The proverb “Birds of a feath­er flock togeth­er” has been in use since at least the mid ‑16th cen­tu­ry, so apply­ing it to the new rap­proche­ment between Turkey and Sau­di Ara­bia is apt. It’s close to the cen­tu­ry and val­ues of their respec­tive lead­ers’ mind­sets and actions, and an augury  Pres­i­dent Joe Biden might bear in mind on his upcom­ing Mid­dle East jaunt.

Bare­ly four years after a Sau­di hit squad mur­dered and used a spe­cial­ly-brought bone saw to dis­mem­ber jour­nal­ist Jamal Khashog­gi in their con­sulate in Istan­bul, Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayeb Erdo­gan and Sau­di Arabia’s de fac­to ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (a.k.a. MBS) hugged and air kissed in Ankara. At the time of the crime, Erdo­gan blamed the atroc­i­ty on the “high­est lev­els” of the Sau­di government.
In April this year, Ankara stopped the mur­der tri­al it had been con­duct­ing and trans­ferred the case to Riyadh, a move con­demned by human rights groups.
In the kind of quid pro quo for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump would recog­nise, a state­ment after the two qua­si-dic­ta­tors’ love-fest not­ed that they “expressed deter­mi­na­tion to work on improv­ing eco­nom­ic, mil­i­tary, secu­ri­ty rela­tions” and “espe­cial­ly expressed inter­est in coop­er­a­tion in oil and oil refining.” 

                                        PRAGMATIC VS CYNICAL

The Saud­is and Turks no doubt con­sid­er kiss­ing and mak­ing up “prag­ma­tism”, one of the cor­ner­stones of suc­cess­ful diplo­ma­cy. Cyn­ics might be more inclined to see it as proof that The Bea­t­les had it wrong; mon­ey can buy you love – of a sort, anyway.
In a sly vari­a­tion of that, restric­tions were lift­ed on the screen­ing of TV series, a touch of bread and cir­cus­es for MBS to paci­fy young Saud­is increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed with the social stric­tures of his rul­ing family’s brand of Islam.
The two patho­log­i­cal­ly crit­i­cism-averse lead­ers also agreed to halt “mutu­al neg­a­tive media cov­er­age”, an exer­cise in restrict­ing press free­dom that is hard­ly in keep­ing with Turkey’s aspi­ra­tions to join the Euro­pean Union.
The Turk­ish and Sau­di regimes are in the same flock on the 2021 Free­dom House index. Turkey scored 32/100, while Sau­di trailed at 7/100. Both nations are clas­si­fied as “Not Free”.
In the case of MBS, that’s a reflec­tion of a litany of human rights abus­es, includ­ing con­tin­u­ing crack­downs on free­dom of expres­sion, asso­ci­a­tion and assem­bly and arbi­trary deten­tions of crit­ics and human rights defenders.

                 WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE…

On the part of the Turks, it has much to do with how the gov­ern­ment views and treats its Kur­dish minor­i­ty, which in turn slants Ankara’s world view. The Ukraine con­flict is a case in point, to whit: “…a desire by his­tor­i­cal­ly neu­tral Swe­den and Fin­land to join the alliance — in the ulti­mate snub to Mr Putin and win for the allies — has yet to be acti­vat­ed because of con­cerns by Turkey. Ankara has accused Stock­holm of har­bour­ing Kur­dish militants.”
Turkey’s atti­tude towards and treat­ment of Kurds, their own and any oth­ers they hap­pen to encounter, is a sight not to behold. When Sad­dam Hussein’s forces were allowed to attack Kurds in north­ern Iraq at the end of Gulf War I, one mil­lion of them fled to Iran, some 400,000 to Turkey.

Three CBS col­leagues and I found sev­er­al thou­sand men, women and chil­dren penned in mis­er­able con­di­tions; hun­gry, cold, wracked with dysen­tery, with­out ameni­ties of any kind, just below the snow­line on the Turk­ish side of the moun­tain­ous bor­der. A Dutch con­tin­gent of Medecins Sans Fron­tieres was denied per­mis­sion to set up a des­per­ate­ly need­ed clin­ic in the refugee camp. We video­taped Turk­ish sol­diers beat­ing back women try­ing to bring sick chil­dren to MSF. In a move I applaud to this day, the group’s exas­per­at­ed leader final­ly said to hell with it and barged his con­voy of aid vehi­cles through the mil­i­tary road­block and into the refugee hell-hole.
When half a dozen U.S. Green Berets showed up to help, I men­tioned to a hulk­ing sergeant that the Turks had “mis­treat­ed” refugees. He nod­ded and said: “I know they’re our allies, but I told them if I saw one of them beat­ing up a refugee, he’d get the same back.”   

                     DON’T LOOK UP

The 18th cen­tu­ry Ger­man philoso­pher Arthur Schopenhauer’s quote that “Com­pas­sion is the basis of all moral­i­ty” makes me won­der what that Green Beret thinks today as he sees Turkey and the U.S. cling­ing to the facade that they are allies who share the same val­ues and pur­pose, even when Turk­ish forces attacked Syr­i­an Kurds who fought ISIS along­side Amer­i­can troops.
As a U.S. ally, the Saud­is are no better.
When Pres­i­dent Biden pos­es for his pho­to op with MBS in Riyadh on his upcom­ing Mid­dle East tour, he’s reneg­ing on his pledge that “the days of cozy­ing up to dic­ta­tors [are] over”.
And if join­ing the flock in which Turkey and Sau­di Ara­bia flap togeth­er is “prag­ma­tism”, he might want to tem­per it with the thought that the oft-quot­ed line about a bird shit­ting on your head being good luck isn’t a proverb, it’s a superstition.

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.