Turkey's rulers seek a "pious generation" amidst a threatening region

Turkey continues to present a mosaic of contradictory policies and positions to the world as its June 7 parliamentary elections near. The elections will decide the makeup of the 550 members of the Grand National Assembly, and the elected members will form the 25th Parliament of Turkey.


Turkey has a population of nearly 75 million people, compared to Egypt's 82 million and Germany's 80 million. The country sits strategically between Europe and the Arab world, and it has a turbulent history with its neighbors. Graphic from thesmokingnun.wordpress.com

From wikipedia, we read, "The governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) will seek a fourth consecutive term in government. Its leader, Ahmet Davutoğlu, will seek a full term as Prime Minister of Turkey in his own right, having taken over from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in August 2014. The AKP's goal is likely to be to win more than 330 seats in order to have the right to put constitutional changes to a referendum, or more ideally 367 seats to bypass a referendum and change the constitution directly within parliament."

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, campaigning for his AKP party which is expected to gain a majority of seats in the June 7th election. Such a majority in turn would allow him to adjust the country's constitution to reflect his own vision of the nation and Turkey's leadership in the region. Photo from The Economist with the article here.

So what direction is Erdogan, with his party, wanting to take Turkey?

As a recent BBC article (found here) put it, "Under the 12-year rule of the Islamist-rooted AK Party, constitutionally-secular Turkey has fundamentally changed. There is now a push to raise a "pious generation"

The article continues, "The government has constantly stressed its vision of stay-at-home mothers, urging three children per family. Last year, the deputy prime minister told women not to laugh in public; the president recently insisted that men and women were "not made equal".

And from the Economist article noted above, "seen against the background of his recent behaviour, Mr Erdogan’s plans for a strong presidency are troubling. He has dismantled checks on his power. His approach is majoritarian and divisive: so long as his party wins elections, it can trample any critics. Critical newspaper groups have been subjected to capricious tax fines. Columnists have been fired. Turkey had more journalists in jail than any other country until the middle of last year, when a clutch of 40 were let out. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group, ranks it 149th of 180 countries for press freedom, above Russia but below Venezuela.

The authorities have often tried to close off access to critical websites and social media. In the second half of 2014, Turkey filed 477 requests to Twitter to remove content, five times more than any other country. And since Mr Erdogan became president, 105 people have been indicted for insulting the head of state.

Attacks on the media and a harsh crackdown on the protests in Gezi Park in Istanbul two years ago deepened a rift with the supporters of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim preacher. The Gulenists, formerly Mr Erdogan’s allies against the army and the secular establishment, have now become enemies. The battle with them intensified after tape recordings of AK officials taking bribes were leaked. Mr Erdogan promptly reassigned hundreds of policemen, prosecutors and judges who were looking into cases of alleged graft."


President Erdogan has raised the debate with Fethullah Gulen, a former imam, who is self-exiled in the U.S. Gulen, who has millions of Turkey supporters, "teaches an Anatolian version of Islam, deriving from Sunni Muslim scholar Said Nursî's teachings. Gülen has stated that he believes in science, interfaith dialogue among the People of the Book, and multi-party democracy. He has initiated such dialogue with the Vatican and some Jewish organizations" according to Wikipedia. Photo from The Guardian

Gülen is actively involved in the societal debate concerning the future of the Turkish state, and Islam in the modern world. He has been described in the English-language media as an imam "who promotes a tolerant Islam which emphasises altruism, hard work and education"

Turkey's contradictions and tensions abound.

Even as Erdogan states clearly where his citizens should head, there is increasing discord by a variety of minorities within Turkey itself. Izmir, Turkey's third largest city and on its westernmost coast, is home to the opposition CHP party, which is the party of modern Turkey's founding father, Kemal Ataturk. The party is adamantly secular, strongly pro-women's rights, and nervous about the AKP's push to Islamicize the population. It made recent news by holding women bicycle rallies to offer a different vision for women rather than accepting a subservient Islamic role.


Izmir women on bicyles - a threat to Erdogan's pious generation? Photo from the BBC


Not to be outdone, President Erdogan also rode a bicycle with a few of his friends and bodyguards during a recent 51st Presidential tour. Photo from http://www.demotix.com

At that same time, it is unclear as to how Erdogan's party will interact with its restive Kurdish population in the east of the country. Most readers will remember the outrage in Turkey over Erdogan's passiveness as Kurds in Kobane were under siege by ISIS. His inaction over Kobane undermined his bright spot over the past decade in attempting to better integrate Turkish Kurds into the country as a whole. The still potent separatist Kurdish PKK remains firmly secular with both men and women serving equally in its ranks, and is unlikely to line up behind Erdogan's piety.

Regarding Turkey's neighbors in an increasingly broken region of the world, Erdogan continues to confound his allies and potential partners.

