RECONFIGURING MIDDLE EAST

On the eve of the revolutionary uprisings that began in late 2010, the Arab regimes represented an almost century-long status quo. True, many of them were not the ones which were installed earlier in the 20^th century. Nationalist single party regimes had replaced several post-colonial dynasties and new independent states emerged, but authoritarianism and slow progress would become only more pronounced. The Arab status quo rested on a standard, a priori, acceptance that the authority transferred from the imperial power belonged to those who received and wielded it “on behalf of the people”. This premise was essentially no different for the kingdoms or the republics. Religion was a standard legitimizer. The rulers would simply feel reassured as they saw the same facade of legitimacy in fellow Arab states. The anti-imperialist agenda and the Arab Israeli conflict concomitantly constituted a context nurturing the perception that the Arab peoples’ interests and aspirations were indeed being looked after, while it carried the unmistakable message that no trouble on the home turf would be tolerated. Many of these states had been carved out or demarcated according to outside priorities. These were not questioned (Saddam made that mistake in 1990), but who truly stood for or defended the notional Arab nation remained a contested ground. This claim was a foundational theme across all individual Arab national identities. It at once served as a cause for inter-Arab solidarity and simmering competition. Its deeper effect was however felt domestically, where the national legitimation of government had only been indirectly related to the people.  

This suffocating stillness across the Arab world was bound to be tested, however. Economic growth and social development policies -even if selective- pursued by these regimes through the 20^th century led to the emergence of new urban dynamics outgrowing the established templates for pliant consent. By the turn of the millennium, Arab metropolises had already transformed into centres for legions of professionals with interrogative minds, and for swelling young, well-informed generations, enduring unemployment and poverty. This was the backdrop of the uprisings, which had proven more acute with the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis.

A young and hapless street vendor in Tunisia self-immolated, sparking the uprising. The flare would engulf the entire Arab geography once it sprang onto Egypt. With Egypt’s “Tahrir Revolution”, the Arab rulers quickly came to the realization of a new situation. The era of unquestioned legitimacy was melting away despite their frantic efforts to quell unrest. The agreed regionwide status quo of legitimacy had already imploded. This quickly caused the scope of domestic developments widen to regional scale. It was no longer a challenge simply for individual states. The regimes correctly determined that the uprisings in others posed a direct threat also onto themselves. Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain represents the first regional, forward response to this assessed threat. This is how the transition from 2011 uprisings to regional crises and wars was set in motion. Smothering the popular momentum for change where it blossomed, or -should this prove unattainable- distorting its course became the common maxim for the surviving leaders and for those external powers which riled at the prospect of democratic transformation in the region. The hostilities in Syria, Libya and Yemen were, in essence, the result of this shared view.

Moreover, throughout this process, Islamist and Salafist movements, either directly or indirectly, became the foremost partners of intent for the Arab regimes. The Brotherhood was part of the challenged context, not above it. The movement’s relevance, and indeed existence, depended on the presence of its “infidel” opposite at home. The rivalry had been reduced to the titles of identity. Rejecting the ‘other’ was at its core. What would replace it was never explained beyond enunciating the divine path. And the entire debate was shaped in the sterilized environment of autocratic rule. In fact, Islamism itself was the product of the same hierarchical fabric which so easily gave rise to autocracies. Absent from the debate throughout was the dynamic social process which far exceeded the scope of choosing between those two. As for Salafi Jihadism, it has all along been the wayward child of its parent ideology. Their disagreement essentially remained as a family affair. So, the Arab regimes and their Islamist/Salafist detractors acted as strange bedfellows. For their own ends, they both fought for arresting the popular tide which would sweep away their chances to sanctify their claim on power.

Global to regional vectors

And the struggling regimes were caught off-guard in the wider framework. The Indo-Pacific momentum has been changing the scope and the rules of engagement not only with the Transatlantic space but also with the rest. The “Middle East” as once coined in the West for its proximity to Europe is now becoming “Middle West” for Asia’s rising powers. The Middle East itself is part of a wider geography which is in flux and cracking open. It is across the entire central belt of Eurasia, where Europe and Asia progressively blur into one another, that the push-and-pull effect of the countervailing dynamics is most acutely felt. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the dramatic turnaround in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, tug-of-war in Georgia, Moldova and Romania, coordinated efforts of the Central Asian States to break through their relative isolation, Pakistan’s doldrums and its heightened tensions with India, Iran’s tide and ebb, and even the audacity with which Hamas could launch its onslaught on Israel in October 2023, among others, are not unrelated in the sense that all players are seeking to seize on opportunities rising in the relative vacuum. The growing interrelationship across the belt is also evident. We have already witnessed how Ukraine war distracted Russia’s fuller attention from Syria. Now, the emerging reconciliation between Armenia and Azerbaijan is impacting on the web of interaction among Iran, Israel, Turkey, the U.S., Russia, China and the Gulf states.   

