Today, instead of the free movement of labor and capital, there is, around the border area, the free movement of bombs and bullets.
Ankara considers the real security threat from Syria as not the jihadists, but the secular Kurds who fight the jihadists.
Turkey has worked so hard to create a “Peshawar” (Afghanistan) across its border with Syria — hoping instead to create a Muslim Brotherhood zone.
It was supposed to be Turkish gambit: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s days in power were numbered; the Nusayri (Alawite) man would be toppled by Syria’s Sunni majority in a popular revolt. The Sunni majority would set up in Damascus a Muslim Brotherhood type of regime that would be subservient to Ankara, and Turkey’s southern border with Syria would be now be a borderless Sunni “Schengen” zone; cross border trade would flourish with the free movement of labor and capital. Peace would prevail along the 900-km border, and Turkish and Syrian Sunni supremacists would advance their agenda in the not-always-so-Sunni lands of the Middle East.
Today, instead of the free movement of labor and capital, there is, around the border area, the free movement of bombs and bullets. Turkey’s miscalculated foreign policy on Syria has led to the creation of a neighboring Peshawar (Afghanistan) across its border.
Turkey’s Islamist rulers were unhappy with Assad as their neighbor. Their efforts to unseat Assad have dramatically resulted in creating even less pleasant neighbors: an unknown number of jihadist groups, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Kurdish militants fighting to create an autonomous enclave.
Instead of a predictable Assad, the Turkish gambit has resulted in having as next-door neighbors an assortment of unpredictable, violent and alien groups too unwieldy to keep under control.
After the Syrian Kurdish militia, PYD — which has links to the Turkey-based PKK, the outlawed Kurdish group that has fought a violent war for an independent Kurdish state since 1984 — took over from ISIS the northern Syrian town of Tel Abyad, Ankara did not know if this was good or bad news. For Turkey, ISIS is “officially” a terrorist organization. But it is an open secret that Ankara has supported ISIS in its campaign for the downfall of Assad and the formation in Syria of an Islamist regime.
Hundred of Syrian Kurds gathered along the border with Turkey in the hope of crossing over, as Kurdish militias battled ISIS in nearby Tel Abyad, June 13, 2015. (Image source: Reuters video screenshot)
Immediately after Tel Abyad fell into the hands of Kurds in late June, ISIS jihadists staged bomb attacks, killing over 200 Kurds in Kobane, a Kurdish stronghold in northern Syria.
Figen Yuksekdag, a leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP), said that, “There is a high probability that Ankara facilitated the attack.” She added that Turkey has for years supported ISIS. Turkey’s government vehemently denies that.
But, with or without any Turkish involvement in the Kobane attack, the “official Turkey” reveals where it positions itself in the multiple-party warfare in Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it in very clear, loud words: “We will never allow the establishment of a [Kurdish] state in Syria’s north and our south. We will continue our fight in this regard no matter what it costs… They want to complete the operation to change the demographic structure of the region. We will not turn a blind eye to this.”
Once again, Turkey’s threat perceptions are deeply divergent from its Western allies’. Ankara considers the real security threat from Syria as not the jihadists, but the secular Kurds who fight the jihadists. There are reports that the government has ordered the military to prepare for cross-border operations in order to destroy the Kurdish enclave — siding, therefore, with ISIS, which also wants to destroy the emerging Kurdish enclave in northern Syria.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that any cross-border operation into Syria would be discussed at a meeting, which took place June 29, of the National Security Council. After the four-hour meeting, a statement from the Council said that the efforts aimed at a demographic change in Syria [in favor of Kurds] were worrisome.
Once again, the Turks openly tell the world that they view the secular Kurds more of a security threat than the jihadists.
The Turkish military, generally known for its hawkish stance on the Kurdish issue, is surprisingly (and realistically) opposed to a cross-border adventure to smash the Kurdish enclave. A senior general told this author on June 25: “We have warned the government about possible costs [of such an operation]. If they give us orders for an operation, supported with perfect domestic and international legitimacy, we will act. In any case the government should be responsible for any breach of domestic or international law, and/or for the political consequences.”
