In Ghana, Student’s Radicalization Prompts Fears ISIS Is Infiltrating Universities

BY SIOBHÁN O'GRADY\FP

Between Boko Haram and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, North and West Africa have in recent years fallen victim to an epidemic of Islamist extremism that threatens the stability of the entire region.
But as Mali, Cameroon, Nigeria, and other turbulent nations came under attacks by militants in those groups, nearby Ghana took comfort in its relative freedom from the violence and chaos sparked by the other Islamist insurgencies.

That all changed this week, when Ghanaian National Security Coordinator Yaw Donkor confirmed that at least two Ghanaian citizens have left the country to join the Islamic State. One of them, Mohammad Nazir Nortei Alema, a 25-year-old university student, contacted his family via WhatsApp on Aug. 16 to tell them he had joined the Islamist extremists. Donkor did not reveal the identity of the second individual who allegedly joined the group, but the cases are the first ever reported in Ghana.

According to Donkor, who spoke to state media, Alema likely traveled through neighboring Burkina Faso or nearby Nigeria before reaching a training camp in Niger and then moving forward to Turkey or Syria. Donkor also confirmed that Alema was radicalized in an online forum, raising fears that the Islamic State is using social media to persuade other Ghanaian university students to join the group in Iraq or Syria — or potentially, return home to take up arms in Ghana itself.

Alema’s family has been vocal about his departure, speaking to multiple international news outlets about his choice to join the extremists, and reiterating that he was radicalized online, not in a mosque in Ghana. Alema, who reportedly finished a government internship in July, displayed no signs of outwardly supporting radical Islam, his family members have said. His brother told Reuters that two weeks after telling his family he was traveling from Accra to a mining town in the country’s west, they received WhatsApp messages revealing he left the country to join the group and abandon what he called “the corrupt system.”

“He said he loves us so much and that we should forgive him for not making his intentions known to us from the beginning,” his brother told the news agency.

According to a spring report from the United Nations, more than 25,000 foreign fighters — many of whom were similarly radicalized online — have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State. Both male militants and women who joined the group to marry the extremists are among the thousands of radical supporters from an estimated 100 countries now represented in the group’s self-declared caliphate, which stretches between Syria and Iraq. Speaking to the BBC Tuesday, Alema’s father said hearing his son joined the group was like hearing “someone in the family has died.”

The presence of sophisticated Islamic State training camps in Niger where Donkor claims Alema was trained is particularly frightening because Niger, which borders Libya, is not only under repeated attack by Boko Haram extremists but is also a passover stop for many migrants attempting to reach Europe through North Africa.

For such camps to exist in Niger poses an added threat as the country is already facing considerable social and political turbulence. Boko Haram, which is based in Nigeria but launches attacks in Niger, Cameroon, and Chad, declared allegiance to the Islamic State in March, and now refers to itself as the self-declared caliphate’s “West African Province” although whatever ties may exist between the two groups remain murky.
Donkor said that Alema’s case has sparked an investigation by Ghanaian authorities into any possible links between the country’s universities and the Islamic State. But he also insisted that there only a “handful” of cases in Ghana, and there is “no reason to fear” large scale radicalization there

Collateral damage: The Sudanese in Syria

By MINDY BELZ

PERSECUTION | In 2002, WORLD went to Damascus and witnessed how Sudan’s Islamic regime created a flood of Christian refugees, with terrorism perpetuating their plight


Like the Apostle Paul before him, Hakim discovered that the road to Damascus is no picnic. A Christian from South Sudan, Hakim was an adolescent at the time his brother joined the rebel army to fight Sudan’s Islamic regime. When government soldiers invaded his village near Yei, they captured Hakim and others. Eventually he wound up in a prison cell in Khartoum after refusing to fight for the Muslim-led government based in northern Sudan. His brother was killed there.

WORLD Magazine’s Sept. 21, 2002, cover

“They kept me in prison,” he said, “put sticks in fire and with them burned my legs for two or three hours at a time.” At this point Hakim hikes the hem of his trousers, revealing pitted, scarred gashes across both shins. The torture was meant to force him to renounce Christianity. He was told he must convert to Islam. He endured the injuries and harassment for 10 months, he says, until officials turned him over to a security officer who took pity on him. The officer arranged his passage on a plane out of Khartoum. He told him what to say when he showed up in the Middle East without papers. When Hakim’s plane touched down just outside Syria’s capital city, Hakim wasn’t sure where he had landed. He did not really care, except he hoped he could be free.