Geopolitically, a most perceptible regionwide outcome of the new global power configuration has been in the Arab space. The first quarter of the 21^st century has witnessed the diffusion of the Arab East, mainly clustered in the Gulf, from the Arab West, lined along the Mediterranean coastline. The former’s alignment with the Indo-Pacific axis became more pronounced, whereas the latter continued to interact with the Euro-Atlantic space, even as China politically and economically, and Russia militarily made inroads into the region. And it is the Middle Sea basin where the 2011 uprisings have left a deeper legacy.

Seeds of regional transformation

First, a new regionwide realignment on specific terms of interest is already taking shape. These terms relate to prioritized and practicable objectives, like minilateral security coordination, relations with Israel or transport schemes. They differ from the all too familiar older common denominators like Arab national interest or cause, which were meant to remain mostly abstract anyway. The fate of Palestine appears to be the first casualty of this new type of business. In this, the Gulf is the initiator. The long-time epicentre of the Middle East’s security calculus and policy-setting, the Levant, is now on the receiving end. The Gulf’s growing interest and meddling in Sudan and the Horn of Africa is further eroding the clout of Egypt, a principal and intercontinental regional player, and whose existence is historically predicated on the Nile river.

Second, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria is a milestone, as it represents the total elimination of a centralized single-party Arab state model in the post-2011 phase. It is a waystation between 2011 and what has yet to emerge. Its potential impact on the Arab states along the Mediterranean will likely be profound.

Third, the breaking of the centralized statehood is becoming a norm. Already present in Lebanon, established in Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003, and now de facto in Syria, ethnic and religious differentiation has acquired a regionwide critical mass. The growing stress between the central authority and the atomized groups will test the incumbents’ resilience.

Fourth, Israel’s changed perception of the region and the total militarization of its policies has created a new reality. Initially, it was the perilous regional environment ushered in by the Arab uprisings which caused Israel to keep up its guard. Yet it simultaneously saw the opportunity to maximize its gains while all possible objectors were already overwhelmed by their own existential challenges. With Mr Netanyahu and his radical cohorts at the helm most of the time, the result became an almost foregone conclusion. Today, Israel’s carefree decimation of Gaza and the Gazans may also be seen as the culmination of this boundless process in which the government lost its entire sense of proportion especially after the terror of 7 October. Israel is basking in its victories but there is a downside. And it is twofold. Its deliberate atrocities in Gaza have already left an indelible mark in peoples’ conscience. This legacy will haunt Israel in many different ways. On the operational aspect, Israel seems to have reached the approximate limits of what it can achieve militarily. In fact, 7 October has also proved how its Gaza policy could go tragically wrong. Reducing the Palestine question to a security issue connected to a militant outfit in Gaza, all the while devouring the West Bank to the point of eliminating the territorial basis of a future Palestinian state has almost run its course. More extreme steps to complete the scheme may trigger a backlash which Israel’s military hardware, though formidable, is unsuited to handle. Even Israel’s successful degrading of Iran’s and its proxies’ assets exposed its military’s limits.

Fifth, if the idea for Israel, backed by the U.S., was to strip the question of Palestine off its pivotal significance for peace and stability in the region and even to eliminate the political and physical underpinnings of a two-state settlement, then, it must be said, quite the opposite may have been nurtured. Gun barrels have frequently been indispensable for doing business in the Middle East, but their limited circular scope misses the people as a whole. In many countries, the bond between the ruler and the ruled has frayed beyond repair. Mass demonstrations from Baghdad to Casablanca in 2021 in the face of government ineptitude were flickers of smouldering dissent. Now, with the outrage in Gaza in particular, the Palestinian struggle for life and independent existence is merging with the want for dignity and freedom across the region. And this is not a manipulated state policy.

