I missed this earlier this week: a NYT interview, pre-UN General Assembly opening, with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. It’s worth a read. In it, Davutoglu, who toured Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia last week with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, describes a newly influential axis of Islamic democracy in the Middle East, anchored by Turkey and Egypt, isolating Syria (at least under its current leadership) and Iran, and refusing to accept Israeli criminality:
[Davutoglu] predicted a partnership between Turkey and Egypt, two of the region’s militarily strongest and most populous and influential countries, which he said could create a new axis of power at a time when American influence in the Middle East seems to be diminishing.
…”This will not be an axis against any other country — not Israel, not Iran, not any other country, but this will be an axis of democracy, real democracy,” he added. “That will be an axis of democracy of the two biggest nations in our region, from the north to the south, from the Black Sea down to the Nile Valley in Sudan.”
… Mr. Davutolglu…said Egypt would become the focus of Turkish efforts, as an older American-backed order, buttressed by Israel, Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, prerevolutionary Egypt, begins to crumble. On the vote over a Palestinian state, the United States, in particular, finds itself almost completely isolated.
He also predicted that Turkey’s $1.5 billion investment in Egypt would grow to $5 billion within two years and that total trade would increase to $5 billion, from $3.5 billion now, by the end of 2012, then $10 billion by 2015. As if to underscore the importance Turkey saw in economic cooperation, 280 businessmen accompanied the Turkish delegation, and Mr. Davutoglu said they signed about $1 billion in contracts in a single day.
That is a major economic and well as political and diplomatic shift. And it is underscored by Turkey’s expulsion of Israeli diplomats over Israel’s refusal to apologize or provide compensation for murdering nine Turkish citizens in last year’s Gaza flotilla attack. As Turkey turns toward the Arab world, it also turns away from Europe – and leaves the influence of both Europe and the United States potentially waning in the region.
While it is the U.S. and the U.S./European “Quartet” that has strongarmed the Israeli government into agreeing to restart the so-called peace process – after the Palestinians forced Obama and the Quartet into action – we’ve been down this road, over and over and over and over, for literally decades. It’s a near certainty that the Netanyahu government, if it comes to a negotiating table at all (rather than suddenly insisting on impossible preconditions), will offer a non-negotiable “compromise” designed to make an independent Palestinian state economically and politically impossible. This has been the history of negotiations for as long as the U.S. has been the primary mediator in the region (remember, for example, the “Roadmap for Peace,” soon to enter its second decade?)
For any number of very good reasons – for example, unlimited U.S. military aid to and diplomatic cover for Israel – the United States is not seen by anyone outside Israel as an impartial arbiter of the conflict. If there are to be serious negotiations between the Palestinians – including Gaza – and Israel, it would be more logical for the mediation to come through a block of democratic countries in the region, not the U.S. or Europe.
That Israel, a country that used to self-style itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” has been actively hostile to this emerging axis isn’t just hypocritical. It also cuts off what may be Israel’s best long-term route for ending the Palestinian occupation and alleviating its own isolation.