Erdogan has become hostile towards Israel, a recent ally, while savagely opposing Syria's Assad. Yet while Turkey spends 2.4 % of its gross national product - about $18 billion - on its military, a number that puts it among the countries that spend the most on their militaries (and shames most European countries who have let themselves grow woefully weak in their ability to meaningfully confront Russia's aggressiveness in Ukraine and the Baltic nations), the country is aloof in participating in a Sunni-led alliance against the Syrian leader.


The Turkey-Syria Akcakale border in southern Sanliurfa province. One of many flashpoints that face Turkey as the Syrian civil war lumbers tragically towards a somber conclusion. Photo from Australian Broadcasting Company

Erdogan was borderline hysterical with indignation at the recent movement - from the UN to western media - to accept the definition of genocide by Turkey 100 years ago towards Armenians, leaving many would-be allies unsure of the nation's ability to confront its own history.

Time will tell through the rest of 2015 where Turkey heads, there are the elections in just less than a week, a possible end game in Syria between Hezbollah and Assad vs ISIS and other rebel groups, a restive Kurd population with new discomforts with Erdogan and a long affinity with the Kurds of Iraq. Whither Erdogan's hope for his pious generation.

The Pope names a truth

Wednesday, April 15, 2015 at sundown, begins Israel's Holocaust Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, based on the start of the Warsaw ghetto uprising during WWII. It varies between April 7 and May 7 each year. January 27 is the official UN International Holocaust Day, begun in 2015. As most readers know, Israel's holocaust day and the UN remembrance itself is divisive - whole peoples deny or downplay the accuracy of the Holocaust figures. And some nations to this day would apparently love to see another Israeli holocaust occur ...

But there are other events of genocide, attempted genocide, or the vague "acts of genocide" that the US President Clinton tried to parse during the Rwandan darkness in 1994. And unlike many nations who calculate their response carefully, Pope Francis this past week stormed the citadel of obfuscation and declared the massacre of Armenians during World War I as this past century's first genocide that should not be forgotten.


Pope Francis speaking in very non-diplomatic terms ... a few days ago. Photo as published at kelmih.com

From a CNN posting, ""In the past century, our human family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies," the Pope said at a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian massacres.

"The first, which is widely considered 'the first genocide of the 20th century,' struck your own Armenian people," he said, referencing a 2001 declaration by Pope John Paul II and the head of the Armenian church.


One can ponder the clothing and the costumes of the Catholic and Armenian churches leadership (no shortage of symbolism and ceremony there), but sharp words can nonetheless pierce through the glitter. Pope Francis in white, the head of Armenia's Orthodox Church Karekin II, right, and Catholicos Aram I, left. (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)

Pope Francis has made a number of utterances that have offended many. He has criticized growing economic inequality and unfettered markets; an excessively top-down Catholic Church hierarchy, asked for more tolerance of gays, turned away from the more lavish features of the papal lifestyle, washed the feet of convicts, has repeatedly called for greater efforts to lift up the world’s poor, denounced the killing and persecution of Christians in the past year, and said spanking children isn't all bad. For his troubles, nearly everyone is unhappy with something he has had words for, but also a bit more tuned in to what he might say next.

The mass killings of Armenians by the disintegrating Ottoman Turk empire during and after World War I is still a matter of debate as to which label to use, though the numbers 1 to 1.5 million are generally accepted. Graphic from www.armenocide.am

Modern day Turkey's response

Somewhat mystifyingly, Turkey's leadership today, under the somewhat erratic leadership of President Erdogan went "postal." As the Deutsch Welle news agency reported, "Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday accused Pope Francis of spouting "nonsense" and warned the pontiff not to make "such a mistake again." "We will not allow historical incidents to be taken out of their genuine context and be used as a tool to campaign against our country," Erdogan said in his first reaction to the pope's comments.

Not to be outdone, another "outraged" response came from Volkan Bozkir, Turkey’s minister for European affairs, who significantly upped the ante on his colleagues by suggesting that Argentines as a whole, and not just the pope, had been brainwashed by rich and powerful Armenians in their midst," so reports an article by the New York Times. Turkey recalled its ambassador to the Vatican.


Turkey's President Erdogan defending the honor of his country's past. He also has an interesting take on extremism at least when it occurs in countries other than his own. For example, regarding the killings in France at the beginning of this year, he has what one describes as "an unwavering belief that jihadi terrorism is caused by Islamophobia and thus victims such as the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists have it coming to them due to their actions ..." (read full article here) Photo from www.balkaneu.com

Here are a few remarks by Pope Francis from this NY Times article,

"In addressing the Armenian question, Francis quoted from a 2001 declaration by Pope John Paul II and Catholicos Karekin II, the Armenian Apostolic Church’s supreme patriarch, in which the two leaders called the Armenian slaughter a campaign of extermination that was “generally referred to as the first genocide of the 20th century.”