With its 18-year-long civil war, Sudan is one of the leading exporters of refugees. Ten percent of the world’s uprooted people come from Sudan. Last year [2001] alone, more than 250,000 Sudanese became either new refugees or displaced people living within the country. Most who flee their own borders wind up in neighboring African nations. But more and more are turning up in the Middle East. There, they face an array of factors—an unbending UN refugee bureaucracy, U.S. homeland-security imperatives, and a developing pan-Arab relationship—that threatens to turn them back to their tormentors.

Arab countries traditionally ease travel restrictions for fellow Arabs, which includes Sudan’s National Islamic Front government. This means Sudanese passport holders may enter Syria without filing and waiting for a visa. For that reason, some Sudanese who fear persecution at home will turn out of necessity to a place like Syria. Under cover of these liberal travel measures, however, it appears that Khartoum could be offloading POWs like Hakim to Damascus and other Middle East cities like Beirut. While not all Sudanese refugees arrive without documentation or intent, as Hakim did, many say they had no choice but to flee here.
(How do refugees book these escape flights? They don’t. Some were put on cheap flights chartered by Islamic relief groups, some on government flights or state-run airlines.)

SYRIA IS A LONG WAY FROM PARADISE. A failed Soviet puppet where the cars are 40 years old and the internet was banned until two years ago, the Assad regime—first of Hafez and now his son, Bashar—practices ruthless suppression of political opponents and haphazard crackdowns on religious minorities. Not a government of Islamic radicals like those who rule Sudan, the Assad regime does have this in common with the Sudanese government: Both make the U.S. list of seven nations sponsoring international terrorism (others are Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea).

Since last Sept. 11, however, President Assad has signaled that he wants to be on the right side of history. He publicly distanced himself from Syria’s longstanding support of Palestinian terrorist factions, particularly Hezbollah. He also got serious about cleanup measures, including tightening immigration standards and monitoring undocumented aliens. Syria has long faced condemnation for incubating Palestinian terrorists on its own soil, and, more recently, tolerating visits from al-Qaeda operatives. Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta is believed to have made several visits to Syria for al-Qaeda meetings. Under the new regulations, nonresidents must register with Syrian police and report their status every three months.

The new rules, however, exist apart from overall reform. Syria is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and offers no due-process protections of its own to refugees. Applications for political asylum and resettlement to another country must be made through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Damascus. UNHCR is currently approving only about one in 10 applications. In addition to facing those hurdles, Sudanese refugees say they cannot overcome a bias among the UN agency’s Arab officers against Christians from South Sudan. Most plead not to be returned to Sudan. But without UNHCR approval, they cannot resettle elsewhere, including the United States. Limbo in Syria at least meant survival; now it means no place to turn.

WILLIAM IS ANOTHER SOUTH Sudanese who, like Hakim, in public goes only by first name to protect his identity (and family who may remain in Sudan). He was rejected by UNHCR, appealed, and was again rejected since arriving in Damascus without a passport in 1995. He was a secondary schoolteacher in South Sudan until he lost his home. Government forces destroyed it during fighting near Juba in 1992. After soldiers bombed and shelled his and surrounding villages, they took him to a refugee camp near Khartoum. At el Fashir in northern Sudan, National Islamic Front soldiers imprisoned and tortured him. One day he, too, was put on a plane and flown to Damascus.

In Damascus he has a four-digit file number with UNHCR and little else. He shares a second-floor apartment of four small rooms with a cousin, Mary, and five of her eight children in one of the rundown neighborhoods not far from the historic Old City.

Mary arrived in Damascus from Khartoum on Nov. 23, 1999, according to her UNHCR records. The records also say she entered the country legally as a tourist. But Mary says she “escaped from Sudan to avoid tortures and humiliation that resulted from my family’s refusal to be converted into Islam.” Government soldiers also burned her house during the 1992 fighting around Juba. The soldiers captured Mary’s husband. They threatened to shoot him unless he converted to Islam and served in the government army. He disappeared soon after, she told WORLD.

Mary found herself taken north with her five daughters and three sons. In Jebel Aulia refugee camp, military officials applied the same pressure to Mary and her children. They forced the boys (now ages 23, 20, and 18) into the army. They punished her and her daughters for refusing to convert to Islam. Camp security applied hot embers to Mary’s face. Dawa el Islamia, an Islamic organization, managed relief services at Jebel Aulia. Mary said the relief agents denied her family food, water, and medicine because they were Christians. Other reports, particularly from Anglican workers and a Sudan Council of Churches team who later visited Jebel Aulia, confirmed the abuses. Dawa el Islamia workers forced South Sudanese to change their names to Muslim names and their religion to Islam in order to receive help.

