Turkiye and the Future of Normalization in the Middle East.

• Author: Duran, Burhanettin
• Position: ARTICLE

Making Sense of the "Post-American" Middle East amid Normalization

The Arab revolts dragged the Middle Eastern nations into separate camps that aggressively compete with each other. Whereas many countries, including Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Iraq, evolved into weak players in a state of civil war, new axes of polarization emerged among the leading players--the Gulf, Israel, Egypt, Iran, and Turkiye--as a result of that process. As such, the current level of polarization exceeds the level that the United States' invasion of Iraq introduced to the region in 2003. That chapter entailed the creation of an anti-democratic political domain, which resulted in a crackdown on popular demands, militarized ongoing conflicts by transforming them into civil wars, and caused the dominance of a reverse geopolitical wave that favored the status quo and authoritarian regimes. One of the most striking examples of that trend was Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's bloody coup in Egypt in 2013, which prevented elected governments from forming a new axis in the region. (1) Later, the regionwide polarization between the Gulf and Iran, which dates back to 1979, emerged anew in the form of proxy wars. At the same time, polarization arose between the Gulf, Qatar, and Turkiye.

It is possible to argue that the Trump Administrations Middle East policy (2016-2020) --which involved maximum pressure on Iran, strong support of Israel, and an attempt to unite the Gulf around a single axis--deepened both kinds of polarization. The impact of the Trump Administration, which facilitated rapprochement between Israel and the Gulf/Arab states, encouraged some countries to try and reshape the region. As those attempts at a new blueprint evolved into intense efforts to wear down opponents, the Gulf experienced tensions with Turkiye and Qatar, while countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Turkiye engaged in more fierce competition regarding questions of national security. As the Arab states were ideologically divided and thus weakened, Iran and Turkiye --two major players in the region--were compelled to concentrate on the Syrian crisis, which would continue for a long time. Meanwhile, competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the civil war in Yemen pushed the Gulf closer to Israel. That process, in turn, gave rise to the argument that Israel benefited most from the period of intense polarization in the aftermath of the Arab revolts.

While the tensions between various countries in the region, which were rooted in fierce competition, peaked in 2017 with the Qatar blockade, (2) Joe Biden's election victory in the U.S. encouraged the Middle Eastern states to make a new strategic assessment. The normalization process between Israel and the Arab states, which had been expedited by the Abraham Accords during Trump's presidency, remained on track, as three new normalization trends emerged in the region. Accordingly, the Gulf and Qatar, the Gulf and Turkiye, and the Gulf and Iran tended to rely on diplomacy to end their disputes and manage existing crises.

In this regard, "security on the basis of fierce competition" has been giving way to "linking security concerns to new pursuits of issue-based cooperation" in the Middle East. One could also argue that the multidimensional normalization attempts are rooted in a "post-American" realignment paradigm across the region. Indeed, Washington's reduced interest in the region, coupled with Russia and Chinas growing influence and the toll that competition has taken on the regional powers, have rendered new strategic assessments inevitable. In this sense, normalization attempts have emerged as the most important factor shaping the regions geopolitical atmosphere in the short and medium terms.

Although it is impossible to predict the future course of this period of normalization due to persisting problems linked to the Arab revolts and traditional sources of instability, it goes without saying that a new regional architecture is in the making, which deserves some thought. It remains unclear what the distinguishing features of this new order will be and what exactly that means for the Middle Eastern political order.

Turkiye, in turn, has emerged as part of this new process of normalization and as a country that attempts to manage that process for a variety of reasons. After all, it is directly or indirectly involved in the distinct yet interrelated normalization processes that lay the groundwork for a new regional situation. That new state of affairs adds the idea of a new geopolitical consensus to Turkiye's long-standing list of defense and security-oriented foreign policy parameters.

