 1,000 people were killed.

This massacre became one of the deadliest instances of mass killing of demonstrators in modern history.

The Rabia massacre had a significant impact on Erdoğan and Turkey’s foreign policy. The name ‘Rabia,’ shares a root with the word for ‘four’ in Arabic, leading to the widespread adoption of the Rabia hand sign (four raised fingers with the thumb tucked in) as a symbol of support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdoğan incorporated the Rabia hand sign into his domestic political rhetoric.

After the military coup, Turkey became a safe haven for exiled members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Istanbul hosts several Muslim Brotherhood-linked media outlets, which broadcast in Arabic and are critical of governments that oppose the organization.

Erdoğan repeatedly called Sisi a “tyrant,” “murderer” and a “dictator.” Before the March 2019 Turkish local elections, Erdoğan even likened the Turkish opposition to Sisi: “Will we vote for (AKP candidate) Binali Yildirim or Sisi?” Erdoğan asked in an election rally.

Two years later, Turkey began repairing ties with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. In March 2021, Turkey and Egypt resumed diplomatic contacts at the level of the foreign ministry and the intelligence apparati.

As part of this foreign policy shift, Turkish authorities reportedly instructed three Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated TV channels operating from Istanbul — Watan TV, Al-Sharq TV, and Mekameleen TV — to reduce their criticism of the Egyptian government.

The following year, Sisi and Erdoğan shook hands at the 2022 FIFA World Cup reception in Doha, the capital of Qatar, and gradually, relations began to improve. Egypt and Turkey reappointed ambassadors for the first time in a decade in July 2023 and Erdoğan visited Cairo to meet with Sisi in February 2024.

Impact of the War in Gaza

Deutsche Welle suggested that the war in Gaza accelerated the rapprochement between Turkey and Egypt. Since the outbreak of the war, cooperation between the two states has become increasingly important.

While Turkey and Egypt agree on the Palestinian cause, Erdoğan’s sympathy for Hamas is not shared by Egypt.

Hamas was founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt designated a terrorist organization in 2013. Cairo also briefly classified Hamas as a terrorist organization in 2015, but this move was overturned by the courts on a technicality.

Nonetheless, Turkey and Egypt share a strong consensus regarding an independent Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. During their meeting, both Sisi and Erdoğan called for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid for Gaza.

They also called for an end to the ongoing escalation in the West Bank, where Israel had been conducting a military operation since August 28.

“Sphinx / Blue Mosque,” Digital, Dream, Dreamworld v3, 2024

Libya and Maritime Borders

In recent years, besides ideological differences, Egypt and Turkey have also had significant diplomatic tensions on regional issues.

Notably, Cairo and Ankara have backed opposing sides in the Libyan Civil War. Turkey has supported the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Meanwhile Egypt, along with the UAE and Russia, has supported the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by General Khalifa Haftar.

The two countries have also had disputes over the Eastern Mediterranean maritime borders.

In 2019, Turkey signed a maritime boundary agreement with the GNA in Libya. The deal extended Turkey’s claims over large areas of the Eastern Mediterranean, including waters claimed by Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt. In response to Turkey’s deal with the GNA, Egypt signed a maritime demarcation agreement with Greece in 2020.

After Sisi’s visit, the pro-government media in Turkey discussed the possibility of new maritime deals between Egypt and Turkey, suggesting that Turkey offers a better deal compared to Greece and Cyprus. Hürriyet claimed that Turkey’s reconciliation with Egypt has scared Athens.

What makes Sisi’s visit to Turkey so significant is the decade-long rift between the two countries. Erdoğan has been a vocal critic of Sisi, and this led to significant personal animosity between the two leaders.

As Turkish political scientist Emrah Gülsunar explains, under normal circumstances, “U-turns” in foreign policy occur among states since interests determine inter-state relations. However, Erdoğan’s approach is quite different. He tends to personalize foreign policy and make grand statements, this is why the shifts in Turkish foreign policy sometimes seem “tragicomic.”