Sixth, Iran is, in a way, repeating a prominent feature of its long history: recoiling after overstretching. This phenomenon itself is a function of Iran’s deeper recurring paradox.  Its domestic fortitude wanes even as it spreads out. A middle power like Iran naturally seeks regional influence. But it is now moulded in the Islamic regime’s compulsion to satisfy its existential priorities. The old imperial imperative has been replaced by ideological necessity. The regime’s ideological scope is broader than Iran. But it stands alone. It must also have certain following abroad to remain sufficiently secure and relevant at home. Domestic unrest, either simmering or erupting, pokes further its existential fears, and induces it to take a more aggressive stand abroad. But now, its regional footprint has also been effectively rolled back and its standing at home has sustained serious blow. That is why today Iran’s regime finds itself between a rock and a hard place. After the end of the 12-day war, national solidarity mood is also fading behind harsh domestic realities. Iran is in a process of revolution-slow motion. Iran’s nuclear programme, even in its battered state, is still a dimension of its regional schemes. Tehran’s ongoing pressure on Iraq to constitutionally elevate the pro-Iranian Iraqi militia to a status akin to that of its Revolutionary Guards is just one issue that betrays its diehard intentions. Persuading Iran into constructive engagement remains an elusive yet necessary objective.

Seventh, the weakening of the Transatlantic bond is inducing the major powers in Europe to take matters more directly into their hands in their own neighbourhood. If states like France and the UK, with their individual and joint responsibilities in the shaping of the modern Middle East, can today prepare to soon recognize the physically yet to be established State of Palestine, it should be seen as a harbinger for rebalancing, and not simply as political gesture. After all, Europe, not the U.S., will bear brunt of deeper instability in the Middle East. The growing European interest in and engagement with Syria is likewise indicative of its shifting attitude in favour of forward action.       

Eighth, big power involvement is crystallizing. Mr Trump, the tariff-brandishing mercantilist President, certainly has his own impulsive and disorderly ways of engaging in state business, but at least in the Middle East he cannot be blamed for disrupting the longstanding U.S. policies. Essentially, only his style is more naked. Even when he disavows former policies of military engagement or state-building, admitting -rightly- that America does not understand these societies, his “govern as you please, but let’s do big business” kind of attitude very much echoes those policies. Indeed, the more erudite American outlook to the post-war world beyond the West -from RAND to area studies to modernization theories- has time and again proven to be basically the amalgamation of European orientalism with American exceptionalism, prioritizing civilizational cocoons and sheer power. Its results have not been glorious for the leading world power from Vietnam to Shah’s Iran, from Afghanistan to Iraq. Might came to naught.  At a time when the U.S. is hastening to direct its fuller attention to its Asian priorities, do not expect it to come up with a vision broader than individual deal making and occasional coercion.

Russia has lost its bastion, Syria, in the Mediterranean, and the future of its bases on Syrian territory remains uncertain. It has a foothold in the Hafter-controlled part of Libya, and in recent years has been undergirding North Africa, hence southern Mediterranean, from the Sahel. Yet these advances do not diminish the enormity of its strategic loss caused by the downfall of Assad. Otherwise, Russia maintains longstanding relations with almost the rest of the region, and the OPEC-plus arrangement brings Russia into strategic coordination with the Gulf.

China is the ascending outside power in the Middle East. The Gulf is a primary source for its energy needs. It has been consistently making economic inroads into the region through industrial and infrastructure investments, and transport schemes, but more lately its political clout is also increasingly felt. China has become a new lifeline for Arab autocracies. It is not yet a game-setter but has an interest in a more orderly and stable region. Any step that curtails the risk of future armed conflict serves as land clearance for its further penetration into the region. It coordinates with Russia but the means by which they approach the Middle East could not be more different. China is a 21^st century power whereas Russia essentially rests on its 20^th century laurels.

Turkey in all this

The Turkish government had its fleeting moment of glory when the HTS-led militia easily overrun the fleeing Syrian army in December 2024. It saw the sudden downfall of Assad not only as a vindication of its engagement with radical groups, but also as the play-off of Morsi’s removal from power in Egypt in 2013.  Maybe the clock could be rewound to when Islamists thought they were on a regionwide march. However, the government’s strongest point, that is its intimacy with the HTS and the current transitional leader Mr Al Sharaa, may prove its weakest. From the moment Mr Al Sharaa established himself as the new ruler in Damascus, he at once assumed broader Syrian credentials, which naturally also implies relations with all others. And apart from the political, military and diplomatic support Turkey provides to the new administration, it has little to offer by way of investments on its own for rebuilding Syria. More crucially, the ethnic and religious diversity of Syria is now on full display. So, there are quantitative and qualitative limits on the government’s influence over Syria. Its disproportionately prioritized engagement with Damascus hardly evokes confidence in the wider spectrum of the Syrian society, many Sunni Arabs who do not cherish Mr. Al Sharaa’s ideology included. The Turkish government’s stolid approval of Damascus’s involvement in the bloodshed against Alawites and the Druze also did not help.

