Turkey and Qatar in the Tangled Geopolitics of the Middle East

Birol Başkan

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137517708
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137517715
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book narrates how Turkey and Qatar have come to forge a mutually special relationship. The book argues that throughout the 2000s Turkey and Qatar had pursued similar foreign policies and aligned their positions on many critical and controversial issues. By doing so, however, they increasingly isolated themselves in the Middle East as states challenging the status quo. The claim made here is that it is this isolation—which became acute in the summer of 2013—that led the two countries to forge much stronger relations.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Birol BaşkanTurkey and Qatar in the Tangled Geopolitics of the Middle East10.1057/978-1-137-51771-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Birol Başkan¹ 

(1)

School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Georgetown University, Doha, Qatar

 

Abstract

The question this book seeks to shed light on is, how and why have Turkey and Qatar developed quite a special relationship in the last three years? The chapter elaborates on the question and claims that Turkey and Qatar were in fact unlikely countries to form such a special relationship. However, as the chapter notes, driven by their own interests, the two countries had already aligned their foreign policies on many critical and controversial issues by summer of 2013. What pushed them further together was their isolation in the region for the support they seemed to be extending to the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Keywords

Turkey-Qatar Relationspost-9/11 Middle Eastthe Arab Springthe Muslim Brotherhoodthe Gulf Security

End Abstract

By the time of the military coup in Egypt in the summer of 2013, Turkey and Qatar had already aligned their policies on many critical and controversial issues: for example, both fully supported the anti-regime opposition in Syria, developed working and even cordial relations with Iran, recognized and treated Hamas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and supported Egypt financially and diplomatically during the presidency of the Muslim Brotherhood (henceforth, the MB or the Brotherhood)-backed Muhammed Mursi.¹

The coup in Egypt and its aftermath pushed the two countries even closer. They exchanged numerous high-level visits. Qatar’s ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, was the highest-ranking statesman from the Arab World to attend Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s inauguration dinner in August 2014. Erdoğan soon reciprocated with a high-level visit to Qatar the next month. This was Erdoğan’s first visit to the Middle East after being elected president. At the end of the visit, Sheikh Tamim drove President Erdoğan to the airport in his own car. Turkey and Qatar declared 2015 the “Year of Culture.” More critically, the two have recently signed an agreement to not only increase cooperation in military training and defense but also deploy Turkish troops to Qatar.

If it is not blocked by new domestic, regional, or international developments, there is a potentially powerful Turkey–Qatar axis forming in the Middle East. In the 1990s and even in the 2000s, no one would have anticipated this. The two countries were then worlds apart and in many ways they still are. Turkey is an electoral democracy while Qatar is a monarchy. Turkey is among the largest countries in the Middle East, both in territory and population, while Qatar is among the smallest. Turkey calls itself secular while Qatar does not.

Although Qatar is an energy-rich country, and Turkey an energy-dependent country, they had not developed strong economic relations prior to the 2000s. In 1996, for example, the total trade volume between Turkey and Qatar was a meager $13 million² and only 674 tourists from Qatar visited Turkey. To see how much relations have improved since then, in 2014, the total trade volume between the two countries was around $739 million, having increased more than 50 times from 1996 to 2014, and 29,743 tourists visited Turkey from Qatar.³

What happened in between? This book addresses this question. In a nutshell, it argues that Turkey and Qatar had pursued similar foreign policies throughout the 2000s and during the Arab Spring, realigning independently their positions on major issues, and eventually forged a special relationship in the aftermath of the military coup in Egypt in 2013 in order to break the state of regional isolation each found itself in. This isolation was the outcome of the efforts of both actors to remain bipartisan throughout the 2000s, in a Middle East increasingly marked by bipolarity between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and to form an alternative pole to balance these two countries with the onset of the Arab Spring.

Bipolarity in the Middle East is not something new. Throughout history, it has repeatedly emerged in the form of geopolitical rivalries between states/empires (the Romans vs. the Sasanids, the Ottomans vs. the Safavids, to cite a few examples). In 1979, the Middle East witnessed the emergence of a new bipolar regional environment in the form of a rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In the 1990s, this rivalry waned, in large part thanks to the coming to power in Iran of a more pragmatist leadership. The rivalry intensified again, however, in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks.

In a post-9/11 regional context, Turkey and Qatar have become active international players, both expanding their economic relationships with the rest of the world and engaging in high-profile mediation efforts. In the years preceding the Arab Spring, however, both countries were also careful not to commit to either side of the Saudi–Iran rivalry. The Arab Spring changed the regional context once again, as it brought to power MB-affiliated political parties and leaders, who assumed new roles in major Arab countries, especially Egypt and Tunisia.

Unlike other Middle Eastern states, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan, Turkey and Qatar saw little threat in the rise of the MB, as both had developed cordial relations with the movement throughout the 2000s. Rather, they saw it as an opportunity to turn this new regional context to their own advantage. To this end, for example, Turkey and Qatar became the major financial and diplomatic supporters of Egypt under the presidency of the Brotherhood-backed Muhammed Mursi.

In April 2013, King Abdullah of Jordan remarked, “I see a Muslim Brotherhood crescent developing in Egypt and Turkey.”⁴ Yet, the July 2013 military coup in Egypt cut short this development. In the post-coup regional environment, Turkey and Qatar became increasingly isolated, and as a result turned to each other and strengthened their mutual ties.

