Qatar and Turkey: Toxic Allies in the Gulf
Qatar and Turkey: Toxic Allies in the Gulf
- “Iran’s continued support of the Hezbollah terrorist organization with both financial and political assistance, as well as weapons and tactical training, deserves close examination. Western diplomats and Lebanese analysts estimate that Iranian financial support for Hezbollah averages around $100 million each year, sometimes reaching amounts closer to a quarter of a billion dollars…. All of these activities pose a direct threat to U.S. security interests, contribute to the prolonging of conflicts across the Middle East, and pose threats to our key allies in the region.” — US Representative Ted Budd, member of the Financial Services Committee and its Terrorism and Illicit Finance Subcommittee.
- Why not consider expanding the US deployment at Al-Dhafra airbase in the United Arab Emirates as a replacement for the airbases used by the US in Qatar and Turkey, if the UAE accept the idea?
- If one nation is able to defy or undermine U.S. policy while still pocketing the benefits of America’s friendship, many others may follow Qatar’s example. Why should other Arab nations endure domestic criticism
,for supporting America’s war on terror if they can subvert America but still enjoy America’s military protection and their access to the world’s largest market?
These days, America has more trouble with its allies than its enemies.
Consider the strange case of Turkey and Qatar, two putative American allies. Both nations host essential U.S. air bases while supporting Islamist political parties, increasingly cooperating with Iran, America’s most determined enemy in the region, and actively subverting U.S. policy in the region.
Questions began with the arrest of Andrew Brunson, an American-born Christian pastor who has lived in Turkey for 23 years without incident. Then, on October 7, 2016 Brunson and his wife Norine were seized as alleged coup plotters. Norine was released after being held for 13 days, without any charges being filed. Andrew Brunson has remained in detention since 2016 and the charges, when they finally appeared, were numerous and impossible to believe. Example: Brunson is a part of Mormon-inspired CIA plot to topple Turkey’s elected government. (Brunson is not Mormon and has no known CIA connections.) If convicted, he faces up to 35 years in prison.
Turkey revealed its true intentions when it offered to exchange Brunson for Fethullah Gülen, a self-exiled Turkish Islamic cleric who lives in Pennsylvania. The Turkish government believes that Gülen and his alleged “Fethullah Gülen Terror Organization” are behind the July 2016 alleged attempted “coup” against the Turkish government. Dissidents maintain that the “coup” was manufactured to give the elected Islamist government cover to purge pro-secular senior military officers, opposition politicians and critical journalists. For more than a decade, Turkish politics has been roiled by a debate about undoing many of secular traditions and laws enacted at the founding of modern Turkey in the 1920s, but now moving toward a more Islamic model that is friendlier to Iran’s Islamic dictatorship and less so toward the US and the EU. Brunson apparently became a pawn in a larger chess game.
Enter President Donald J. Trump, who has publicly called for Brunson’s release while privately rejecting the idea of turning over Gülen, a legal U.S. resident, to a foreign court system unlikely to give him a fair trial in a charged political environment. Next, Trump piled on economic sanctions to try to spring the jailed American pastor. more at https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12917/qatar-turkey-toxic-allies
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