The future of Kurdish participation in unified Syria is a case in point. The consolidation of the YPG-led SDF’s hold over the country’s northeastern third had become a fact of life in the final years of the Assad regime, and its sudden downfall changed the equation altogether. It influenced matters in Turkey too, because the government had itself connected, in 2016, its drive to rout out PKK terror in Turkey with area control in Syria. The government had already ended the so-called solution process with the Kurds after their political leadership made clear that they would not green-light Mr Erdoğan’s drive for an exclusive presidential system. The general atmosphere was also highly charged in the wake of the pitched battles between security forces and PKK militants in Turkey’s southeastern urban areas, and the Kurdish party’s leaders would soon be sent behind bars. The government reduced the issue to one of fighting terror only, also internalizing Syria’s north as part of the new policy.

Fast forward to 2024-2025. The initiative spearheaded by the leader of the MHP, AKP’s partner in the governing alliance, calling for the disbanding of the PKK received its requisite response from its jailed leader, and was followed by subsequent PKK declarations of cease-fire and intent to disband. The initiative had rested on a sober assessment of two intersecting developments. One was that PKK’s militant capacity to inflict harm on Turkey was all but eliminated and its force in northern Iraq was trounced. The other was the changed situation in Syria. Its political and security landscape had transformed. Turkey’s success on its own soil and in Iraq’s north had to be distanced -if not totally decoupled- from the more complex situation in Syria. In a sense, it was the reversal of the 2016 strategy which had also run its political course. For the PKK leader and his lieutenants in turn, the calculus was simple. On the one hand, there was little sense in perpetuating a losing insurgency against Turkey. Moreover, renouncing armed struggle would leverage their political demands on legal platforms. On the other, the PKK leadership’s abandonment of the idea of a homeland carved out of four countries in favour of democratic coexistence in each country dovetailed with the SDF’s objective to autonomously exist in Syria. The Turkish government insists that PKK’s disarming (so far, it remains limited to a symbolic gesture) should include its offshoot in Syria, while SDF has no intention to agree. This is also the position of PKK’s leader. SDF relies on its armed strength which is way greater than what Damascus could hitherto build for itself. It is difficult to see how Turkey can militarily intervene in that overly crowded political landscape now.  

The Turkish government’s dilemma in Syria reflects its own ideological conundrum not only there but across the region. The government desires to see templates which conform to its domestic outlook -like Turkish-Kurdish-Arab religious brotherhood in nationhood’s stead- or developments that alleviate its existential concerns. In Syria, however, the tension is between exclusionary centralism and social diversity. The more Damascus attempts to assert its own terms, the stronger will be the tendency for further diffusion. Moreover, Mr Al Sharaa does not wield even a semblance of the power his predecessor once possessed. And the issue is not limited to the concerns of ethnic or religious groups. In fact, exaggerating these differences as the basis for a future constitutional compromise runs the danger of sacrificing fundamental rights for all. Let us not forget that even Saddam’s Iraq once had its Kurdish region. When individual rights and freedoms are defined on communal, collective terms, it easily legitimizes the repression of the majority itself. Because the ruler can then decide what suits it. Plural is not pluralism. It does not qualify for the rule of law either, which is for everyone, in equal measure. Turkey has its own historical trajectory and pillars of national harmony. It will be a better place when, on the basis of its unitary statehood, democratic rights and freedoms are restored and expanded, enabling every individual to enjoy to the fullest his or her identity, and the rule of law, which undergirds the entire constitutional order, is truly upheld. If Syrians, as equal citizens, eventually opt for a different framework of national harmony, it will be their choice. It will have no bearing on a confident, democratic Turkey. Did post-Saddam Iraq cause Turkey’s unity to crumble even during these difficult times at home?

And Turkey will continue to work with all countries in the region on the basis of sovereign equality, harness mutual interests with no motive to perpetuate power grip at home, and restore its traditional regionwide stability generating role, something which the Middle East dearly needs under the circumstances.