Broadening the nongovernmental humanitarian mission: the IHH and mediation.

• Author: Tabak, Husrev
• Position: Humanitarian Relief Foundation

Introduction

The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), Turkey's top nongovernmental humanitarian organization by aid volume in 2011 and 2013, and the second in 2012, (1) today delivers relief to 140 countries worldwide. The delivered aid varies from the fight against hunger to opening medical clinics, providing vocational education to women, and providing shelter and psychological support to orphans. However, quite recently, the IHH has begun channeling its operational capabilities and motives to fields beyond delivering humanitarian relief; as a novel internationalist humanitarian practice (for both Turkey and the IHH), it has begun acting as a mediator in disputes and intra-state conflicts. For instance, as a member of the Third Party Monitoring Team (TPMT), the IHH has played a crucial role in the peace negotiations between the Philippines government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which were initiated to end the decades-long conflict in the country. In another example, the IHH has upheld arbitration and mediation roles between warring parties and in the release of civilians imprisoned in Syria. Similarly, recently, the IHH contributed to the release of two Czech women kidnapped by an al-Qaeda-linked armed group in Pakistan by officially heading the negotiations with the women's kidnappers. In a final example, the IHH is endeavoring to contribute to the solution of the Kurdish issue in the Middle East by acting as a platform to facilitate discussions. I will detail these examples and share more of them below. Needless to say, as demonstrated by these examples, the IHH does not confine itself to relief providing; moving well beyond this role, it implements mediation (or humanitarian diplomacy as the IHH calls it (2)) and has so far accumulated a great deal of experience. As my respondents from IHH have stated, the IHH plans to continue and expand its role in acting as a mediator in international disputes.

This paper explores the dynamics of and the motivations behind the IHH's novel civilian mediator role and its relevant practices. Concomitant to the IHH's expansion of its area of work, several other nongovernmental organizations in Turkey have begun running international humanitarian missions, and it has been suggested that Turkey is now following a proactive foreign policy, in the scope of which it has become an international humanitarian actor. This paper therefore, secondly, questions the place that the IHH's international humanitarian activities occupy in broader turn in Turkey's contemporary foreign policy. Within the scope of this examination, the paper initially discusses the roots and motives of the broader nongovernmental internationalist and humanitarian concerns in the country and the government's role in it. This debate is followed by a discussion of the IHH's broadening nongovernmental humanitarian mission through humanitarian diplomacy and mediation, which is followed by an exclusive analysis of the IHH's mediator role in the TPMT and MILF's disarmament. The research paper is based on interviews conducted with both junior and senior officials from the IHH, all of whom have been involved either in the formulation or in the conduct of the IHH's mediation practices. Their names have been omitted due to ethical concerns.

Nongovernmental Internationalism in Turkey

Nongovernmental humanitarian internationalism, a form of consciousness and a practice of overseas and cross-border civilian humanitarian engagement, is overwhelmingly characterized in Turkey by the involvement of religiously oriented humanitarian organizations. (3) The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency's (TiKA) development assistance reports also suggest this. (4) Accordingly, setting aside the very minor contributions of a handful of secular organizations, most of Turkey's international aid to the needy in global crisis zones is provided by nongovernmental organizations with religious concerns. (5) These relief organizations include, for instance, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), Kimse Yok Mu, Dost Eli Society of Aid and Solidarity, Cansuyu Society of Aid and Solidarity, Aziz Mahmut Hudayi Foundation, the Sadakatap Society, the Deniz Feneri Association, and the Yardimeli International Humanitarian Aid Society. All of these organizations, in one way or another are either linked to a religious group--for example Kimse Yok Mu is the humanitarian aid organization of the Gulen movement--or act with a declaredly bold religious motive, such as the Yardimeli. To understand the IHH's involvement in 140 countries worldwide and more recently it's broadening of our understanding of nongovernmental humanitarianism in Turkey, accordingly, one should first ask why Turkey's existent humanitarian organizations--including the IHH--are mostly oriented around Islam, and how this orientation is related to Turkey's so-called pro-activism in contemporary foreign policy.

