ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is hunting for potential electoral allies to bolster the People’s Alliance that he formed with the ultra-nationalist party MHP.

The next elections are not scheduled until June 2023, but the growing popularity of the opposition has made him aware of his vulnerability in a possible snap election.

The unification of the opposition brought victory in key municipalities, including Istanbul and Ankara, during the 2019 local elections. The mayors of both cities are potential presidential challengers to Erdogan.

The Nation Alliance, which stood against People’s Alliance in previous elections, consists of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the right-wing nationalist Good Party (IYI), with the backing of the Islamist-leaning Felicity Party (FP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

However, the FP has been approached by Erdogan in his attempt to broaden his own alliance. He had a meeting with Oguzhan Asilturk, a senior member of the party and a prominent political figure in the Islamist movement in Turkey, on Jan.7, stirring speculations about his motives.

Speaking to reporters the next day about meeting a senior figure in the FP rather than its leader, Erdogan said they discussed a possible future election alliance and the FP’s support in the government’s counterterrorism fight.

The FP, with 2.5 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections, shares the same Islamist roots as the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and is a rising star among religious voters who are disillusioned by the authoritarian rule of Erdogan.

Its leader, Temel Karamollaoglu, has been in close contact with the breakaway parties from the AKP, especially with the leader of the Future Party, Ahmet Davutoglu, as both seek to capitalize on disenchanted AKP supporters in the coming elections by criticizing the rhetoric and one-man rule of Erdogan.

Joining the FP would help the AKP to keep its majority in the parliament, and would also undermine the smaller party’s opposition allies. All small parties need an electoral alliance to enter the parliament because of the 10 percent threshold.

The eroding support of the AKP and the threat to its parliamentary majority is no secret.

The latest survey by Ankara-based polling firm MetroPoll found that support for the AKP has fallen to its lowest point since 2002, when it came to power. It was down to around 30 percent, followed by CHP with 20 percent.

AKP’s ultra-nationalist partner MHP is expected to get only 6 percent, far below the threshold, obliging it to remain in the alliance.

“As Karamollaoglu’s rising power as an opposition figure continues, it won’t be easy for the FP to join the ruling coalition with Erdogan,” Osman Sert, research director at the Ankara Institute, told Arab News.

“FP electorate has now other alternatives with the newly established breakaway parties,” he added.

However, he thinks that Erdogan will continue to search for new coalition members. “Otherwise difficult days are ahead for AKP,” he said.

Levent Basturk, a political scientist who was also a candidate for the FP during March 2019 elections, said the party’s leverage in Turkish domestic politics has been rising since 2015.

“The Felicity Party challenges the polarizing discourse of President Erdogan. Its alliance with the main opposition CHP in the last elections helped the secular segments of Turkish society to reconcile with conservative people,” he told Arab News.

Erdogan has often accused the CHP of being indifferent to the concerns of the conservative people in Turkey, but with the new communication policy of the party, CHP has been reaching out to different segments of society, partly through the support of its electoral alliances.

Basturk thinks that a partnership with the ruling party would scare away a great proportion of the FP’s supporters who are categorically against the AKP.

“If the Felicity Party opts for an electoral alliance with the ruling AKP regardless of the objections coming from its hardcore voters, the party could dissolve in favor of the AKP. Several members of the Felicity Party therefore see the latest attempts of Erdogan as a move to weaken their party,” he said.

According to Basturk, the Felicity Party received an unexpectedly high share of votes in the latest elections with a rhetoric based on its objections to the authoritarianism in the country.

“The Felicity Party will not close all communication channels with the government right now. If it joins the ranks of the government, it will get more seats in the parliament but will be part of the corrupt system and so abolish the reason for its existence,” he said.

NAIROBI: New satellite images of a refugee camp in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region show more than 400 structures have been badly damaged in what a research group believes is the latest “intentional attack” by fighters.

The report by the UK-based DX Open Network nonprofit, shared with The Associated Press, says “it is likely that the fire events of Jan. 16 are yet another episode in a series of military incursions on the camp as reported by (the UN refugee agency).”

The Shimelba camp is one of four that hosted 96,000 refugees from nearby Eritrea when fighting erupted in early November between Ethiopian forces and those of the defiant Tigray region. 

The fighting has swept through the camps and two of them, including Shimelba, remain inaccessible to aid workers. Many refugees have fled.

On Thursday, UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi cited recent satellite imagery of fires and other destruction at the two inaccessible camps as “concrete indications of major violations of international law.”

On Sunday the UN refugee agency urged that it be given access to the camps.

“Until November, 8,700 refugees were registered in Shimelba. We have no information on how many refugees were still in the camp last week,” UN refugee agency spokesman Chris Melzer said in an email. 

“We still have no access to the two northern camps, Shimelba and Hitsats (25,248 refugees registered in November). We demand access since the refugees are without supplies for two-and-a-half months now and we are extremely concerned. We also saw satellite pictures and heard frightening reports. But since we don’t have access we cannot confirm them.”

