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Saudi Arabia turns to Turkey
Saudi Arabia and Turkey have agreed to form a Strategic Cooperation Council to coordinate and develop relations between the countries in terms of economic, political, defense, security, education and health issues. The countries also are discussing military cooperation, especially with regard to Syria.
Author: Ibrahim al-Hatlani
Posted: February 11, 2016
Translator: Sahar Ghoussoub
Comments 3
The custodian of the two holy mosques, Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, received Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu at his palace in Riyadh during the prime minister's official visit Jan. 31.
The high-level Turkish delegation Davutoglu headed included Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Economy Minister Mustafa Elitas, Interior Minister Efkan Ala, Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz, Minister of Transport, Maritime and Communication Minister Binali Yildirim and the chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, Gen. Hulusi Akar.
Following the meeting between the Saudi king and Davutoglu, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir and his Turkish counterpart announced that officials had agreed to implement the Strategic Cooperation Council.
“We will sign [the agreement] in the future and appoint two joint presidents for the council,” Jubeir said. The meeting followed up on discussions in December, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Saudi Arabia.
The final signing of the council agreement is scheduled during Salman's visit to Turkey to participate in the Islamic summit, which is held every three years. The summit’s 13th session will be held in Istanbul from April 10-15 under the auspices of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which was established in September 1969 and includes 57 member states on four continents.
The royal palace in Riyadh welcomed Davutoglu with a luncheon by Salman in the presence of senior Saudi officials, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. The crown prince had visited Ankara in April 2015 a few hours before Erdogan’s visit to Iran, so as to brief Erdogan on Tehran’s security interventions in the Gulf and military interference in Yemen.
The lunch also included the Saudi defense minister and chairman of the Council for Economic and Development Affairs, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who later held a meeting with Davutoglu, given that the deputy crown prince is responsible for the military and economic affairs in Saudi Arabia.
These developments reflect the interest of Saudi Arabia in establishing a strategic partnership with Turkey, which has shown the initiative to achieve a greater understanding with Riyadh on several political issues with regard to Yemen and Syria. Turkey also agreed to join the military anti-terrorism Islamic coalition declared by the Saudi minister of defense in December.
Conversely, the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi did not offer the support Riyadh sought in several political and military stances with regard to Syria, Yemen or Iraq; observers said this reflects Egypt's ingratitude for the kingdom’s support of the Egyptian economy in terms of funds and oil. Saudi Arabia provided more than $8 billion worth of aid to Egypt in 2013 and 2014.
It seems that the Turks are more willing and able — albeit not by receiving any direct financial aid from Saudi Arabia — to show solidarity with the Saudis, starting with Erdogan, who made a scathing criticism of Iran, accusing it of executing a large number of people, during his speech in January against the backdrop of the attacks on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. Erdogan previously accused Iran of seeking to dominate the region in an interview with France 24 in March 2015, declaring his support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen.
This is not to mention Davutoglu’s criticism of Iran’s behavior with its Arab neighbors during his interview with Al-Arabiya channel Feb. 3, although he described Iran as a friendly and neighboring country to avoid raising Tehran’s ire; there is $14 billion in trade between Turkey and Iran.
Moreover, the Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador to Ankara on Jan. 7 to protest Iranian media outlets that had linked Erdogan’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia and Riyadh’s death sentence against Shiite Saudi cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. This is not to mention the Iranian media accusing Erdogan of previously being aware of Riyadh’s decision and of coordinating with Saudi authorities to implement the death sentence against Nimr. These accusations came in response to Erdogan’s statements that the death sentence is a Saudi internal affair.
During his visit to Riyadh, Davutoglu, during his meetings with a number of Saudi businessmen, was keen to persuade them to increase the size of their investments in Turkey.
Turkey seeks, through its new cooperation with Riyadh, to increase Saudi investment in Turkey, which currently amounts to about $2 billion — namely in real estate and other activities such as industry, tourism and energy — to $25 billion by 2023.