In the spring of 1999 government bulldozers entered Jebel Aulia and leveled Christian homes in the camp. They destroyed an Anglican church, along with homes for 200 mainly Christian families from South Sudan. The government said it was clearing the land for agriculture. Mary and her girls were among the completely homeless Christians. Two other women in the group died of heat exposure during that summer. Mary escaped to Damascus.

Her passport, issued in 1999 just before her departure from Sudan, expired last year. The Sudanese Embassy in Damascus refused to renew it. She was also denied refugee status from UNHCR. Like others WORLD interviewed, she has a letter from the UN agency stating: “Upon consideration of the claims you presented, it has been decided that, at the moment you are not in need of international protection.”
LAST DECEMBER MORE THAN 200 Sudanese, fearing deportation to Sudan because of Syria’s new rule on nonresidents, protested their nonstatus outside the Damascus offices of UNHCR. The peaceful sit-in lasted four days, according to participants WORLD interviewed. Although the crowd remained constant, it won none of the international press coverage Palestinian demonstrations of fewer people routinely receive outside the U.S. Embassy in Damascus. At UNHCR’s request, police stepped in on Dec. 11 to arrest the demonstrators: 53 children, 77 women, and 136 men, according to the refugees.

“We told them we have nothing against this country,” said William, who was among those arrested. “Our problem is we are refugees and we have no place to go.” William said that a threatening letter sent from the Sudanese Embassy prompted the demonstration. It said the refugees must “regularize their status” in Syria or face deportation to Khartoum. “There,” said William, “we know we will be killed or sent off to fight our brothers in the South.”

Adel Jasmine, UNHCR senior protection officer in Damascus, told WORLD his office called for the arrests when the Sudanese would not leave the compound, even though he knew they felt threatened by notices from the Sudanese Embassy. “They were asked to leave but refused. Then we asked the authorities to remove them and they did. Women and children were released the same day, but single men were kept,” he said. Over 90 men were held—some for over six months and all without legal representation or due process—at a military installation outside Damascus. UN officials worked to resolve their cases, according to Jasmine. UNHCR sent additional investigators from Cairo to interview the detainees and reassess their status.

In the end, however, UNHCR determined that “a very few” previously turned-down cases were eligible for legal protection as refugees, said Jasmine. Most were not. Neither William nor Hakim won legal status during the review process.

During that time UNHCR did successfully negotiate with Syrian authorities to extend the time refugees must report to police, from every three to every nine months. With that deadline now looming, the refugees WORLD interviewed again fear deportation. Jasmine told WORLD his agency is working to keep that from happening. But the refugees see Syria-Sudan relations tightening against them.

Since 2001 top government officials have been meeting almost monthly to negotiate about two dozen cooperative agreements between Syria and Sudan, mostly to increase trade. The agenda is to create “a new era of investment and economic cooperation,” according to Syrian Prime Minister Mustapha Miro. Both nations aspire someday to be part of an Arab common market (much like the predecessor to the European Union). So far the pacts boost agriculture, electricity, postal services, along with bolstering the campaign for a Palestinian state. Perhaps it was coincidental, but just as Sudanese refugees were notified to report to Syrian police, President Bashar al-Assad was in Khartoum, meeting with Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir.

“Once a case is rejected by UNHCR, they have no protection,” said U.S. Committee for Refugees policy analyst Steve Edminster. “They are at the mercy of whatever the police want to do.”
The refugee bureaucracy would like to deny its responsibility to Sudanese like William and Mary. Adel acknowledged that 90 percent of UNHCR’s Sudanese applicants are from the South. But he claimed that the caseload includes no torture victims ferried to Damascus without choice. “All left Sudan voluntarily and with passports,” he argued. “Most have jobs on the outskirts of the city in agriculture. But they say they cannot get the Sudanese Embassy to renew their passports.”

Officers at the International Office of Migration, the contract agency to resettle Damascus refugees in the United States and other third countries, would not speak for the record but said they are not aware of Sudanese with legitimate claims for protection being denied refugee status.

At the U.S. State Department, officials say privately that the U.S. Embassy could issue “P1” or Priority 1 status to a select group of needy refugees, thus bypassing the UNHCR bureaucracy altogether. But with the United States already applying closer scrutiny to immigrants from Arab nations, it is a hard sell for any refugees from Syria.

