The missing Saudi factor

The missing Saudi factor

The missing Saudi factor

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s visit to Saudi Arabia was a timely one, giving the largest country of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula its due respect. The Saudi factor was interestingly missing in Turkey’s foreign policy deliberations.
The content of the meetings Davutoğlu had in Jeddah and his promise that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would pay a visit to this oil giant show that this missing factor is going to be re-injected onto the list of major actors in Middle Eastern politics in the minds of Turkish foreign policy makers.Saudi Arabia has been switching roles with Egypt as the leading country of the Arab world. Turkey’s rejuvenated role as a leading actor in the Middle East should have bothered, or at least interested, the Saudis as much as it did the Egyptians. Nothing appeared in the Turkish press about possible or actual deep-down friction between Ankara and Riyadh. This is so despite the fact that King Abdullah was already party to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while he was the crown prince and acting king of his country.
Turkey’s “speak to all the parties in the conflict including Hamas” policy with regard to Palestine should have bothered the Saudis as much as it did the Egyptians. But whereas we saw the embodiment of this discomfort in different forms on the Egyptian side, the Saudis kept silent.
The Saudis kept silent on the Palestinian front for some time. It is as if, upon ascending to the throne officially, King Abdullah realized the existence of other threats and decided to withdraw his mediating arm from among the Palestinian factions. This is particularly strange given the fact that King Abdullah was the brain behind the Arab initiative of March 2002 and that Saudi Arabia was believed to be ready to finance the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and cover the compensation of those that wouldn’t be able to return to their original lands. If Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence chief and apparently the actual ruler of Egypt, is to be seen as the armistice-broker of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, King Abdullah should have been regarded as the peace-financer of the same conflict.
A particular reason for Saudi Arabia’s absence in Turkey’s Middle East performance is Ankara’s unwillingness to be over-identified with Riyadh with regard to its Iran policies. Saudi Arabia feels the highest level of threat from “perceived Iranian expansionism,” and Turkey feels no threat at all. Saudi warplanes have been bombarding the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and it seems that what they are trying to blow up is not the Houthis themselves but the Iranian interests in the region. Saudis believe that Iran is behind the Houthis both strategically and logistically, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support this belief.
Saudi preoccupation with the Yemenite Zaidis is based on Riyadh’s fear that the rebellion can easily spread to the Shiite population of Saudi Arabia as well. This preoccupation also explains Riyadh’s relative silence on issues relating to Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation in Iraq.
With its new foreign policy paradigm, Turkey could no longer remain uninterested in what is going on in Yemen, and Ankara does not have the luxury of neglecting Riyadh’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the unstoppable rise of Hamas. Davutoğlu’s visit should have put the missing Saudi factor in its appropriate place.
Hopefully this visit will also put Turkey in its appropriate place in the minds of Saudi officials. The establishment of a state-run Turkish school in Mecca for the children of Turkish citizens living in the holy city awaits Saudi approval despite the fact that President Abdullah Gül was promised a quick solution during his September visit to Jeddah. Saudis failed to show appropriate care for the preservation of the Ottoman heritage in the holy land in the past, and there have been rumors that the inner portico around the Kaaba is to be removed soon in order to create more space for circumambulation around the House of God. The inner portico is the last Ottoman remnant in this holiest spot of the Muslim world, and its removal will certainly be received in Turkey as an attempt to erase the Ottoman past of the holy precinct.

Source: todayszaman.com

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