About ten years ago, I delivered a presentation on the historical context of Turkey’s political-military aspirations in relation to its membership in NATO. I gave the presentation in Ankara at the official residence of the British Ambassador to Turkey. The audience was made up of students who were studying at a British Ministry of Defense academy and were in Ankara as part of their education and training as well as some accompanying staff. About two-thirds of the students were officers in the Armed forces of the United Kingdom, with the rest drawn from Commonwealth or nations friendly to the UK. My presentation was entirely unclassified and delivered under the Chatham House Rule of non-attribution.
I invited the students to extend their understanding of the roots of rivalries between powers in the region back three thousand years and to see the region as encompassing all the lands between the Black, Aegean, Mediterranean, Red, Arabian, and Caspian seas. Within those parameters, I proposed that there existed a millennia-long rivalry for pre-eminence in the region between Turks, Arabs, and Persians that manifests itself now as rivalry between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. An officer from the Air Force of one of those three nations asked, “What is necessary for one of those three to become dominant in the region?”
After correcting his substitution of “dominant” vice “pre-eminent”, I responded that strong relations with Israel were a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for one of the three aforementioned nations to become pre-eminent in the region. By pre-eminence, I meant being that nation looked up to by other nations for its responsiveness to the needs of its people, being pre-eminent means providing the best quality of life to the greatest number of people of one’s nation. I noted that all three of those nations had tremendous resources, though not identical ones, that in combination with the Israeli’s demonstrated capabilities in research and development, education, entrepreneurship, and business processes would give the nation forging a strong, positive relationship with Israel the capacity to become the pre-eminent power in the region.
As a follow-up, the officer noted that Turkey’s membership in NATO gave it an advantage to develop a deep, positive relationship with Israel. I observed that to realize that advantage, Turkey must set aside its demonstrated preference for stymying NATO efforts to enhance cooperation with Israel as well as other non-NATO nations of the Middle East. I further noted that there was little likelihood that President Erdogan was going to relax his anti-Israel rhetoric. Thus, though he doesn’t interfere with commercial relations between Israel and Turkey, he has little interest in deepening his country’s relationship with Israel.
As for relations between Israel and Iran, which had been quite positive under Shah Reza Pahlavi, as long as the Ayatollahs directed the foreign relations of the Islamic Republic, there was no prospect of improved Israeli-Iranian relations.
I then suggested that if the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wished to become the pre-eminent regional power in the lands between the seas, then it had to decide on improving and deepening its relations with Israel, perhaps not openly lest radical Israel-haters would rage against better Saudi-Israeli relations, but to do so with determination to forge a more positive and mutually beneficial working relationship.
Which brings us to the present moment. In the recent massive Iranian drone and missile attacks on Israel, Arab nations took actions that in effect defended Israel. Now some voices speak of a growing alliance of necessity of Israel and its Sunni Arab neighbors against the terrorist octopus of Shi’a Persian Iran. Perhaps. We shall see, and one must hope that instead of seeking domination of others, nations in the Middle East will seek alliances that secure for their people pre-eminence in the quality of life for the greatest number of their citizens, that is, following a citizen-centric governance policy as Israel already does. We must hope.