The Main Reasons behind Normalization

The primary reason behind the regionwide normalization process in the Middle East is the changing nature of the U.S.' engagement with the region, which began during the Trump Presidency and has continued under the Biden Administration. Essentially, Turkiye and the rest of the regional players have made normalization attempts due to the direct and indirect reduction of U.S. involvement in the region. Indeed, the U.S. role and its military presence, which amounted to a security umbrella, and which peaked around the invasion of Iraq, has significantly decreased compared to the past. (3) Whereas great powers like Russia and China appear to have most clearly benefited from the U.S. withdrawal, the truth is that the medium powers, too, are attempting to chart a new course in sync with that process.

In truth, Washington's reduced influence over the region dates back to a choice that the Obama Administration made and by which the Trump and Biden Administrations have abided. It is a widely held belief among the American people and the American elite that the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed. Keeping in mind that both Democratic and Republican U.S. presidents campaigned on withdrawing from the Middle East, it is possible to conclude that Washington won't revisit that decision. Indeed, the Asia-Pacific region remains at the top of the U.S. list of priorities. That does not mean, however, that the U.S. will ignore the delivery of hydrocarbon resources or the question of Israel's security. At the same time, the U.S. has resorted to a comprehensive project of "delegating responsibility" in the region. Instead of engaging in costly interventions in the Middle East, Washington has adopted a strategy of power projection and course-setting through its allies in the region. (4) Israel, the Gulf, Jordan, and Egypt are among those allies. In this regard, Washington's support for the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Gulf as a model offers insights into its new policy toward the region. At this point, it appears that Washington is implementing a policy of deeper, more nuanced engagement with those nations with which it shares a common vision while retreating from the region. In other words, the U.S. withdrawal from the region is merely partial. Despite abandoning Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) amid Yemen's civil war and pursuing a new nuclear deal with Iran, the U.S. has not totally lost its interest in the security of the Gulf. The presence of U.S. military bases across the Gulf attests to that fact. Again, the United States is inclined to maintain a military presence in those regions it perceives as low cost, as evident in its insistence on collaborating with the People's Protection Forces (YPG), a component of the terrorist organization Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), in Syria. Due to Israel's concerns over Iran's growing influence and operations, it is possible that the United States will maintain an interest in the region--albeit in different ways. The level of that interest, however, appears to be too low to satisfy the perceived U.S. allies in the region, including Israel, the Gulf, and Turkiye. That dissatisfaction, in turn, encourages the regional powers to pursue normalization and engage in issue-based cooperation to ensure their national security. Whereas the Chinese presence in the region is considered likely to increase, it remains unclear how Russia will position itself in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine.

The second driving force behind regionwide normalization is that the regional powers have become aware of the limits of their alliances with the great powers, as well as the shortcomings of their own ambitious power projections. The process of change, which the Arab revolts entailed, compelled the regional powers in the Middle East to engage in a challenging struggle to manage that process. Counting on their alliance with the U.S. and Israel, the Gulf states attempted to ensure that the new regional order would uphold the status quo, be anti-Iran and contain Turkiye. Those efforts, which could be described as the pursuit of a "regional design," included weakening Iran in Lebanon and Yemen, where it posed a direct threat, rebuilding the Assad regime in Syria, forcing Palestine to reach a settlement with Israel, containing Turkiye with various instruments, and slowing down Gulf adversaries such as Qatar through economic and even military methods.

Yet the Gulf states, which engaged in such pursuits during the Trump's presidency, could not reach their goals. Iran's resistance, Turkiye's combination of hard power and diplomatic activism, the Gulf's insufficient capacity, and the lack of consistency between Trump's strategy and the claims meant that the attempt to reshape the region achieved nothing more than deepening the chaos. (5)

The failure of those projects, which the regional powers implemented in cooperation with the great powers, led them to reposition themselves to reconcile, cement their gains and strengthen their security and defense sectors. Whereas almost all nations have prepared for or assessed realignment, the UAE and Turkiye have been the leading players on that front. Having made those general points, it would be useful to inspect each...