Ankara also seeks to obtain a bigger share of development projects in Saudi Arabia to the benefit of 200 Turkish companies operating in the field of construction and contracting, whose investments reached $1 billion during 2015.
According to a report by Al-Hayat newspaper Jan. 11 quoting sources from the Saudi Ministry of Housing and Turkish sources, a group of Turkish companies would land contracts with the Saudi Housing Ministry for the construction of residential units with an area of 300 million square meters (3.2 billion square feet); while the value was not confirmed, there were reports that it could be as much as $240 billion.
Turkey is characterized by its strategic location linking Europe and Asia and its growing and diversified economy under the rule of the Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP). The AKP has implemented an economic program designed to reduce imports, focusing on producing and exporting local products based on local raw materials and establishing international business partnerships with Europe and oil-rich countries in the Middle East.
This is not to mention Turkey’s military power, as it has the second-largest army in NATO with 670,000 soldiers, following that of the United States.
Saudi Arabia is anxiously looking at Iran’s growing power and influence in the Arab region following the relief of international sanctions by Europe, the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency, not to mention lifting the ban on its oil exports, which allowed it to restore half of its frozen assets abroad, amounting to $100 billion.
In this context, Riyadh is turning toward Sunni-dominated Ankara, considering that the close economic, security and military ties have become a strategic need to protect the security of the Gulf and reduce the risk of Iranian influence in the smoldering Arab areas such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Despite the expected benefits on the political and military levels after the cooperation agreement is enacted, and despite the AKP’s positive stance and support of Saudi Arabia and its genuine endeavor to promote cooperation between the two countries, Saudis who are banking on any foreign military and economic alliances should be realistic and cautious in their optimism.
This is especially true since the Turkish government might be powerful and capable inside Turkey, but is not very likely to demonstrate the same influence and power abroad as the Saudis wish — given Turkey’s economic considerations with Iran, and for military reasons, as it is a member of NATO, not to mention the security reasons in light of the battle with armed Kurdish groups at home.
Decision-makers in Riyadh first ought to trust their citizens and enlist those who are willing in the army to increase the armed forces, currently amounting to 233,000 soldiers. However, this number is no longer sufficient for Riyadh, which is currently engaged in different military operations in Yemen and Bahrain, and potentially in Syria and other countries.
Saudi Arabia also ought to take necessary measures in this regard so it will not have to seek help from abroad, especially with 651,000 unemployed people in the kingdom, according to 2014 official statistics. The kingdom also needs a national project to face the Iranian one, as no economic reform can be achieved without real political reforms ensuring the participation of citizens in power and wealth management.
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Are the Saudis ready to fight in Syria?
On Feb. 4, Saudi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri announced that Saudi Arabia is now ready to send ground troops to Syria to fight the Islamic State (IS). Saudi Arabia is part of the international anti-IS coalition led by the United States since September 2014. However, when it launched the war in Yemen to fight the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels almost a year ago, its priorities shifted and its airstrikes on IS subsided. In December, it launched a new Muslim anti-IS coalition, but this, too, remains ambiguous as a strategy and may be interpreted as yet another attempt by the Saudi regime to seek Islamic backing against its rival and archenemy, namely Iran. It is important to understand why the Saudis announced they are now willing to venture into the troubled waters of Syria with ground troops, allegedly to fight IS.
Author: Madawi Al-Rasheed
Posted: February 10, 2016
Comments 36
The 2014 Saudi airstrikes on IS were viewed by many as a symbolic gesture to convince the international community of its commitment to fight terrorism. Saudi support for various radical rebel groups in Syria, together with the ideology of IS that resembles radical Saudi religious interpretations, had prompted some observers to doubt Saudi commitment to fight terrorism. Hence the announcement to launch airstrikes on IS came at a time when the Saudi regime became increasingly suspicious in the eyes of some international commentators. The occasional airstrikes took place when King Abdullah was still king, but by the time he died in January 2015, they became extremely rare and hardly publicized in the domestic and international press.