The religious orientation of Turkey's humanitarian organizations may initially be explained with reference to the presence of cognitive frames among religious circles in the country, suggesting a consciousness of a global Islamic community. Faith-based organizations in Turkey existentially hold such a global consciousness, particularly of their fellow believers and their miseries worldwide. This consciousness leads them to easily translate the present internationalist frames into international engagement on a humanitarian level. This factor indeed constitutes the initial and most important spark for cross-border engagement; however, I will refrain from reducing the entire motivation of cross-border involvement to a religious cause. At this juncture, in practical terms, what accelerated international humanitarian activism and made the religiously motivated organizations the biggest nongovernmental international donors in the country were the opportunity spaces created throughout the last decade--by which religious civil society was successfully de-securitized after an almost decade-long containment--and the roles that the AK Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) governments cast for Turkey in global politics in general, and in Muslim politics in particular.

In Turkey, civil society has played a pioneering role in working towards restoring the bonds with other predominately Muslim countries/communities that had been practically broken by the Kemalist regime. Such restoration had never had implications at the governmental level until the rise to power of the Welfare Party government of the mid-1990s. The j oint work of the government and civil society to restore the bonds with the global ummah in the early and mid-1990s, however, did not last long; the February 28 coup of 1997 ultimately toppled the Welfare government and securitized civilian religious initiatives; hence, religious groups' ability to act, even within the country, was shattered. It was, however, the AK Party governments which de-securitized civilian religious initiatives as soon as they 'claimed the throne,' and which created opportunity spaces for civil engagement and joint actions between the state and civil society; thanks to these changes, civil society's cross-border humanitarian involvements have soared. In 2007, for instance, the AK Party government granted the following organizations tax-exempt status: Deniz Feneri, Kimse Yok Mu, the IHH, the AzizMahmut Hudayi Foundation's Istanbul Association, and Cansuyu. (6) Such exemption has provided these organizations with both governmental backing and the ability to act more proactively in the international arena; thus they are able to contribute more to the building of relations with Muslim countries and communities. By the same token, Turkey's governmental institutions, particularly TiKA, have collaborated with the aforementioned organizations and many other nongovernmental organizations in the field. For instance, TiKA collaborated with the IHH in Niger in the building of a medical clinic, and in Somalia in the building of a school for agricultural education in 2013. (7)

Moreover, in addition to the existential emphasis on ummah and the AK Party's practical support via opening opportunity spaces, the reconstruction of the conceptual map of the people in the country--which includes Turkey's role in global (Muslim) politics, and Turkey's so-called "civilizational" responsibilities--has provided religiously-oriented nongovernmental organizations with the cognitive and intellectual tools to direct their attention and effort to the realization of Turkey's internationalist role. Accordingly, through such political and intellectual concepts as zero-problems-with-neighbors, strategic depth, self-perception, center state, soft power, self-confident foreign policy, historical legacy, historical responsibility, humanitarian diplomacy, and civilization, (8) the conceptual map of the people in Turkey regarding their geography, history, and present-day exigencies, and outward responsibilities has been reconstructed. Policy practices challenging the political perception of being surrounded by perpetual enemies (9), Turkey's confidently playing of intervening role in its immediate surroundings (10), and finally its opening to new geographies (11) via novel humanitarian instruments have all been among the factors contributing to such shifts in perception. Such developments, while turning foreign policy into a domain of epistemological reconstruction, however, have mostly appealed to religiously-motivated people and circles, and their internationalist frames of reference and applications have been stimulated within this scope.

The building of a new interpretation of geography and history via foreign policy, that also encouraged a rise in nongovernmental internationalist concern, however, required transcending certain mental barriers historically set before Turkey's foreign policy making. These barriers are in the scope of, and in tandem with, the...