New Delhi, March 14 (IANS) In a detailed and exclusive interview with IANS, Michael Rubin, a leading expert on the Middle East, dissects the complex and evolving geopolitical landscape surrounding Turkey, the Kurdish freedom movement, the implications of Turkey’s growing bonhomie with Pakistan, and India’s strategic options considering Turkey’s sponsorship of Kashmiri terrorists.
Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Director of Policy Analysis at the Middle East Forum, brings his extensive experience – including time spent in post-revolution Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria as well as with Turkey – to this crucial discussion.
Excerpts:
IANS: How do you look at the implications of Abdullah Ocalan’s recent call for the PKK to disarm and dissolve? Is it a call which is given under duress, or, is this something else?
Michael Rubin: Abdullah Ocalan has been in prison since 1999. So, for more than a quarter of a century, he is not only in prison, but he’s been in prison on an island where he is the only prisoner. So, he has been in isolation. It’s rare that even his lawyers get to see him. Thus, he hasn’t had direct command and control of the PKK for so long or for some time now. He has been able to write books and read. That basically transformed him into a political philosopher. But he hasn’t had day-to-day control of the PKK. And this is where I think President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey gets it wrong. He may think he can trot him out, perhaps under duress, because after 25 years of isolation, it’s possible to do these things. But the PKK, because of his arrest, had to diversify its leadership, and military and come up with new systems. And so, what we’ve basically seen are two responses. First, the PKK has said they will have to vote on this. And the second is, well, this is all well, good for Abdullah Ocalan to say this, but we are under fire right now from the Turks, and therefore we’re not able to lay down our arms until the Turks lay down their arms. Now, when Abdullah Ocalan calls for a ceasefire, also remember that there have been major ceasefires in 2012, and in 2015 as well. They all broke down. The idea was for the PKK to lay down its arms in Turkey and move to Syria, which they did. And then Turkey started attacking Kurds in Syria. And so there’s a great deal of cynicism among the PKK, among the Kurds, who say, look, we value Abdullah Ocalan as a founding father, but we don’t necessarily take his commands. The other interesting comparison is that Kurds have long likened Abdullah Ocalan in prison on Imrali Island to Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned on Robben Island. They both started out as radicals who conducted violence. They both had a change of heart when they were in prison. The difference is when Nelson Mandela came out of prison, P.W. Botha, the President of South Africa, held a free election and allowed a transition to a new, post-Apartheid South Africa. So, it’s very fair to ask in Turkey – firstly, are you going to let Ocalan out of prison? And, where is Erdogan’s resignation? And where is the Truth and Reconciliation Committee so we can examine what has happened over the 20 years of Erdoganism?
IANS: Let us talk a little bit about India’s neighbourhood. How does this Turkey-Pakistan bonhomie impact India’s regional and strategic interests? And can supporting the Kurdish movement in Turkey mitigate those impacts? Can it be a kind of a diplomatic counteroffensive from the Indian side?
Michael Rubin: In short, the answer is yes. The other thing to understand about Erdogan is that he participated in the first Islamic party governing inside Turkey. When he was Mayor of Istanbul and when that government collapsed, or as many people would say, it was pushed out in a soft way by the military, Erdogan went to prison briefly for religious incitement. When he came out of the prison, he said he was a changed man. He was a pragmatist. His new Justice and Development Party (AKP) came into power but because he had been in prison, he wasn’t able to actually take office until they changed the laws. At any rate, when Erdogan became Prime Minister in February 2003, people celebrated him as a pragmatist because they said he was a changed man. He could link democracy and Islamism. And to his credit, where a lot of the other Turkish parties had run Turkey’s economy into the ground, Erdogan had actually paid attention to constituent services. And so, he attracted people to the AKP. Lots of people who weren’t necessarily Islamists, who were businessmen, who were conservative, had enough of the old order. He was also able to take advantage of the demographic dividend. And so, when he took office, the Turkish economy grew. Now, here’s the issue. Erdogan once said, “Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it as far as you need and then you step off”. And in the West, we were so naive we forgot that he said this. We forgot that he described himself as the Imam of Istanbul. We forgot that he