Private groups are raising concern about UNHCR procedures in Syria. “We uncovered enough problems with refugee status determination procedures that make the quality of those decisions suspect,” said Edminster. “The lack of training and experienced staff has led to erratic decision-making.” After a monitoring trip to the region earlier this year, his organization, along with an independent European group, plans to issue a report on its findings later this month.

On the part of the Sudanese “there is a lot of fear about the intentions of the Syrian government, a lot of fear about being sent back,” said Edminster. “The South Sudanese stick out more because they are darker skinned, and Christians.”

Church groups in Damascus are trying to help. Several churches in the city assist Sudanese families with food and other necessities. The Order of Franciscan Monks provides jobs to some of the refugees at the religious tour sites run by the group. A few, like Hakim, are grateful to find menial work. He cleans bathrooms and the kitchen at a restaurant down an alley just off the Street Called Straight. For a 10-hour shift he is paid 100 Syrian pounds—about $2. And he is waiting in Damascus, he says, just like the Apostle Paul.

Confederate flag burned outside of Virginia Beach home

Virginia Beach, Va. – Keiffer Beach says he never had any problems flying his Confederate flag outside of his Silverleaf Drive home until last week when someone took it and then burned it.

“Pretty upset and kind of upset to see someone go that far, like come on,” Beach told NewsChannel 3. “It’s still a flag.”

He believes the recent movement against the Confederate flag after the Charleston Church shooting may have motivated someone, but if there was an issue, he says he didn’t know about it. No one ever complained to him.

“I keep to myself. I don’t talk to anybody and for someone to come and do that, it’s disrespectful,” he said.
Pride for his southern heritage kept the flag in the front of his house, where it flew alongside the American flag. “I don’t want people to think I’m one of those crazy southern rednecks that are all against black people. I’m not. I have black family,” Beach said.

Firefighters are investigating the case as arson. For now, Beach says he won’t hang any flags outside of his house in case whoever did this decides to come back.

Islamic experts urge more Muslim action on climate change

A group of Islamic experts urged the world's 1.6 billion Muslims on Tuesday to do more to fight global warming, in a new example of religious efforts to galvanise action before a UN climate summit in Paris, France, in December.


In June, Pope Francis, urged world leaders to hear "the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor" in an encyclical on the environment for the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.


Unlike Roman Catholicism, Islam is a highly decentralised religion with no single recognised authority. But Muslim experts from 20 nations agreed an eight-page declaration at talks in Istanbul where it was adopted by 60 participants including the Grand Muftis of Uganda and Lebanon, a statement said.


“Excessive pollution from fossil fuels threatens to destroy the gifts bestowed on us by God, whom we know as Allah - gifts such as a functioning climate, healthy air to breathe, regular seasons, and living oceans,” they wrote.


They said inaction on reining in manmade greenhouse gas emissions, from factories, power plants and cars, would mean “dire consequences to planet earth".


The declaration called on rich governments - and oil-producing states that include some OPEC nations where Islam is the state religion - to lead the way in “phasing out their greenhouse gas emissions as early as possible and no later than the middle of the century.”


It is unclear what weight the Islamic declaration will have for Muslims in the run-up to the climate summit in Paris from November 30 to December 11.


Din Syamsuddin, chairman of a Muslim organisation in Indonesia which has some 30 million members, welcomed Tuesday's declaration. “Let's work together for a better world for our children, and our children's children,” he said.


Cardinal Peter Turkson, a key collaborator on the papal encyclical, praised the declaration and promised closer cooperation with Muslims “to care for our common home and thus to glorify the God who created us.”


Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said religion was a guide for action.
“Islam's teachings, which emphasise the duty of humans as stewards of the Earth and the teacher's role as an appointed guide to correct behaviour, provide guidance to take the right action on climate change,” she said in a statement.

The Turkish Model

American progress\By Dov Friedman


To discuss any notion of Turkey as a model country in 2015 is passé. The government’s aggressive crackdown on the summer 2013 Gezi Park protests and the December 2013 revelations of high-level corruption in the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government quieted any lingering optimism about Turkey’s democracy. In truth, authoritarianism in Turkey had been on the rise for years under the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The June parliamentary elections temporarily halted President Erdoğan’s ambitions, representing only a small step toward democratic strengthening in Turkey. Much of the English-language analysis hailed the rejection of Erdoğan’s personal ambition and praised the Kurdish-supported Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, as a mark of resurgent liberalism in Turkey. Yet within two months, the caretaker AKP government had renewed hostilities with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and launched a political inquisition against the HDP—despite the party’s consistent rejection of violence.