The new report says the satellite images show “smoldering ruins, blackening of structures and collapsed roofs.” 

It said the structures “match the profile of mud-brick dwellings constructed by the refugees themselves. The attackers likely split into multiple groups going door to door to set fires inside buildings,” consistent with previous attacks on the Hitsats camp, which also is inaccessible.

Neither the UN nor DX Open Network has blamed anyone for the attacks, but the presence of troops from Eritrea, a bitter enemy of the Tigray region’s now-fugitive leaders, has caused alarm. 

Grandi noted “many reliable reports and firsthand accounts” of abuses including the forced return of refugees to Eritrea.

The day after Grandi’s statement, Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel tweeted that “UNHCR seems to indulge, yet again, in another bout of gratuitous & irresponsible smear campaigns against Eritrea.” 

He said Eritrea rejects the “forced repatriation of refugees.”

Thousands of people have fled Eritrea over the years to avoid a system of military conscription.

Fighting continues in parts of the Tigray region. Thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced.

MISSOURI, US: A good many Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere will be celebrating the departure of US President Donald Trump when he leaves office on Jan. 20. 

Those in Iraq will remember when his administration hung them out to dry during their independence referendum, allowing Iran, Baghdad and Shiite militias to attack, while Turkey threatened to blockade them. 

Turkey, meanwhile, had little reason to fear American outcry over its human rights violations as it arrested and jailed thousands of pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) activists and their elected representatives.

And in case this did not prove sufficiently disappointing for the Kurds, Trump withdrew US troops from the Turkish border in northeastern Syria in October 2019, giving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to invade the Kurdish enclaves there and ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands from the area. 

Kurdish forces in Syria, who had just concluded the successful ground campaign against Daesh, found themselves betrayed by a callous and unpredictable American administration. Just days before Trump greenlit the Turkish operation in a phone call with Erdogan, the Americans had convinced the Syrian Kurds to remove their fortifications near the Turkish border to “reassure Turkey.”

Most Kurds therefore look forward to President-elect Joe Biden taking over in Washington. In Turkey, from which roughly half the world’s Kurdish population hails, many hope the new Biden administration will pressure Ankara to cease its military campaigns and return to the negotiating table with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 

At the very least, they hope a Biden-led administration will not remain silent as Erdogan’s government tramples upon human rights in Turkey and launches military strikes against Kurds in Syria and Iraq as well. 

Judging by the record of the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice-president, Kurds may expect some improvements over Trump. But they should also not raise their hopes too high.

One need only recall how Erdogan’s government abandoned the Kurdish peace process in 2015, when the Obama administration was still in power. At that time, the HDP’s improved electoral showing in the summer of 2015 cost Erdogan his majority in parliament. He responded by making sure no government could be formed following the June election, allowing him to call a redo election for November.

Between June and November, his government abandoned talks with the Kurds and resumed the war against the PKK. The resulting “rally around the flag” effect saw Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) improve its showing in November, boosted further by the Turkish army siege of entire Kurdish cities, which in effect disenfranchised them.

Following the November 2015 vote, Erdogan formed a new government with the far-right and virulently anti-Kurdish National Action Party (MHP).

The militarization of Ankara’s approach to its “Kurdish problem” increased even further under the AKP-MHP partnership. In 2015 and 2016, whole city blocks in majority Kurdish cities of southeastern Turkey were razed to the ground as part of the counterinsurgency campaign. In the town of Cizre, the army burned Kurdish civilians alive while they hid in a basement. 

In Sirnak, footage emerged of Turkish forces dragging the body of a well-known Kurdish filmmaker behind their armored vehicle. In Nusaybin, MHP parliamentarians called for the razing of the entire city.  

Urban warfare is never pretty, of course, and the PKK held part of the blame for the destruction as a result of its new urban warfare strategy. Many aspects of the Erdogan government’s counterinsurgency actions of 2015 and 2016 went beyond the pale, however, and should have earned at least some rebukes from Washington.

The Obama administration stayed largely silent during this time. Policy makers in Washington had finally gained Turkish acquiescence to use NATO air bases in Turkey in their campaign against Daesh and Ankara has also promised to join the effort. 

What Obama really received from Ankara, however, were a few token Turkish airstrikes of little significance against Daesh and a rising crescendo of heavy attacks against America’s Kurdish allies in Syria. 

Erdogan’s government duly reported every cross-border strike and various incursions and invasions into Syria as “operations against terrorist organizations in Syria” — conveniently conflating Daesh and the Syrian Kurdish forces.

Turkey even employed former Daesh fighters and other Syrian radical groups among its proxy mercenaries in these operations, further aggravating Syria’s problems with militant Islamists.

The quid pro quo of this arrangement involved Washington turning a blind eye to Turkey’s human rights abuses against Kurds both in Syria and Turkey. Even Turkish airstrikes in Iraq, which at times killed Iraqi army personnel and civilians in places like Sinjar, failed to elicit any American rebukes — under Obama or Trump.

If the new Biden administration returns to the standard operating procedures of the Obama administration regarding Turkey, little may change.