This book is about Turkey’s and Qatar’s foreign policies, but it is also to a certain extent about the security of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The security of these Gulf states is important for understanding Turkey’s and Qatar’s foreign policies, simply because it is a, if not the only, significant factor that molds the geopolitical space within which Turkey and Qatar act and pursue their foreign policies.

These Gulf states are wealthy, thanks to their oil and natural gas. But, they are not populous: some 36 million people live in them with a good number of them being non-citizens. More importantly, they are situated in the midst of a heavily populated and extremely poor region. This stark disparity in wealth constitutes the essence of the security problem of these Gulf states.⁵ A myriad of domestic, regional, and international developments can and often does unexpectedly aggravate this problem, often catching the Gulf rulers unprepared. Arab Gulf security is highly fragile, to say the least.

The 9/11 attacks and the aftermath brought new challenges for the Arab Gulf states. More specifically, three actors came to pose security challenges to the Arab Gulf states, successively. These were the USA, Iran, and the transnational MB movement. I will say more about these actors later in the book as discussion necessitates, but here I would like to note briefly that this book narrates how these three actors have come to pose different security challenges for the Arab Gulf states in the post-9/11 period and thereby molded the space within which Turkey and Qatar have pursued their foreign policies.

In the midst of all these developments, Turkey came to the region with a renewed interest and a new outlook. In doing so, it became relevant to Gulf security. When the USA and Iran began to pose security challenges to the Arab Gulf states in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Turkey became a welcome actor in the region. Having their own agendas, Turkey and Qatar skillfully turned this new context to their own advantage, and became highly active actors in the region. When Turkey and Qatar became pro- MB, however, during the Arab Spring, they became part of the security challenge that the MB posed for Arab Gulf security. The two countries therefore faced a regional backlash and became isolated, which in turn led them to strengthen their relationship with each other.

Covering the post-9/11 period, this book is divided into three main parts. The first part looks at how the US response to the 9/11 attacks changed the regional geopolitics in the Middle East. The second part examines how Turkey and Qatar benefited from this new regional environment and aligned their policies. The third part discusses the impact of the Arab Spring and the subsequent military coup in Egypt on regional geopolitics as they have affected Turkey and Qatar. The book ends by assessing the future of Turkey’s place in the Middle East and, by implication, the place of Turkey–Qatar relations.

Footnotes

1

As will be discussed in Chap. 5, Turkey and Qatar pursued similar foreign policies in the 2000s. For a short review, see Özgür Pala and Bülent Aras, “Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in the Turkish and Qatari Foreign Policy on the Arab Spring,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 17(3), pp.286–302.

 

2

Otherwise stated, all $ signs refer to US dollars.

 

3

These figures are from Turkish Statistical Institute, http://​www.​tuik.​gov.​tr

 

4

Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Modern King in the Arab Spring,” The Atlantic, April 2013. Available at http://​www.​theatlantic.​com/​magazine/​archive/​2013/​04/​monarch-in-the-middle/​309270/​

 

5

See the very enlightening book on the topic, Kristian Coates-Ulrichsen, Insecure Gulf: The End of Certainty and the Transition to the Post Oil Era, Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2011.

 

Part I
9/11 and the Changing Regional Landscape

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Birol BaşkanTurkey and Qatar in the Tangled Geopolitics of the Middle East10.1057/978-1-137-51771-5_2

Begin Abstract

2. The Earthquake: The 9/11 Attacks and the US Response

Birol Başkan¹

(1)

School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Georgetown University, Doha, Qatar

Abstract

Turkey and Qatar have begun to align their foreign policies in the post-9/11 regional context, a context that had been deeply shaken by the USA. To see how the USA had shaken the Middle East, this chapter discusses how the USA responded to the 9/11 attacks. The chapter argues that the USA in fact pursued two-pronged strategy: on the one hand, it sought ways to punish the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq it held responsible for the 9/11 attacks; on the other hand, it promoted democracy in the Middle East.

Keywords

the 9/11 attacksthe US Invasion of Afghanistan and IraqUS Promotion of Democracy

End Abstract

On 11 September 2001, al Qaeda, an international terrorist organization based in Afghanistan, undertook four deadly attacks in New York City and Washington, DC. Thousands, mostly civilians, were killed and wounded. It was not the first time al Qaeda had attacked US targets: the organization had been at war, self-proclaimed to be holy, with the USA for at least half a decade by then, but none of its previous attacks had been of this magnitude. The numbers of dead and injured were shockingly high, but there were also other features that made the attacks unprecedented. The most important was perhaps that all previous al Qaeda attacks had involved US targets abroad; for the first time, they hit the very soil that had long been thought of by Americans as safe.

The comments of the US president, George W. Bush, made on the same day perhaps best describe the general public mood in America regarding the attacks: “The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger.” Bush assured the Americans that the USA would bring to justice the perpetrators of the attacks and, while doing so, Bush warned, the USA “will make no distinction between those who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”¹

Nine days later, George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and declared “war on terror,” which would begin with al Qaeda, but would not end with it. Bush declared a war that would last “until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” In the same address, Bush also issued what amounted...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 1. 9/11 and the Changing Regional Landscape
• 2. The Rise of Turkey and Qatar
• 3. The Arab Spring: The Rise and Fall of the Brotherhood Crescent
• Backmatter