It remains unclear how closely Turkey and Egypt will cooperate. Economic collaboration between these two countries—given their control over key trade routes like the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, and the Suez Canal—could be mutually beneficial, especially as both face economic difficulties.

The Middle East has long been a center of geopolitical tensions and instability, and both Turkey and Egypt could benefit from enhanced cooperation on issues such as Gaza, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia. Despite significant challenges, the thaw in relations between Ankara and Cairo seems to signal a strategic recalibration in the region.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “Türkiye and Egypt agree to work together on regional issues”

Although Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK) did not officially state the reason for the ban, the move came after Fahrettin Altun, the Presidential Communications Director, criticized Instagram for preventing users from sharing content related to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas and a close ally of President Erdoğan.

Altun said on X: “I strongly condemn the social media platform Instagram for blocking people from posting condolence messages regarding Haniyeh’s martyrdom without providing any justification. This is an apparent and obvious attempt at censorship.”

In a similar incident, Meta, Instagram’s parent company, removed social media posts by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim expressing condolences for Haniyeh. Meta designates Hamas as a “dangerous organization” and prohibits content that praises the group.

Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran on July 31, where he had been attending the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Historical Context of Social Media Bans in Turkey

Under Erdoğan, Turkey has previously blocked several social media platforms, including YouTube, Threads, EksiSozluk, Wikipedia, and X (formerly Twitter).

YouTube was first banned in Turkey in 2007 and again between 2008 and 2010, due to videos insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey. The platform was briefly banned again in 2014 and 2015.

X (formerly Twitter) was banned in 2014 following the circulation of alleged leaked recordings implicating government officials in corruption.

Wikipedia was banned in Turkey from 2017 to 2020 due to entries that accused the country of having links to terrorist organizations.

Additionally, the government has imposed bans on social media and broadcasting in response to disasters, terrorist attacks, and social unrest.

In 2024, the number of blocked web pages in Turkey surpassed one million. Meanwhile, Hüseyin Yayman, head of the Turkish Parliament’s Digital Media Commission, claimed that many Turkish people want TikTok to be banned. “People who see me on the street say, ‘If you shut down TikTok, you will go to heaven,’” Yayman added.

Impact of the Instagram Ban

Following the Instagram ban in Turkey, online searches for VPN services surged. In response, pro-government media began publishing articles warning people about the risks associated with free VPN services.

Professor Yaman Akdeniz, co-founder of the Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD) and a law professor, said: “This ban must have been requested by either the presidency or a ministry. The BTK is required to obtain approval from a criminal court.”

Akdeniz added, “The censorship imposed on Instagram is arbitrary and cannot be explained or justified. No judge should approve such a request.”

Human Rights Watch and İFÖD stated that the block on Instagram violates the rights to freedom of expression and access to information for millions of users. With 57.1 million users, Turkey ranks fifth worldwide in the number of Instagram users.

The ban had a significant impact on the Turkish economy, as Instagram plays a crucial role in Turkey’s e-commerce landscape, with approximately 10% of the nation’s total online sales being conducted through social media platforms.

According to Buğra Gökçe, head of the Istanbul Planning Agency (IPA), the ban also disrupted the service sector, including tourism, hospitality, and restaurants in reaching customers. The IPA projects that the ban could lead to a weekly economic loss of approximately USD 396 million.

On August 5, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan criticized opponents of the ban and used a racial slur to describe them. He claimed they care more about Western interests than Turkey’s sovereignty, stating: “The only purpose of the existence of ‘house negroes,’ who are both opportunists and losers, is to please their owners.”

Less than a week after the Instagram ban, Turkish authorities also prohibited access to the online video game platform Roblox. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Mayor of Istanbul and a prominent opposition figure criticized the bans on Instagram and Roblox, stating: “Those who made this decision are ignorant of the new world, the economy, and technology.”