This burst of American enthusiasm about Turkey—followed by its swift tempering—is a recurring theme that can be traced to the beginning of the Cold War at the conclusion of World War II, when Turkey exemplified American hopes for—and consternation regarding—Western influence in the Middle East. Turkey was deemed a so-called model country—a concept that, once born, proved difficult to bury. The model became a Rorschach inkblot—interpreted and applied in numerous ways, often revealing more about U.S. anxieties in periods of geopolitical turmoil than about Turkey itself.

Each iteration of the so-called Turkish model was eventually abandoned as it proved ineffectual or disconnected from regional dynamics. But before being rejected, each of these models enabled many policymakers to avoid grappling with Turkey’s complexity and infused U.S. perceptions of Turkey’s democracy with unwarranted optimism. As a corollary, the model conception made the United States reluctant to criticize Turkey or use leverage against it, lest the model be seen as a failure. Turkey’s recent parliamentary elections seemed to provide an opportunity for Turkish politicians to counter President Erdoğan’s autocratic aspirations. In order to support this process, U.S. policy should eschew simplistic enthusiasm—including about Turkey’s role in the campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS—and instead work to strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law in Turkey.

From post-World War II to the post-Soviet era

The origins of the Turkish model can be traced to the immediate aftermath of World War II. Hoping to secure economic relief alongside the Marshall Plan—which focused exclusively on rebuilding Europe—then-President İsmet İnönü’s government conjured the first Turkish model, presenting Turkey as a Middle East state firmly allied against Soviet communism and eager to facilitate Western diplomacy in a volatile region. Facing political uncertainty in the Middle East, the Truman administration found the notion of a Turkish example for the region appealing. Then-U.S. Ambassador George McGhee began to see Turkey as a country others in the region can “hope to emulate.” U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson told Turkish Ambassador to the United States Feridun Erkin that NATO “recognized [the] importance [of] Turkey’s role in [the] free world and vital Near East area.” Turkey had oversold its commitment and anti-communist capabilities, but American enthusiasm was enough to give birth to the Turkish model.

The concept ebbed and flowed over the years, roughly tracking U.S. anxiety about political change in the Middle East. By 1991, a new model was needed, and Turkey was ready. Turkey began actively shopping a new vision of a secular but majority-Muslim state with a Western orientation and a successful track record of market-based economic development. Then-Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel promoted Turkey as “a model of democracy, secularism, and free-market economy” and sought Western support for his vision of a Turkish model for the region.

The George H.W. Bush administration—struggling to make sense of the newly independent Central Asian states and uneasy about regional volatility—supported Turkey’s efforts to influence the region and adopted the Turkish model as an important formulation in its regional diplomacy. In early 1992, then-Secretary of State James Baker visited each of the Central Asian states, encouraging them to look to Turkey for “strategic orientation.” As it turned out, these conceptions underestimated Russia’s continuing influence on the region. As Central Asia’s post-Soviet politics took shape, talk of the Turkish model for the region—promoted by the Turkish government and endorsed by the first Bush administration—receded once again from the U.S. foreign policy discourse.

The post-September 11th Turkish model

The notion of a Turkish model reemerged after the September 11th attacks with renewed purpose. While the George W. Bush administration prosecuted the war in Afghanistan and planned the Iraq invasion, it sought to hold Turkey up as an example for the Middle East. The Turkish model was able to survive yet another change in meaning because it benefited both the United States and Turkey. The United States was able to point to Turkey as a way of separating the War on Terror from any perceived war on Islam, while Turkey earned U.S. support for its bid to join the European Union and elevated its international stature as a key U.S. partner in—and example to—the Middle East.

The first post-September 11th Turkish model promoted Turkey’s secular, democratic character in a Muslim-majority country. Concerned about the influence of radical Islamic movements, American leaders viewed Turkey as an alternative path for Middle Eastern states. Hugh Pope—at the time, a Turkey-based correspondent for The Wall Street Journal—wrote that Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit’s January 2002 visit to Washington, D.C., “crowns the rediscovery of the strategic value of Turkey”—with the use of Incirlik Air Base and overflight rights providing crucial logistical support for the war in Afghanistan. Ecevit’s government readily promoted the Turkish model language, using it to secure U.S. financial support during Turkey’s economic crisis. By early 2002, The Wall Street Journal referred to Turkey as a “model of progress.”

