Palestine leadership visit: Azerbaijan joins international pressure on Israel?

We have repeatedly made an assumption that Arab spring bears a potential of radical overhaul of the Middle East conflict architecture http://blog-abunajla.blogspot.com/2011/05/arab-revolution-may-overhaul-middle.html , and reshuffling of traditional alliances in the region.

http://blog-abunajla.blogspot.com/2011/05/easing-blockade-at-gaza-new-move-to.html

Despite all existing dissension and contentions two Palestinian authorities have come together to start building Palestinian State. After US President Obama’s speech addressed to Arab world, in which the US administration declared its countenance to the 1967 borders between Israel and Arab State, Palestinian authorities made few further steps to get broader international support for their plans. In the end of May Mahmud Abbas clarified that Palestinian authorities will bring up the declaration of the State of Palestine to the UN General Assembly, if Israel government does not come back to resume negotiations.

Russian Foreign Office manifested their intention to support Palestinian State at UN General Assembly once the issue comes to voting. Very substantial backing on behalf of Turkey was done by President Abdallah Gul on June 16: Turkey will vote for the establishment of the Palestinian state at the eventual UN GA voting in September. France has suggested convening of an international conference in Paris in mid July  to discuss peace agreement based on recognition of 1967 borderline. Mahmud Abbas immediately accepted the offer, but Benjamin Netanyahu did not and told they appreciate the French initiative, but need to weigh it further and consult with American friends.

International pressure on Israel is getting heavier weight.  The last weekend on June 25 Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan manifested unambiguous and comprehensive support to the State of Palestine at the press conference with Mahmud Abbas in Ankara. This week Mahmud Abbas made an official two day visit to Azerbaijan. He was introduced as President of the Palestinian State and conducted few events with President Ilham Aliyev and other high ranking officials of Azerbaijani government. The Embassy of Palestine was officially opened in the building provided by Azerbaijani authorities. At the joint press conference in Baku yesterday President Aliyev ensured a full backing to the establishment of the State of Palestine with the capital city in Eastern Jerusalem. Azerbaijan has been and will continue to be on the side of Palestine elsewhere in international organizations and gatherings, - Ilham Aliyev said. Mahmud Abbas highlighted many similar challenges both nations were facing because of aggression by neighboring states.

 Palestinian leadership visit to Azerbaijan and its tangible outcomes indicated further remarkable changes in regional policy. For the first time since independence Azerbaijan openly declared its unanimous support to Palestinian authority plans. It is noteworthy because after a certain cooling in relationship with Turkey value of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel has risen. Cooperation with Israel has also been valuable because of the growing tension of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and for further confrontation and militarization trend in relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The reasonable question is what has urged the Azerbaijani government to take a stronger stand for the Palestinian interests? This might be a valid inference of increasingly coordinated international pressure on Israeli government aimed at demanded renovation of Israel policy towards Arabs. Policy makers in Azerbaijan may have come to conclusion that the long standing conflicts and continuing occupations have ended up under critical view of democracy and peace champions. After the failure of Armenia and Azerbaijan summit meetings under the aegis of Russia a stronger side in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan, has aligned with militarily weaker side in Arab-Palestine conflict to demonstrate its peaceful aspirations, and both countries, Palestine and Azerbaijan, were victims of territorial occupation by aggressive neighbors. And finally we have probably witnessed another indication of traditional alignment of Azerbaijani and Turkish external policies, which was not evident in the case of relationship with Israel until these most recent developments in question. http://blog-abunajla.blogspot.com/2011/06/turks-and-arabs-arab-spring-might-lead.html

Turks and Arabs: Arab spring might lead to revival of common political space.

I am aware that every word in the title may entail lengthy debates to specify the meaning and contemporary implications. The title is simplistic refection of the changing role of the Turkey in Middle East policy placed in longer historical perspective.

Indeed the eminent victory of the Moslem Justice and Development Party (or AKP) in the June 12 elections denoted an important milestone of an increasing integration of Middle East policies with the developments on the Turkish scene. Arab spring, which manifested a demand for political renovation based on citizenry values and human dignity, unfortunately did not bring strong leadership alternatives to overthrown dictatorships. In the meantime it has undoubtedly legitimized Islamic political forces, which were evidently visible in Egyptian upraising, as well as in the movements in other Arab countries. Obvious manifestation of that trend was Egyptian facilitation of Hamas and Fatah rapprochement in Palestine.

Nevertheless the actors on scene seem have not come to  a mutually shared vision of the future reforms and the role of revolutionary actors- army, citizens, oppositional parties and youth -  in increasingly demanded new political system. And here is where the Turkish experience comes to help. Emerging value of Arab coordination in Palestine-Israeli conflict carries a potential of tougher Arab stand in peace process. On the other hand the messages and challenges that come from Arab insurrections have already started influencing the global actors on the scene – European countries and the US. And the following effect was an increasing pressure on Israel,  with whom the US used to keep a priority of their Middle East policy.  http://blog-abunajla.blogspot.com/2011/05/obamas-speech-and-talks-with-netanyahu.html

The developments of the last few days provide many proofs of changing priorities and reshaped alliances.  PM Erdogan speech on the balcony immediately after his party win of election manifested the regional significance of Turkish developments as clear as never. Some may consider this appeal to Moslem world and Arab resurrection as unnecessary demagogy at the time when internally two huge challenges: reconciliation of constitutional reforms and Kurdish issue, -  have to overwhelm the new government attention. However continuing limitation of Turkish policy priorities on internal affairs does not count emerging demand for Turkey to advance acting in stalemate of confrontation with Arab dictatorships.