Israeli Response to Turkey’s Instagram Ban

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz criticized Erdoğan, accusing him of turning Turkey into a dictatorship by blocking Instagram. Katz also tagged İmamoğlu in his comments, seemingly attempting to exploit the political polarization in Turkey to his advantage.

İmamoğlu responded by saying: “We have no need to receive lessons on democracy and law from those responsible for the suffering and deaths of countless innocents, including children.”

Katz’s attempt backfired, as despite the political polarization in Turkey, both sides of the spectrum largely voice support for Palestine, though in different ways—Islamists tend to back Hamas, while secularists in Turkey are more aligned with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or other left-wing Palestinian groups.

How Was the Ban Lifted?

On Saturday, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu announced that Instagram had accepted Turkey’s conditions. The ban on Instagram was lifted after Meta reportedly agreed to comply with Turkish law and remove content related to certain crimes or terrorist propaganda.

The independent news website YetkinReport noted that Meta had already been publishing transparency reports indicating that Instagram was implementing these measures even before the ban. The latest report was published on July 31, just two days before the platform was blocked.

The nine-day ban was Turkey’s longest on a major social media platform in recent years. Since Instagram still continues to ban pro-Hamas content, it appears that little has changed. It remains unclear why Instagram was banned in Turkey in the first place, why the ban was lifted, and what problem, if any, was resolved by imposing the ban.

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France 24 Video: “Turkish president slams social media ‘fascism’ amid Instagram battle • FRANCE 24 English ”

During a speech in the province of Rize on July 28, Erdoğan said there was no reason for Turkey not to intervene in Israel’s war on Gaza, just like it has done in  Karabakh and Libya. The president did not elaborate on what this intervention would look like. 

The remarks triggered an exchange that started with Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel Katz, comparing Erdoğan to Saddam Hussain in a post on X, writing, “Erdoğan follows in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein and threatens to attack Israel. Just let him remember what happened there and how it ended.” The Minister was referring to Saddam Hussain’s capture and eventual execution.

Katz also urged NATO to expel Turkey following Erdoğan’s remarks. An opposition figure Yair Lapid also joined the fray, calling on the world and NATO to “strongly condemn [Erdoğan’s] outrageous threats against Israel and force him to end his support for Hamas,” adding that Israel “won’t accept threats from a wannabe dictator.”

There were no statements from NATO or any of its members at the time of writing this story, with the exception of a bipartisan group of US lawmakers who denounced Erdoğan’s threats.

Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded on X, comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, “Just as genocidal Hitler ended, so will genocidal Netanyahu. Just as the genocidal Nazis were held accountable, so will those who try to destroy the Palestinians.”

Turkey’s public broadcaster TRT took it a step further in a tweet:

“Just as genocidal Hitler ended, so will genocidal Netanyahu” The murderer of millions, Hitler, drank cyanide and then shot himself after losing Berlin. Just as genocidal Hitler ended, so will genocidal Netanyahu.

The Directorate of Communication also tweeted, “They have committed an atrocity that will outshine Hitler, the most cursed figure of the last century. Gaza has become the world’s largest extermination camp today.”

Since October 2023, Turkey went from trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas to recalling its ambassador to Tel Aviv and announcing total restrictions on all trade with Israel until the war on Gaza ends. But a recent investigation by Turkish journalist Metin Cihan showed how Turkey has continued to steadily supply oil to Israel via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline — a gas pipeline that carries Azerbaijani oil through Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean ports, where it is then shipped around the world, including Israel.

Turkey continued to maintain the flow despite calls to halt the supply of Azerbaijani oil exports to Israel (Turkey did restrict the sale of certain goods to Israel in April and announced its decision to cease all trade ties with Israel in May 2024). Reportedly, the sale of Azerbaijani oil to Israel increased by 23 percent between January to April 2024, compared to the indicators from 2023.