The focus on secularism and democracy in a Muslim country meant that the first post-September 11th model promoted Turkey’s unabashed laicism as an effective way to combat Islamic radicalism. “Turkey is being understood as a good model for that part of the world,” said then-Democratic Left Party Member of Parliament Tayyibe Gülek. “Lawmakers enforce such a strict separation of religion and politics that they even banned a female legislator from wearing a head scarf in parliament.”

When then-Prime Minister Erdoğan’s AKP came to power in November 2002, the Turkish model subtly shifted meaning once again to encompass a secular democracy upheld by a government led by devout Muslims. After the AKP victory, the George W. Bush administration used the Turkish model to highlight Turkey’s moderately Islamist—or Muslim democrat in then-President Abdullah Gül’s preferred framing—government. President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell redoubled their efforts to help Turkey commence EU accession talks. Financial Times reported that the Bush administration “has much invested in the success of Turkey’s new government, which it is holding up to other countries around the Muslim world as a model of Islamic administration in a secular democracy.” Marc Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs at the time and a former ambassador to Turkey, affirmed this U.S. vision for Turkey—that it “become what it wishes to be: democratic, secular, and Islamic.”

The revised Turkish model permeated the highest levels of U.S. defense policymaking as well. In a December 2002 speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz devoted much of his speech to Turkey. “Modern Turkey demonstrates that a democratic system is indeed compatible with Islam,” Wolfowitz said. “People who share the values of freedom and democracy that grew out of European civilization are seeing increasingly that these are not just Western values or European values. They are Muslim and Asian values, as well.” Wolfowitz concluded that the United States had to demonstrate “to those who might be recruited to [the enemy] cause that there’s a better way, a better alternative.” The newly elected AKP government, led by devout Muslims, played a central role in that demonstration.

U.S. support for the Turkish model also tied into its planning for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The United States pressed Turkey to promise use of its bases, overflight rights, and other logistical support for the Iraq War—just as Turkey had done during the 1991 Gulf War. Not only was Turkish support important for the prosecution of the war itself, but the political message it would send could help legitimize the George W. Bush administration’s policy. Although the AKP government initially promised Turkish logistical support, it reversed the decision in response to widespread opposition from both the public and parliament. The reversal dealt a significant blow to U.S.-Turkey relations. As U.S. involvement in Iraq deepened and opposition to the war became increasingly bitter, talk of a Turkish model subsided once more.
The Turkish model after the Arab uprisings

Following the Arab uprisings, Tunisian and Egyptian Islamists repurposed the Turkish model as a way to signal to the West that their vision of political Islam was as anodyne as that of the AKP. Several other factors facilitated the concept’s reemergence. Journalists in U.S. and Arab outlets saturated coverage of the uprisings and their aftermath with links to Turkey. The Turkish government—eager to expand its regional influence under Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu—promoted its experience as a model for Arab neighbors. The AKP highlighted its record of stability, economic management, and modernity, while also promoting space for religious expression, Islamic education, and social conservatism in the public sphere. The U.S. government, as in previous eras, reverted to portraying Turkey as an essential regional example—but without specifying exactly what Arab revolutionaries might learn from the Turkish experience.
In the Western media, the Turkish model meant different things to different writers: “wedding democratic freedoms with religion”; coexistence between political Islam and a secular, NATO-aligned military; and reserved prerogatives for the military within a democratic system. It mattered little that none of these models appropriately addressed the complexity of Turkey’s political climate and democratic development. As before, some in the United States saw what they wanted to see in Turkey—an easy answer to regional uncertainty.

In Tunisia, Islamist Ennahda’s leader Rachid Ghannouchi offered Turkey’s AKP as the appropriate model for his party’s vision of marrying Islamist politics with secular democracy. Recognition in Tunisia and from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood helped Turkey advance the model concept. While then-Prime Minister Erdoğan toured North Africa and underscored President Obama’s off-the-cuff “model partnership” comments from 2009, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu touted the model more subtly. He claimed “Turkey remains ready to share her own democratic experience with all interested countries.” Although Davutoğlu avoided the specific term, the concept was still that Turkey hoped to leverage its experience to gain international influence.