The war on IS remained a sidelined priority for the Saudi regime as long as it was engaged in a more important southern war in Yemen. The rise of King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud to power in January 2015 inaugurated a new era of direct military intervention in Yemen, which became the primary focus for his son, Mohammed bin Salman, the newly appointed young minister of defense and deputy crown prince.
It is doubtful that serious Saudi ground troops will be deployed in Syria despite the announced and heavily publicized promise. It must be mentioned that the regime struggled to assemble an Arab coalition willing to send ground troops to Yemen and seemed unwilling to go to war in Yemen alone. The regime counted on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, and only a handful of willing countries outside the GCC promised support. Saudis seem to have failed to convince major Arab countries such as Egypt to actively participate in any ground offensive in Yemen. Similarly, Pakistan was reluctant to join the Saudi war efforts for its own domestic reasons. So Saudi Arabia ended up fighting this war with the help of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and countries in Africa. The main strategy of this war remains airstrikes rather than ground offensives, perhaps because of the fear of serious casualties among Saudi troops should they be heavily deployed on the ground. Without substantial ground troops, the war in Yemen is still far from achieving its declared objectives, mainly the return of the exiled Yemeni government to Sanaa and the end of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebellion. Instead, the war has led to serious Yemeni civilian deaths and the near total destruction of the meager Yemeni infrastructure.
The Saudi army has not had extensive experience in fighting on the ground beyond its own borders and may find itself in serious trouble should its leadership decide to venture into Syria. The Saudi army’s much publicized heroic performance during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 is not to be dwelled on too much given that almost 500,000 foreign, mainly US, troops took part in expelling the Iraqi army from the small Gulf emirate.
One does not need to be a military strategist to know that any Saudi troops on the ground in Syria will find themselves face to face with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s remaining army and under heavy shelling by Russian fighter jets. Moreover, Saudi ground troops in Syria will also be fighting the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah fighters, who had been supporting the Assad regime, together with other Shiite militia that had been supporting the Syrian regime and fighting IS and similar rebel groups. Needless to say that such military engagements will definitely be bloody beyond imagination given the rise in sectarian tension between Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Shiites in general in the Levant and beyond. The recent Saudi execution of the dissident Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Jan. 2 added to this tension that is now difficult to cool down or even contain.
But if the Saudi regime does send ground troops to Syria under some kind of Turkish umbrella as anticipated, from the very beginning their mission will have to be clear. The Saudi regime needs to decide whether its troops are there to fight IS or support various Syrian rebels who are now under tremendous pressure since the Russian airstrikes began in October 2015. The Russian intervention was clear from the very beginning when Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced on Oct. 2 that his strikes target terrorists who are broadly defined as “if it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist — it’s a terrorist.” The Saudis do not have such a vision or definition of terrorism. Thus, it is difficult to anticipate who the Saudi troops will pledge to fight despite the announcement that ground troops will be fighting IS.
The shift in the balance of power between Assad on the one hand and the rebels on the other may have been seriously changed after the Russian intervention, which has prompted the Saudi announcement to send ground troops.
In any case, direct ground military intervention by the Saudis in favor of Syrian rebels or to fight IS may be unlikely given that the war in Yemen is far from being won. More important, the Saudi regime must seriously worry about sending its own troops to a conflict zone such as Syria where global and local fighters have been entrenched in what seems to be an unending sectarian war with no real winner on the horizon. The Saudi regime must also think about the repercussions if its own troops engage IS fighters on the ground. How would Saudi domestic opinion deal with such a possibility, albeit an unlikely one? Sending ground troops to Syria may become fatal for a regime that is yet to decide whether its aggressive regional interventions are actually beneficial or affordable. These are unanswered questions that the new Saudi leadership must think about before starting yet another adventure farther in the north.
First, it requires the imposition of sanctions penalties on those who conduct business with North Korea in support of its various illicit acts. Although most of the types of business support identified are already potentially sanctionable under US law, under the new law, the imposition of penalties would be mandatory unless the President waives their application rather than being held solely in his discretion as is largely the case today.