Image by Arzu Geybullayeva

Using data from BOTAS — Turkey’s state-owned oil and gas company which operates Turkey’s section of the BTC — Cihan wrote how millions of barrels of oil are shipped from Ceyhan on a monthly basis. “We don’t know how much of it goes to Israel,” wrote Cihan on X. “According to our Minister of Energy, we do not have influence nor authority over where oil is shipped. The oil is sold by Azerbaijan. We simply get our share,” explained Cihan.

In his following tweets, Cihan wrote that after looking into relevant agreements, Turkey cannot sanction this trade route given the existing agreements. “According to an agreement with British Petroleum (BP) we would pay compensation to the company in case of a delay of petroleum for any given reason,” explained Cihan. “According to the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline agreement [Turkey] signed we are obligated to continue supply oil even at times of war or terrorism. This trade is considered superior even to human rights and state sovereignty. In exchange, we receive a share of 80 cents per barrel of oil loaded onto tankers from Ceyhan,” added Cihan.

Due to this agreement, Erdoğan’s statement was viewed in Turkey as nothing but an empty threat. In a tweet, veteran journalist, Amberin Zaman wrote, “If Erdoğan meant any of it he would start off by halting Azerbaijani oil sales to Israel which go through Turkish ports.”

President Erdoğan has made empty provocative statements before. On two occasions in 2022, he said Turkey could invade Greece overnight.

Turkey also took a U-turn in the Gulf Diplomatic Crisis. During the crisis, Turkey backed Qatar while Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt severed their ties with Qatar. After openly supporting Qatar in the conflict, Turkey’s relations with Saudia Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt took a chilly turn. However, once the crisis ended, Erdoğon changed his tune on these countries and relations improved dramatically.

In the case of Egypt, relations between the two countries soured after former president Mohammed Morsi was ousted in a military-backed uprising in 2013. Morsi was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had ties with the ruling Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP). But in 2022 during the opening of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the infamous handshake between President Erdoğan and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi signaled that changes were afoot.

In January 2024, Erdoğan traveled to Cairo where he signed several agreements with al-Sisi.

On the United Arab Emirates front, the ties between the two countries showed signs of thawing in 2022, when the UAE expressed interest in purchasing Turkey’s Bayraktar drones. After Erdoğan’s victory in the May 2023 election, the two countries signed a five-year trade agreement.

But the recent strongly worded statement from the President should not go unnoticed, warned Sinan Ciddi and Sophia Epley in a recent policy brief for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington DC-based research institute. The authors wrote:

Erdoğan often threatens other countries to bolster political support from his nationalist and Islamist base. Neither the United States nor its NATO allies should ignore Erdoğan. President Joe Biden in concert with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg should demand a de-escalatory statement and corrective language from Erdoğan.

There is also the matter of domestic audience as Gonul Tol, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program explained in an interview with Al-Monitor, “The tough rhetoric against Israel is his attempt at keeping his most conservative supporters from defecting to New Welfare and to maintain his image as ‘a tough guy who stands up to Israel.”

According to a survey by the Turkish Foundation for Political, Economic, and Social Research (SETA), which is known for its close ties to the ruling party, in 2024, an overwhelming 83 percent of the respondents expressed support for Palestine. In October of last year, hundreds of thousands of Turks attended a pro-Palestine rally waving Turkish and Palestinian flags.

Erdoğan’s statement also stirred some international controversy, especially with his reference to Karabakh — a formerly disputed territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which Azerbaijan reclaimed control over last year. Turkish troops were not directly involved in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020 but the country did provide operational and political support “by supplying arms and conducting joint military drills during the Nagorno-Karabakh war.” Naturally, the president’s remarks about “entering Karabakh” raised eyebrows as both Turkey and Azerbaijan denied direct involvement of foreign troops during the war and after. In response to a media inquiry, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense called the statement untrue.

Via Globalvoices.org

Although Israel has called for Turkey’s expulsion from NATO, the latter is far too valuable to the alliance for that to happen. Ankara’s utility was again shown Thursday when Erdogan helped successfully broker the release of American prisoners and dissidents by Russia.

