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I have an instinctive pro-democracy and anti-Gulf dictatorships bias. Legolas Send a noteboard - 06/08/2014 09:47:45 PM

Of course, that doesn't mean that I like Morsi or most of his Islamist counterparts that came to prominence in the Arab Spring - only the ones from Nahda in Tunisia have played what could fairly be called a positive role with positive consequences. It does mean that I find it difficult to be cold and purely realpolitiker about it and support regimes as dubious as the Saudi one (though I do respect King Abdallah more than his country as a whole). And as hypocritical as Al-Jazeera and their Qatari masters may be about preaching the democracy and free speech abroad which they repress at home, they're still much less repellent than the propaganda machines that pass for media in most other Arab countries, so when it's Qatar against the rest of the GCC, I tend to think Qatar is right more often than not. Similarly, while I detest Khamenei and his ilk, I think we can all agree that Iran has a thousand times the culture and history of Saudi Arabia, and the Iranian people (not government, though I like Rouhani and what I've seen of his cabinet) is arguably more friendly towards the West and its ideals than the Saudi one.

View original postHowever, it is interesting to see that most of the Gulf states (including the Saudis but excluding the Qataris) got rattled when Morsi came to power in Egypt and so have taken a very strong anti-Brotherhood stance that also involves bashing Hamas as allies of the Brotherhood and/or the Shias. This has pushed them closer to the Israeli position. Considering that Israel's other big enemy, Hezbollah, is a Shia group fighting the Sunni rebels they've been financing, they have even more reasons to cooperate.

Indeed. We certainly agree on that much - that Hamas being politically weakened and isolated was a good thing and an important opportunity. It's after that that our disagreements started.
View original postIt has created a tripartite sort of division, because Turkey and Qatar were very strong supporters of the Brotherhood and early on supported the Syrian opposition in a huge way. Qatar seems to have doubled down on Sunni extremists, but Turkey is now faced with the Islamic State on its southern doorstep and can't be happy about that. Although they are almost certainly experiencing a monumental crisis of ideology (not just on their role in Middle Eastern politics, either), they revert to pro-Brotherhood sentiments regarding Israel.

The Turkish presidential election is only two weeks away now. Best case scenario is Erdogan gets elected but Gül or someone else in the AKP manages to keep him locked in the president's traditional role - if his active, guiding role in Turkish politics ends right now, he still has a fair claim of having been the single greatest Turkish leader since Atatürk. Seems unlikely somehow, though.

I think the real problem of the West in Turkey, though, not in the least where foreign policy is concerned, is that the alternative to the AKP remains so utterly lacklustre. Actually, the same goes for much of the Middle East: the Islamists may not like the West, but the secular nationalists (or the Christians) aren't much warmer, or at least their supporters in the streets aren't.

View original postI think the reason Iran, Hezbollah and Assad haven't really said much is because they are too busy fighting on other fronts, and feel that Hamas dumped them far too quickly.

Yeah. Understandable, though - with what's going on in Syria, Hamas maintaining its links to them openly would be too fatal for its popular support in Palestine - and outside it.

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I have an instinctive pro-democracy and anti-Gulf dictatorships bias. - 06/08/2014 09:47:45 PM 554 Views
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