This means that the Turkish government is preparing for an illegitimate military operation in Syria, although it probably will fail to initiate it for legal and logistical reasons. Against whom would the Turkish army be fighting in such a deeply contested territory? Who are its friends and foes? How would a cross-border operation be logistically supported? How would the ruling AKP party justify Turkish casualties, especially at a time when it is trying to compromise and form a coalition government after it lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002 in June 7 elections?Turkey has worked so hard to create a “Peshawar” across its border with Syria — hoping instead to create a Muslim Brotherhood zone. It has its own cross-border “Peshawar” now. It just does not know how to deal with it.
**Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Extremism and Censorship
Samuel Westrop/Gatestone Institute
July 1, 2015 http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5967/uk-extremism-censorship
There are obvious shortcomings in the British government’s demand that all “beliefs” deserve “mutual respect.” While it is important in a free society to tolerate beliefs we dislike, we should not be required to “respect” them. If the government would stop funding and backing religious separatism, and start using existing laws to prosecute preachers who incite violence and promote terrorism, these measures would go a long way to preventing extremists from operating with impunity. Censorship, on the other hand, will harm everyone.
On May 27, a few weeks after the elections, Queen Elizabeth II addressed the British parliament with a speech that laid out a number of important proposed bills, including changes to immigration and the welfare system; a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, and, most importantly, a series of new measures to tackle Islamic extremism.
The “Extremism Bill,” the government has announced, will “unite our country and keep you and your family safe by tackling all forms of extremism.” It will also “combat groups and individuals who reject our values and promote messages of hate.”
To achieve this, the government is attempting to establish a number of new proscriptive powers. “Banning Orders” would allow the Home Secretary to outlaw designated “extremist groups.” “Extremism Disruption Orders” would restrict the activities of individual, designated “extremists.” They would be prohibited from appearing on television, and would have to submit any publications, including social media posts, to the police for prior approval. “Closure Orders” would allow the government to shut down institutions, including mosques, used to promote extremism.
In addition, the government has announced plans to take “tough measures against [television] channels that broadcast extremist content.”
Changes to background checks would also mean that companies could find out whether a potential employee is an extremist. If so, they would be barred from working with children.
Alongside these counter-extremism efforts, the government will also attempt to introduce a “snoopers’ charter,” to allow the security services to track everyone’s web and social media use. Additionally, according to a report in The Guardian, the Bill “moves to strengthen the security services’ warranted powers for the bulk interception of the content of communications.”
Critics argue that many of these new measures are draconian. Former deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has claimed that the rights of British citizens were being “threatened by a turbo-charged snooper’s charter.” These counter-extremism measures, others claim, threaten freedom of speech. Before the recent elections, the Liberal Democrats claimed to have blocked the Conservatives’ proposals on “three different occasions.” Tom Brake, a Liberal Democrat MP, argued that, “Banning orders will undermine existing efforts to engage with communities and run the serious risk of criminalising legitimate groups who have a right to speak out against the government. It risks being a licence to silence any opinion the government doesn’t like.”
Conservative MPs have also voiced concern. In 2014, Dominic Raab MP, who was recently appointed a junior Justice Minister, wrote:
“The case for stronger law enforcement is overwhelming — but legislation that erodes basic principles of freedom won’t make us safer. … The public should certainly expect the security services to track terrorists online, but the broad powers of proposed Extremism Disruption Orders could be abused. Those engaged in passionate debates — such as Christians objecting to gay marriage — could find themselves slapped down. Monarchists or communists could be swept up for peacefully expressing their political views.”
Another Cabinet member, Sajid Javid, has also opposed the Home Secretary’s plans to censor broadcaster’s programs. As The Guardian revealed, Javid told the Prime Minister the proposed censorship would mark a “fundamental shift in the way UK broadcasting is regulated, away from the current framework which is designed to take appropriate account of the right to freedom of expression.”