The Obama administration promoted the Turkish model less zealously than the George W. Bush administration, yet the concept regained some purchase. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton alluded to Turkey as a leader and a model during her July 2011 visit there. In a joint press conference with Foreign Minister Davutoğlu, Clinton expressed that the administration “welcomes Turkey’s rise … as a leader in the region and beyond, and as a valued ally on the most pressing global challenges.” Clinton was pressed specifically on the notion of Turkey as a model democracy in an interview with CNN Türk during the same visit. “On balance,” Clinton responded, “Turkish democracy is a model because of where you came from and where you are.” At an annual conference on U.S.-Turkey relations in October of that year, Secretary Clinton said, “We know that Turkey has a unique opportunity in this time of great historic change … to demonstrate the power of an inclusive democracy and responsible regional leadership.”

Amid Middle East turmoil, the Obama administration hoped to emphasize Turkey’s democratic development as a regional point of reference. Yet the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s rejection of Turkish guidance revealed the stark absence of Turkish regional influence and the Arab revolutionaries’ opportunistic use of Turkey to assuage American fears. Meanwhile, the United States’ optimism required it to overlook politically motivated trials that ensnared the AKP government’s political enemies, a crackdown on the Turkish press, and efforts to undermine institutional checks on then-Prime Minister Erdoğan’s power. By 2013, the Gezi Park protests and revelations of high-level corruption in the Turkish government brought into stark relief the AKP’s rejection of democratic reforms and the rule of law. By 2014, the Obama administration had distanced itself from a Turkish government that had once seemed one of the United States’ closest regional allies and shifted to a strictly transactional relationship. Once again, U.S. hopes for Turkey’s regional role necessitated ignoring major adverse developments for Turkish democracy.

Conclusions and recommendations

Repeatedly, the United States has disengaged from Turkey when the country has fallen short of the model ascribed to it. With Turkey in the eye of Middle East upheaval and engrossed in a fragile domestic political moment, U.S. withdrawal from the relationship would prove debilitating to both Turkey and U.S. interests. At the same time, the United States must carefully consider the manner in which it engages Turkey. A key lesson of the model fallacy is that problems arise when the United States assumes that alignment with Turkey is a strategic development that will markedly improve episodes of geopolitical instability. If the United States stopped expecting Turkey to unlock the Middle East for U.S. foreign policy, it could better engage the Turkey that exists in reality to advance policy cooperation that is beneficial to both countries.

The developing U.S.-Turkey agreement regarding Incirlik Air Base demonstrates that while the model terminology may be dead, the modes of thought that produced it are very much alive. The Obama administration views Turkey as an essential addition to the anti-ISIS coalition—one that lends strength to the fight in Syria. Turkey has ramped up efforts to keep ISIS fighters out of Syria, and it began rooting out ISIS influences embedded within Turkish communities. Incirlik also offers a more economical and logistically sensible point of origin for strikes against ISIS than Jordan, Iraq, or the Gulf.

However, Turkey has used the agreement as cover to renew hostilities with the PKK, launch criminal investigations of the HDP, and embroil the Kurdish regions of both Iraq and Syria in its air campaign. The PKK has responded to the airstrikes with attacks against both the Turkish police and Turkey’s pipeline network, but the PKK has also expressed a desire to return to the ceasefire arrangement. President Erdoğan rejected the PKK’s overture, promising to continue the fight until terrorism is eliminated from Turkey. This complicates U.S. strategy in Syria, as the United States has countered ISIS through close air support for the PYD, or Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party, a PKK-affiliated group.

U.S. acquiescence to Turkey’s broad anti-Kurdish campaign would be a grievous mistake. Focusing predominantly on Turkey’s new measures in support of the coalition overlooks the potential damage to the greater anti-ISIS effort and to Turkey’s domestic political stability. The Obama administration should play an active diplomatic role to dampen the new Turkey-PKK conflagration. Although the United States traditionally defers to Turkey on domestic terrorism, in this case, those efforts are destabilizing key U.S. partners in the PYD and the Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, in Iraq.

At the same time, the politically motivated investigations into the HDP risk setting Turkey’s peace process back indefinitely and precipitating Kurdish citizens’ rejection of national democratic politics. The Obama administration must not stand by as these investigations proceed; it must be prepared to walk away from any deal with Turkey should they continue. Finally, coalition negotiations between the AKP and the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, have failed. The Obama administration should use intensive diplomacy with both parties to encourage the formation of a stable coalition despite their bitter relations and deep policy divergences.

As the PYD will play a critical role in any stable Syrian future, Turkey’s full participation in the anti-ISIS coalition does not obviate the U.S. need to support the PYD on the ground in Syria. The United States should also begin devising strategies to promote a long-term Turkey-PYD rapprochement—similar to the relationship Turkey and the KRG have developed in recent years. Until such a relationship takes root, the United States must broker a modus vivendi between the groups to prevent direct Turkey-PYD conflict and to benefit the fight against ISIS.