described the Turkish army as the “Army of Mohammed”, or that he also declared himself as a “servant of Sharia”. At any rate, once he was able to consolidate control over the economic sector by taking over the tax technocrats, and the banking technocrats, he could close any businesses of rivals or punish those who spoke out against them. Once he was able to take almost authoritarian control over the mechanisms of government. Then we saw his ideology shine through. So, this comes to your question. Erdogan at heart is an ideologue. He’s a Muslim Brotherhood ideologue. He can’t stand to see any Muslims live under non-Muslim rule. This is why we see him being so proactive in support of terrorism when it comes to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but it’s also why we have always seen him engaged in Kashmir. And if he can do it through Pakistan, then he has a little bit of plausible deniability. But make no mistake, he has repeatedly met with Kashmiri militants. He’s repeatedly met with Chechen militants. It’s just part of his philosophical upbringing. He’s like a dog with a bone. He’s not going to drop Kashmir no matter what he tells diplomats or however quiet he may become. Now, personally, I think we should be supporting the Kurds for their own merit. They are 40 million people spread across four countries, and they deserve a state. Erdogan, as an ideologue isn’t going to give up on supporting Kashmir terrorists; let’s not call them militants, they’re terrorists At the same time, perhaps the pragmatist in him would realise, well, if the Indians are going to respond in kind by, for example, providing weapons to the PKK, then maybe at the very least, Turkey can just take a pause and focus probably on south square towards Gaza or towards Chechnya or towards Somalia, or wherever.
IANS: What are India’s other strategic options to respond to Turkey’s support of terrorism and hub of terrorism Pakistan?
Michael Rubin: India has to stop being polite. It’s the world’s largest democracy, and the world’s most populous country. Too often it’s also the world’s least aggressive country when it comes to diplomatic strategy. It’s time that India realised it’s got to calibrate its strategy to what its adversaries do to it. We’ve already seen Pakistan engage in cross-border actions using terrorists. India responded directly with cross-border airstrikes which were justified. And Pakistan got the message. Turkey tries to support Kashmir terrorists.
IANS: How is the West looking at Turkey’s attempt to become a rallying point for Islamists? Do Trump 2.0 and Europe have a containment policy for Turkey and are they on the same page?
Michael Rubin: When it comes to Turkey, we’re not sure whether the United States and Europe are on the same page, because we’re not exactly sure where Trump is actually going. Trump, for example, seems to be very pro-Israel, although in Washington we’re worried that perhaps Benjamin Netanyahu could be the next to get the Vladimir Zelensky treatment. But with the Trump administration being pro-Israel at least for now, and Turkey’s emergence as the chief sponsor of Hamas, there is a conflict. Now, Trump likes strongmen, and he doesn’t mind autocrats, so he’s always gotten along with Erdogan until Erdogan took an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, hostage during Trump’s first term. And Trump tried to resolve this quietly. When it didn’t work, Trump very loudly said he was willing to crush Turkey’s economy, and he slapped sanctions on the steel industry in Turkey. The Turkish currency crashed and Erdogan sent Andrew Brunson home. The point of this is that in the case of Turkey we don’t we don’t know where Trump is. But beyond Trump, there’s Congress. And Congress has become very, very sceptical of Turkey because of Turkey’s behaviour over the decades. Namik Tan who was Turkey’s Foreign Ministry spokesman and was Turkey’s Ambassador to Israel, later became Turkey’s Ambassador to the United States around 2010. Once, he pointed to the Turkish affinity caucus inside the US Congress, which had more than 200 members. He said this is a metric of Turkey’s influence in Washington that we have more than half of the US Congress signed on as affinity members to a strong Turkish-US relationship. That shows just how influential Turkey is. Well, if we look at the Turkish caucus in Congress today, it’s actually less in number; it probably only has two dozen members. The fact of the matter is Turkey’s influence has dropped inside Washington. People despise Turkey. People recognise that Turkey is a terrorist sponsor. The debate in Congress isn’t whether we should honour Erdogan, it’s whether Turkey should be designated a state sponsor of terror. And so, it is possible if Trump tries to go too far in his embrace of Erdogan, for example, by selling F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, then you would have Congress in a bipartisan manner make the relationship with Turkey the red line and say no, we’re taking this power out of your hands.
–IANS
int/as