SINOGRAPH China's chance to stem
Syrian blood By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - In Syria, China decided to
experiment with some new policy on the Middle
East. It has vetoed a United Nations intervention
in the country, something that in Libya opened the
road to the toppling of the Muammar Gaddafi
regime, and now it is looking for some creative
solution. It is clear that the forces around
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are entrenched
and do not want to give up decades of privileges,
while the new forces represent something still
very unclear. In this new situation, China could
consider that Syria is a turning point in Middle
Eastern policies.
What if the current
issue in Syria is not about the different shades
of Islam - Alawites or Sunnis - nor even about the
different shades of democracy in the political
system, no matter what some Americans may want to
believe? What if the real matter is about
the return of empires in
the Middle East, the Persian and the Turkish ones?
Then, as many times in past centuries, the Arabs
are really the pawns in and prize of the
competition.
In fact, in Syria are all the
remnants of the very long local history, and the
violent confrontations between forces supporting
and opposing the government seem to come from that
past. The Alawite, Druze, and Christians, making
up some 25% of Syrias population, have been ruling
over a country in which most of the population is
made up of Sunnis. The Alawite, a rather secular
group, were and are supported by the Iranians, who
are mostly Shi'ite Muslims. For decades Syrians
and Iranians had a common enemy, Iraq, and also a
common ally, the Shi'ite minority living in
Lebanon. Then, through a loose appeal to a vague
religious cause, Tehran actually managed to
stretch its influence up to the Mediterranean.
If, as now seems likely, the Alawite lose
their quasi-monopoly on power in Syria, Damascus
could well fall under the influence of Turkey,
whose population is Sunni, like the majority of
Syrians, and Lebanese Shi'ites would become more
isolated from their Persian religious brethren.
Turkey has been supporting the jasmine revolutions
sweeping the Middle East. Still Egypt, Tunisia,
and Libya are quite distant countries from Ankara,
but Syria is just next-door. If it switches from
receiving support from Iran to Turkey, Iran will
become more isolated whereas Turkey will gain
greater clout in the region. It would be hard then
for Jordan or even Egypt to ignore Ankara's
wishes, which could make it the true champion of
the new Middle East, greatly contributing to
reining in an Iran that is already under pressure
for its nuclear program and that could be bombed
by Israel or America.
The economy will
still be in great pain. These countries have very
weak production bases and have little or no oil.
Turkey's economy is faring well, but some
economists have severe reservations about it (see
Recall
notice for the Turkish model, Asia Times
Online, Jan 10, 2012). And certainly revolutions
can change politics but rarely bring food to the
table.
Cynically, one can claim that poor
economic performance does not improve the
political situation, but doesn't worsen it either.
These places were poverty-stricken before, and
they will carry on being poor - played by Iran
before and by Turkey now. And Turkey, despite all
the reservations some Westerners may have about
the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is
certainly far better than the Iran of the
Ayatollahs.
Still, perhaps religion, as
Graham Fuller claimed in his A World Without
Islam, is not the main force in this game. The
real issue is the old competition between the
Persian and Turkish empires over who should rule
the Middle East. For over a century, Turkey was
expelled from the region, and the country looked
more to the West to find its new identity. The
search for this new identity endured a few
setbacks since the Europeans were lukewarm on
admitting Turkey into their midst - and because
Turkey failed to shed a few of its old abuses of
human rights, stop violations against the Kurdish
minority in the east, or even address the history
of the Armenian genocide.
Yet, in
comparison with Syria or Egypt, Turkey is a
paragon of democracy and could be a lighthouse of
civilization and development in the far weaker
political environment to the east. This could be,
after all, a new swing of the old pendulum,
bringing Turkey back into the region.
There is a difference, however: in the
previous centuries Israel, a huge economic dynamo
that could help to reignite regional development,
was not a part of the region. Will Turkey and its
new Arab allies carry on with their old
anti-Jewish policies, or will they think to heal
old wounds and create a new Middle East with
Israel as an integral part of it? Despite recent
flare-ups, Turkey for many years had a very good
relationship with Israel. With the new Turkish
interest in the region, could Arabs find a real
geopolitical ally in Israel, one that could bring
to the table the dynamism necessary to revive the
regional economy? This could totally change the
rules of the game in the Middle East. Religions
and ideologies are instruments of a power game.
In this new environment, China, without
baggage in the region, could help the birth of a
new balance of power, playing some new creative
card and helping to mediate between the many local
interests. But at the end of the day the first
step should be to stop violence and bloodshed in
Syria. Here China has to be active, seeking new
solutions, it can not just sit in the back and
accept or refuse other people's choice.
Francesco Sisci is the Asia
Editor of La Stampa. His e-mail is
fsisci@gmail.com
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