In fact, it is the other way around. Tuvan Gumrukcu at Reuters got the scoop that since last October Turkey has blocked the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from cooperating in any way with the Israeli war on Gaza. Israel is not a NATO member and despite its close military and intelligence ties with many European countries and with the US and Canada, it is voiceless when it comes to a strong stance by a NATO member like Turkey. Gumrukcu says “Turkey had vetoed all NATO engagement with Israel since October, including joint meetings and exercises . . .” on the grounds that Israel’s war on civilians and civilian infrastructure directly violated NATO principles.

NATO rules of engagement state that “NATO recognizes that all feasible measures must be taken to avoid, minimize and mitigate harm to civilians. When planning and implementing such measures, NATO should give consideration to those groups most vulnerable to violence within the local context. NATO recognizes that, in general, children constitute a particularly vulnerable group during conflict and women are often disproportionately affected by violence.” You couldn’t honestly say Israel is abiding by these principles. In fact, you might be forced to conclude that it is starkly violating them every day in Gaza.

Erdogan also instituted an economic boycott of Israel on April 9, as an Indian think tank puts it, placing export restrictions “on 54 product groups. The restrictions covered various materials, including raw iron bars, aluminium, copper products, concrete, cement, iron steel, electrical and fibre optic cables, granite, construction materials, marble and jet fuel.” Israel does not, for instance, make much cement of its own, so this boycott hurt. Israel and Turkey used to do $7 billion a year in bilateral trade, and the loss of Turkish products has contributed to skyrocketing inflation in Israel and supply chain disruptions. Under World Trade Organization rules, countries may institute boycotts over wars, so Turkey is within its rights. Israel’s government has contemplated a counter-boycott on Turkey, but some Israeli analysts worry that the WTO could sanction Tel Aviv over the step, since there are no legitimate grounds for it in the WTO charter.

Turkish Air used to be a significant carrier for Israel, but it won’t fly there any more. Israelis traveled to Turkey for tourism in large numbers, but that is now being discouraged by Israeli politicians.

The worst effects of the Turkish boycott, moreover, have yet to be felt, since Erdogan gave companies a three-month buffer in which to wrap up their contractual obligations to Israeli firms.

Some 46,000 Israeli businesses have shut down since October 7 because of the Gaza War, and the toll of shuttered companies in 2024 may amount to 60,000.

All that may be annoying, but Erdogan recently threatened a direct intervention against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians: “Just as we intervened in Karabakh, just as we intervened in Libya, we will do the same to them.”

Turkish troops were sent to Libya in 2020 and are still there, in support of the internationally-recognized government in Tripoli. They prevented the complete takeover of the country by the Bengazi-based Haftar government backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO, with some 425,000 soldiers.

Other than these (probably groundless) threats and minor inconveniences from Turkey, Israel has been able to pursue its total war on the Palestinian civilians of Gaza with almost complete impunity, given that it is backed to the hilt by the United States, a silent partner in the genocide. The some five hundred 2,000-pound bombs that the Israeli Air Force dropped on residential complexes in the first three months of the war, sometimes in the absence of any obvious military target (according to the UN Human Rights Council), all came from the US Pentagon. The US vetoed three UN Security Council cease-fire demands and called the fourth, from which it abstained, “non-binding,” making a mockery of the UN Charter and international law — and allowing the carnage to continue.

Last week, 45 American doctors who had done volunteer work in Gaza said that at least 92,000 people are dead and that “Virtually every child under the age of five whom we encountered, both inside and outside of the hospital, had both a cough and watery diarrhoea,” and that most mothers are giving birth to underweight babies that they cannot breastfeed because they suffer from malnutrition and dehydration. Some 50,000 babies have been born in Gaza during the war, victims of food and water shortages and repeated displacements even where they are not killed by indiscriminate Israeli fire. The US political establishment is either firmly behind these genocidal actions or declines to do anything practical to obstruct them.

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Rome Reports in English: “Erdogan calls on Francis to pressure Israel’s allies to halt attacks”