Beyond military cooperation, the United States neglects other important types of engagement with Turkey. With nearly 2 million Syrians inside its borders, Turkey harbors more refugees of the conflict than any other nation. Neither the United States nor its European allies have advanced any plan to address the human suffering caused by the conflict—though it was Turkey’s own decision to go it alone in the early stages of the Syrian civil war. Prospective military coordination should lead to a broader conversation about the human costs of war, recognition of the lives Turkey has saved, and a multinational plan to aid and resettle refugees. This diplomatic work is no less important than the coalition’s military objectives in the war against ISIS.

THE P5+1 AND IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL

Arms Control Association\KELSEY DAVENPORT


With an historic comprehensive nuclear deal in hand, the focus now shifts from Vienna to the domestic stage, where debates over the deal are taking place in Tehran and the capitals of the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States). In the United States the clock started on the sixty-day congressional review period after the Obama administration sent the deal and supporting certifications to Congress on Sunday.

Congress now has until Sept. 17 to decide if it will vote on a resolution to approve or disapprove the agreement. President Barack Obama will then have a maximum of 12 days to veto a resolution of disapproval, followed by a 10-day period in which Congress can attempt to override the veto. The latest the review process should be completed by is Oct. 9. The administration is giving the deal a full-court press. Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will all be on the Hill this week to brief members of Congress on the details of the deal.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif briefed the Iranian parliament today, July 21. He submitted the text of the deal to that body for review on the same day. Zarif told members of the parliament that Iran achieved its main objectives under the deal and that the agreement respects Iran’s goal to develop a peaceful nuclear program.

The countdown to adoption day also began this week, with the UN Security Council unanimously passing a resolution endorsing the deal and laying the groundwork for relief from UN sanctions when implementation begins. According to the agreement, adoption day is 90 days from passage of the resolution, but can happen sooner by mutual consent of the all of the parties. According to the schedule, by Oct. 19, the agreement will be adopted and both Iran and the P5+1 will begin taking steps to implement the agreement.

In the meantime, Iran is packaging up information on the past military dimensions of its nuclear program for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). That information is due to the agency by Aug. 15.
—KELSEY DAVENPORT, director for nonproliferation policy

Iran's working moms get the sack after taking maternity leave

SaudiGazette


Tens of thousands of working mothers have been sacked in Iran since the start of 2014 because employers found cheaper staff, an official said Friday, warning that a new maternity pay policy remains unfunded. The comments highlight the financial pressures on families and on the Iranian government, despite this month's nuclear deal with world powers that could pave the way for an economic rebound.

An austerity budget passed in March after a precipitous drop in global oil prices has left key Tehran ministries, including education and oil, struggling to pay wages. A new law enshrining nine months of paid leave for mothers has been passed yet there are no funds to pay its estimated 3.2 trillion rial ($985 million) bill, according to welfare bosses.

"So far, not one rial has been allocated," Mohammad Hassan Zeda, a deputy at Iran's Social Security Organization, told the ISNA news agency in an interview. He said studies showed that from 145,000 women who had gone on a six-month maternity leave in the past 18 months, 47,000 of them — almost a third — were sacked when they tried to return.

"This is because right now due to the situation in the job market, there are many individuals with higher education who are prepared to work for lower salaries," said Zeda, noting the trend would likely worsen.

"If maternity leave is increased to nine months, the number of women getting sacked, upon returning to work after using maternity leave, will increase much more."

According to the Statistical Center of Iran, the unemployment rate was 10.8 percent in 2014, though unofficial sources estimate the number is as high as 20 percent.

Unemployment is particularly bad among women (19.2 percent) and youths (25 percent). Underemployment has also become common in Iran, according to the World Bank, with a weak labor market leaving only 36.7 percent of the population economically active.

Zeda said the nine-month maternity leave term can start if the government allocates the money, but officials are "not allowed to implement a law for which no financial resources have been provided."

Around 160,000 working women would be eligible for the nine-month leave, he said. After a deep recession, Iran returned to growth of three percent last year, partly due to limited sanctions relief under an interim nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers.

A final deal struck on July 14 in Vienna stands to lift all UN, US and Europeans sanctions imposed on Iran as punishment for its disputed nuclear activities, raising hopes of better economic and job prospects. — AFP