The government is evidently facing plenty of opposition to its proposals from both sides of the aisle.
Concerns about threats to freedom of speech have also been intensified by the vagueness of the terms. Home Secretary Theresa May has made repeated reference to the promotion of “British values.” The proposed “Extremism Bill,” she claims, is designed to “protect” these “British values.” Leaked Home Office documents also advocate immigrants must adhere to “British values.” In the wake of the Trojan Horse scandal, in which some English schools were found to have been infiltrated by Islamic extremists, the Education Secretary at the time, Michael Gove, announced that schools must promote “British values.” And in a speech in March, Theresa May declared that, “Islam is entirely compatible with British values and our national way of life, while Islamist extremism is not.”
What, then, are “British values”? And, for that matter, what is an “extremist”?
There is no statutory definition of extremism. Since 2011, however, the government has claimed, without legislative foundation, that extremism is a “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.”There are obvious shortcomings in the government’s demand that all “beliefs” deserve “mutual respect.” While it is important in a free society to tolerate beliefs we dislike, we should not be required to “respect” them. Further, without a statutory definition of “extremism,” there is no indication under the proposed new laws of what constitutes a “crime.” These measures will be ripe for abuse. No wonder there is opposition to the government’s plans. Similar vague rhetoric was heard under former Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party. He declared that the promotion of “British values” necessitated discussion on “how we better integrate our ethnic communities” and “how we respond to Muslim fundamentalism.”
Notions of “tolerance” and “mutual respect” sound promising but are largely meaningless, especially when faced with the very particular threat of Islamic extremism. By proposing a ban on “extremists” from appearing on television and vetting their writings, the present government demands that we “respect” others’ beliefs, while it simultaneously proposes to censor their views.
Censorship is notoriously counter-productive. In the 1980s, similar bans on broadcasters had been introduced. This led, the journalist Padraig Reidy writes, “to the ridiculous scenario where [IRA leader] Gerry Adams and other republican representatives had their statements dubbed by actors before interviews were broadcast, as if it were not their words but their very voices that might attract sympathy for terrorism.”
The government’s proposals seem to many a combination of bluster and censorship. In 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron delivered an address in Munch, where he claimed that, “Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream…. We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.”Despite this acknowledgement of the problem, not a thing has been done to resolve it. For progress to be made, Britain would do well to re-examine the state’s relationship with religious groups. Mosques and community groups that promote extremist preachers continue to receive public funding. Further, the government refuses to shut down Islamic charities that openly support terrorist organizations. Interpal, for example, is a designated terrorist organization under U.S. law, but enjoys mainstream political support in the UK. Its trustees openly attend Hamas rallies in Gaza.
So long as the government, as part of its multiculturalism policy, funds and legitimizes extremist groups within religious communities, Islamist movements will continue to encourage segregation and foment extremism — presumably not part of the “British values” advocated by government. “Extremism” is a nebulous term, begging statutory guidelines for what defines it. The state appears keen, in fact, to introduce further bureaucracy rather than enforce existing laws. Current legislation already allows the authorities to prosecute preachers who incite violence or express support for foreign terrorist organizations, but these laws are rarely enforced. The flags of outlawed terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah are frequently seen on London’s streets, despite the Terrorism Act of 2000, which criminalized support for banned terrorist organizations. The Racial and Religious Hatred Act and various Public Order Acts also prohibit incitement to violence. Nevertheless, Islamic preacher Abu Usamah at-Thahabi has publicly said: “Take that homosexual man… and throw him off the mountain. If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that’s my freedom of speech, isn’t it.” Despite advocating murder, he has never been charged. If the government would stop funding and backing religious separatism, and start using existing laws to prosecute preachers who incite violence and promote terrorism, these measures would go a long way to preventing extremists from operating with impunity. Censorship, on the other hand, will harm everyone.
