Constantinople Revisited - Some Thoughts on Middle Eastern Politics

The unrest in Turkey caused me to re-read an article about that fascinating country which  I published here in August 2010 :

 

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/08/the-disturbing-picture-of-growing-repression-at-the-heart-of-eurabia.html

 

When I wrote it nearly three years ago the mainstream media were still chanting away about how the Erdogan government in Ankara was ‘mildly Islamist’ or perhaps the Muslim equivalent of European Christian Democracy. Well, believe that if you want. Only the other day, I was struck by the fact that ‘The Times’ published a mildly critical leader on Turkey’s plans to introduce alcohol restrictions – a measure I don’t have all that much quarrel with myself. This followed a story on the same subject in ‘The Guardian’  - a story which attracted a very interesting web response from Turks who said ‘This is nothing. You should be paying attention to the protests in Istanbul about the destruction of a park’. How right they were.

 

But it’s my impression that the unpopular newspapers in this country were less exercised about the Erdogan government’s increasingly autocratic nature, its intolerance of criticism, its pressure on Turkish media to conform, its round-ups of political opponents accused of taking part in bizarre secret plots, than they were about the alcohol ban. After all, Turkey has become our ally in the battle to overthrown the Syrian government. I would never have predicted that, when I wrote my article in 2010.  In fact I referred several times to the then close relationship between Ankara and Damascus, and also between Turkey and Iran.

 

I must say that , at the time, I saw this as a clear direction for Turkey to take as it converted itself into an Islamic Republic and cast off the secular bonds placed on it by Kemal Ataturk and maintained, until recently, by the Army. But since then, the curious and misty events of the ‘Arab Spring’ have unfolded, during which much that previously seemed clear has become unclear.

 

I remember wondering out loud here whether Iran might not be behind the ‘Arab Spring’ which began by affecting largely pro-American Arab regimes. I was , as it turned out, wholly wrong about that speculation, which was too political and took too little account of religious forces. While I was right not to welcome the ‘Arab Spring’, or see it as a benevolent change, I had mistaken its origin and nature. And, having been introduced thoroughly (in Iran some years ago) to the nature and power of the great Shia-Sunni divide, I should have known better.

 

It now seems reasonably clear to me that the origins of the Arab Spring lie in Sunni Islam, and in the stern version of it which is taught and encouraged by Saudi Arabia. These ideas have been spread very widely over the past few decades, as so many Arabs from all over the poorer, oil-free lands of the Middle East have gone to the Gulf to find work and have returned home enthused by militant beliefs. Saudi money has also established many institutions which encourage and reinforce these beliefs.   Travellers in the Arab world note that , 25 years ago, few women in cities such as Cairo, Beirut  or Damascus would have worn headscarves. But now most of them adopt Islamic dress, the hijab headscarf at the very least, with increasing numbers resorting to the niquab, which conceals the whole face except the eyes. This change is visible to the most casual visitor to this part of the world. Other, deeper changes in attitudes are less easily detected, but undoubtedly taking place, as Egypt’s elections showed. Nobody expected the Salafists to do so well.

 

The beneficiaries of the Sunni revival are everywhere the more puritan and intolerant Islamists, enemies of secularists such as Muammar Gadaffi, nationalists such as Hosni Mubarak, and of Shia Muslims whom they regard as intolerable heretics. This dislike is very strong among some (but by no means all) Sunnis. An Iranian Shia friend of mine who went to Medina and Mecca on the Haj pilgrimage was shocked by the amount of cold hostility which he encountered, specifically directed against Shia Muslims and also against non-Arab Iranians.  

 

For a while, the anti-Israeli rantings of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad overcame some of this hostility. Ahmadinejad became quite popular in parts of the Sunni Arab world, a kind of taxi drivers’ hero in a culture where irrational loathing of the Jewish state is pretty much universal, and encouraged by governments and official media who like local discontents to seek a foreign scapegoat for their problems.  And I’m sure this aided the rapprochement between Sunni Turkey and Shia Iran.

 

But the ‘Arab Spring’ seems to have ended this process, for now at least. The Gulf states have firmly taken the side of the Syrian rebels and at some point Turkey(which is said to want to be the leading nation of the Middle east, as it was in ottoman days) has slipped into line with this view, swiftly dumping President Assad off its invitation list. Quite what interests Western nations (or Israel) have in taking sides in the quarrel I do not know.  I do wonder how it would be if Turkey had become (as the USA has long desired ) a member of the EU. It is quite complex enough having Turkey as a NATO member, and would be more so if anyone could work out what NATO was for these days.  

 

But Syria is very definitely not a Sunni or Salafist country. It is avowedly secular, despite its close relations with Iran( whose government is anything but secular) and the Shia militia Hezbollah.  For complex historical reasons, having much to do with the fraught period of French rule in this area after the First World War, the Alawite minority, once despised, has become a sort of ruling elite.  What are Alawites?  Are they Muslims? Like the Druze, they keep themselves to themselves and there are disputes about where they stand in the idle eastern religious spectrum.  Some say they are Muslims of a sort, perhaps a Shia sect, though some of their ceremonies are said to be similar to those of Christianity .  They certainly don’t follow all the rules or dress codes of Muslims. One description of them suggests that orthodox Muslims regard them much as orthodox Christians regard Mormons. Others say that they have more in common with the Alevi minority in Turkey, who are more or less Shias.  Yet others say that they don’t. I’m not qualified to judge. I’m still grappling with the differences between Baptists, Independents and Presbyterians in the English Civil War, not to mention the Anabaptists. I yield to any experts in this matter.

 

They certainly see Shia Islam as their ally (hence their strong friendship with the Iranian state, and with the Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon) , and orthodox Sunnis are certainly very suspicious of them.  And with reason. The Alawi Assad government has flattened (sometimes literally, with artillery)  crushed any signs of revolt by the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood, both in the past and again now. Precarious post-colonial minority governments are like boys riding horned bulls, who must grip those horns like grim death, or be thrown and gored. The same was true of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority rule of Iraq. That is why Assad fights on, and why his supporters fight on. . If he loses, he and his supporters will suffer terrible fates, and they know it. They saw how Gadaffi ended his days. Why would they volunteer for such a fate?

 

You may not care about who runs Syria. This is a a reasonable position, as far as I am concerned. You may not care who runs Turkey either, though if Turkey joins the EU, and remains a member of NATO, the character of its government will be important. It is also important to the very large, significant and influential Turkish minority now to be found in Germany.  All I would say is that, if this country is going to take sides in such a quarrel, then we should debate the matter in Parliament beforehand and Ministers should explain the reasons for entering what looks like being a rather serious conflict. And if their explanation is unsatisfactory, they should abandon the policy, and (preferably) resign. If our political and media classes could for once look up from their troughs and allow themselves to be distracted from the petty gossip which obsesses them, perhaps this might happen. As it is, hige matters proceed with hardly any scrutiny or debate.