Controversial developments and obviously increasing scale of bloodshed and confrontation in Syria has brought the controversies of the Arab revolt to Turkish borders. The world attention and concerns are getting concentrated on Turkish – Syrian borders. Hollywood celebrity Angelina Jolie has asked Turkish Foreign Ministry to arrange her visit of Syrian refugees. The US does not seem leaning to act rigorously, but offered a help to Turkey on the same refugee challenge. Turkey’s response has by no means been late. Immediately after elections a Syria discussion was convened in the government and Erdogan called Bashar al-Assad to insistently recommend leading actual reforms and keeping a distance of hardliners in the government. Turkish analytics foresee the possibility of urgent visit by Foreign Minster Davutoglu, or Chief of Turkish intelligence Hakan Fidan to Syria in the aftermath of this Wednesday meeting of Turkish ambassadors to Arab countries.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his message to salute the Turkish election results news has come that the second humanitarian caravan that planned to float to Gaza might be cancelled as a spokesman of the Turkish NGO Humanitarian Relief Foundation told referring to critical developments in Syria. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=relief-group-signals-u-turn-on-gaza-plan-2011-06-14 .  Thus the demanded transformations of Israeli policy might get started from improvement of Turkish-Israeli relations.

One more meaningful and provoking term was not put in the title of this blog posting: “New Ottoman era”. It does have a full right to be a subject of full range of debating, as the increasing leadership ambitions of Turkey are not based on previous values of nationalist concepts but are addressing still sustainable sense of common Moslem identity. However one could make a mistake if assumed that the trend is a mere retrieval of the old Ottoman heritage and value system. It is now about transformation of Islam in political sphere and renovation of the relationship of Moslem world and the West, which might hopefully constitute an essential characteristic of an inevitable globalization.

Leadership demand not met in Arab movements

 The Arab insurrection has come to sweep authoritarian regimes which have fatigued t the people striving towards dignity and decent life. It has unleashed the reformist potential of citizens but has not offered yet helpful remedy, or means to establish mechanisms of civic engagement in effective governance. Both in Egypt and Tunisia where protesters managed to change the visible toppings of political structures and in Yemen, Syria and Libya, where the existing regimes were radically challenged, we could not see leading opposition figures which could compete charismatic dictators in the government.

That might be of no hurt to the destiny of those liberation movements, if not a lack of effective citizenship institutions and consequently a demand for alternative leaderships. Visible figures in Egyptian landscape are General Secretary of the League of Arab states Amr Musa  and Nobel price winner Mr. Mohammad Al-Baradei, who unfortunately do not manifest a quality of new leadership and are anchored in the past. No actual leaders emerged in Libya, Yemen, and nothing is clearly known on Syrian protesting leadership.

No strong civic institutions and organizations have been advanced and nor individuals have emerged to undertake the responsibility of pressing reforms toward democracy and transparent governance. In Egypt there is an army which acted as guarantor of necessary constitutional challenges, but the former leaders of the country were also ramifications of those institutions, and whether the same institution could overhaul the system that served its own interests does not remain much to hope about radical innovations.

Then where is actual potential for reforming the Arab society? We may assume that new leaders are expected to rise. However there is no sign of that to come soon. Does the situation lead to Islamic institutions to occupy much demanded leadership position?  There is nothing implausible in such assumption, unless the point of consequently demanded harmonization of relationships with the West as well as human rights respect and limitations to outrageous pressure on human dignity are guaranteed. That is why there is an increase of contacts with Islamic groups on behalf of the Western governments. In the long run the Arab insurrection has also been about Islamic transformation and upgrade of Islamic groups to the acceptable degree of their engagement with the West and final transformation into a political force with considerable capacity to promote tolerance and security to all citizens regardless of their ethnicity and confessions.

EU assistance to Arab world should aggregate security, democracy and human development

The latest G8 summit, announced unprecedented $20bn assistance programs to emerging Arab democracies in the end of May at their meeting in France. Those commitments were followed by some European leaders’ disclosure of their bilateral plans to assist Tunisian and Egyptian governments in democracy and good governance reforms. Indeed the world is keen to establish a successful transformation to the effective democracy in Moslem countries, where the dictatorships were toppled down recently.  British Prime Minister, for example, earmarked  £110m ($180m) for development over the next four years, echoing the G8 outlook on the Arab uprisings. http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/2011531132934920499.html

However the most debatable concern is if those programs actually open a new page of partnerships with Arab countries that could be radically distinct of the past assistance experiences, when development specialists dealt comfortably “with dictatorships and democracies alike, believing that prosperity can best be created by concentrating exclusively on economic issues and institutions.” http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/20116113211917794.html

Reader discussion at information websites demonstrated how much and deeply rooted in the past is the mistrust in actual goals of such Western assistance. Arabs are proud of their revolutionary accomplishments and are dreaming of their dignity resurrected and capacity unleashed. Their voices arose against a possible Euro-US "hijacking" or "containment" of the regional movement through this type of "cheque book diplomacy". In order to demonstrate a good will to re-load the partnership priorities goals of assistance and progress indicators should be clearly articulated to make sure that

•  Assistance priorities are owned by recipients and beneficiaries themselves
•  Spending is transparent and leads to the establishment of effective system of checks and balances that ensure civic participation as actual vehicle of strategy development and implementation
• All assistances should work to generate a sense of mutually shared goals and values to lead to the creation of integrated space of equal partnership and human dignity and remove mistrust and grievances of the past.

In the meantime this discourse brings up to the critical question of legitimacy of interim institutions to receive and spend those huge assistance amounts. Should the money start being delivered before the well trusted popular representatives are elected and strong civil society engagement is guaranteed? The time and again the question comes what depends on what: electoral democracy is secured by institutional development, or the latter could only be build by means of the former?