Although a Biden administration would probably not callously throw erstwhile Kurdish allies in Syria or Iraq under the bus as Trump did, they might well continue to cling to false hopes of relying on Turkey to help contain radical Islamists. 

Many in Washington even think Turkey can still help the US counter Russia and Iran — never mind the mountain of evidence that Turkey works with both countries to pursue an anti-American agenda in the region.

Alternatively, Biden may prove markedly different to his incarnation as vice president. Biden knows the region well, has called Erdogan an autocrat on more than one occasion and has repeatedly shown sympathy for the Kurds and their plight in the past. 

In charge of his own administration rather than acting as an aide to Obama’s, Biden could conceivably break new ground regarding Turkey and the Kurds.

If so, he might start by pressuring Turkey to abide by human rights norms. Selahattin Demirtas, the former HDP leader and 2018 Turkish presidential hopeful, as well as tens of thousands of other political dissidents have been languishing in pre-trial detention in Turkey for years now.

In December 2020, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Demirtas’ detention is politically motivated and based on trumped-up charges and that he must be released.  

Although Turkey is a signatory to the court, it has repeatedly ignored such rulings. A more human rights-oriented administration in Washington might join the likes of France and others in pressuring Ankara on such matters.

A determined Biden administration might also try to coax or pressure Ankara back to the negotiating table with the PKK. A return to even indirect negotiations, especially if overseen by the Americans, could go a long way towards improving things in both Turkey and Syria.  

Little more than five years ago, Turkey’s southeast was quiet and Syrian Kurdish leaders were meeting as well as cooperating with Turkish officials.

If Erdogan and his MHP partners nonetheless remain adamant in maintaining their internal and external wars, then Biden should look elsewhere for American partners. 

Biden said as much only last year, expressing his concern about Erdogan’s policies. “What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership … . He (Erdogan) has to pay a price,” Biden said.

Washington should embolden Turkish opposition leaders “to be able to take on and defeat Erdogan. Not by a coup, not by a coup, but by the electoral process,” he added.

This kind of language from the new Biden administration might go a long way towards changing the current policy calculus in Ankara.

____________________

• David Romano is Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University

DUBAI: The US called Bahrain and the UAE “major security partners” early on Saturday, a previously unheard of designation for the two countries home to major American military operations.
A White House statement tied the designation to Bahrain and the UAE normalizing ties to Israel, saying it “reflects their extraordinary courage, determination and leadership.” It also noted the two countries long have taken part in US military exercises.
It’s unclear what the designation means for Bahrain and the UAE.
Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, while the UAE’s Jebel Ali port is the busiest port of call for American warships outside of the US. Bahrain hosts some 5,000 American troops, while the UAE hosts 3,500, many at Al-Dhafra Air Base.
Already, the US uses the designation of “major non-NATO ally” to describe its relationship with Kuwait, which hosts the forward command of US Army Central. That designation grants a country special financial and military considerations for nations not part of NATO. Bahrain also is a non-NATO ally.
The US military’s Central Command and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The 5th Fleet referred queries to the State Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The White House designation comes in the final days of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump forged close ties to Gulf Arab countries during his time in office in part over his hard-line stance on Iran.
That’s sparked a series of escalating incidents between the countries after Trump unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
It also comes after Bahrain and the UAE joined Egypt and Saudi Arabia in beginning to resolve a yearslong boycott of Qatar, that houses Al-Udeid Air Base.

CAIRO: Clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudan’s West Darfur have killed at least 32 people, according to a local medical official, as Sudanese authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew on the province.
Darfur remains scarred by war after a rebellion in the early 2000s was brutally suppressed. The most recent violence comes two weeks after the UN Security Council ended the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force’s mandate in the Darfur region.
Salah Saleh, a doctor and former medical director at the main hospital in the provincial capital of Genena, said the clashes wounded at least 79 others. “It’s horrible,” he said. “Until now, people cannot reach any hospitals.”
Salah warned that the casualty toll was likely much higher. The violence erupted on Friday in Genena, when an Arab man was stabbed to death at a market in the Krinding camp for internally displaced people, aid worker Al-Shafei Abdalla said. He said the suspect was arrested.
On Saturday, the dead man’s family — from the Arab Rizeigat tribe — attacked the Krinding camp, burning most of its houses, said Abdalla.
Gov. Mohammed Abdalla Al-Douma said the government would impose a curfew that would include the closure of all markets and a ban on gatherings across the province. Al-Douma granted security forces and soldiers a mandate to use force to control the situation.
The prime minister’s office in Khartoum said in a statement a high-ranking delegation led by the country’s top prosecutor would head to Genena “to take necessary measures” to re-establish stability in West Darfur. The statement did not give a casualty toll from the clashes.
Adam Regal, a spokesman for a local organization that helps run refugee camps in Darfur, shared footage showing the burned homes and property in the Krinding camp following Saturday’s attack.
The video included graphic images of wounded people with blood-stained clothes. The footage also showed women and children carrying their belongings, allegedly fleeing clashes in the camp.