Vatican diplomats have been deliberately prudent in avoiding the term, so in using it during the Mass on Sunday, before an audience that included the Armenian president, Serzh Sargsyan, Francis clearly intended to provoke a response. He equated the fate of the Armenians with the genocides orchestrated by the Nazis and the Soviets under Stalin, while also condemning “other mass killings, like those in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia.”

“It seems that humanity is incapable of putting a halt to the shedding of innocent blood,” Francis said. “It seems that the human family has refused to learn from its mistakes caused by the law of terror, so that today, too, there are those who attempt to eliminate others with the help of a few, and with the complicit silence of others who simply stand by.”

The bottom line response from Turkey's Erdogan is that criticism against his country is a form of hate speech.

Interesting how labels are applied freely - what would George Orwell have to say ...

Some individuals caught within larger events

A rather vague theme this time, but I think I'm trying to recognize individuals, who in turn represent the human face of larger forces and events. Hang in there.

A teacher trainee stands up

In Germany, from a report by the German news agency, Deutche Welle, "Tugce Albayrak, a German citizen of Turkish origin, was the victim of a violent attack earlier this month. Reports indicate the student from Gelnhausen intervened on behalf of two girls who were being harassed by three males near the restroom area of a McDonald's restaurant. Thereafter, and in circumstances that have yet to be clarified, the scene shifted to the fast food restaurant's car park, where an 18-year-old male punched her, causing her to fall and hit her head on a stone."

Since that incident (and after this rather dry reccounting), her decision to step in has created a frenzy of attention, right up to the German President, Joachim Gauck, being called upon to posthumously award her the Federal Order of Merit. In gathering a bit of her background, Ms Albayrak, 23, and a teacher trainee, we find the longer story.


Tugce Albayrak, a second generation German citizen, from an immigrant Turkish family. Photo from hellogiggles.com

From an article by the UK Guardian, "The Albayrak family arrived in Germany in the late 1970s – following the route of many a Turkish Gastarbeiter, or guest worker, before them – from an Anatolian village called Bahadin, and settling in the western state of Hesse.

“Tugce’s grandfather had been working at the Opel carplant in Russelsheim for several years ... his wife joined him and decided to bring the five children over,” At the start, life was hard. “It was us, the Turks, and them, the Germans,” she said. “Integration did not exist” said one of the original five children. By and by, all five children gave birth. There were to be a succession of nine boys before Tugce came along in 1991. “She was our first princess,” says Uncle Yasni. “We treasured her all the more for that.”

Tugce’s parents – her father works at a car plastics production plant and her mother as a clinical assistant – were seen as particularly exemplary amongst the Turkish diaspora for the way they encouraged their children’s education – something they had no access to themselves. Tugce was in her second year at university, training to be a secondary school teacher of German and ethics. “She was a very good student and an extremely popular person,” a university spokeswoman said."

A bright light in what is mainly a more somber story of Germany's Turkish workers not integrating well, and not being well received over the past several decades.

Indian girls fight back

In India, where there exists a common sentiment of disdain for women, two young sisters resisted the verbal and physical abuse of three young men on a public bus.

From www.huffingtonpost.co.uk, "footage of two Indian sisters has emerged showing them beating three men with belts who allegedly tried to molest them on a bus. The men are reported to have blown kisses and passed notes before subjecting them to lewd comments.

The sisters, Aarti and Pooja, were then reportedly thrown off the vehicle as it was still moving and further assaulted. No one came to their aid throughout the incident and a fellow passenger apparently said: "Leave these boys or they will rape you or pour acid. They will kill you and no one even get your bodies."


The two sisters, Aarti and Pooja Kumar, 22 and 19, after being discouraged by police from pursuing their case, have suddenly become social media heroines. Photo from http://www.ibtimes.co.uk

Unfortunately, the article continues, ""Passengers in the bus stopped us from calling the police. We were thrown out of moving bus & then conductor told us to file police complaint, but by that time they had all escaped." Police have said the matter is under investigation but have drawn criticism for their slow response. The girl's father, Rajesh Kumar, said officials were even trying to pressurise them not to pursue the matter."

Since the event has become internationally known, we learn (from the ib times in the UK) "The three alleged assailants have been arrested and remanded in custody for 14 days but residents in their village of Kandla have mounted a protest demanding their immediate release. ...Meanwhile, the bus driver has also been suspended for failing to take action during the fight."

A young American boy offers free hugs

In the US, tensions from the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, following a grand jury decision to not indict a white police officer who shot and killed a black teen in an altercation, broke across the nation with street protests. In Portland, Oregon, a 12 year old boy offered free hugs as an alternative to angry actions.


From an article in the UK Daily Mail, a 12-year-old black boy, Devonte Hart, with tears in his eyes, embraced a white police officer, Portland Police Sgt. Bret Barnum (Photo from article)

Kenyan laborers pay dearly

In Kenya, repeating a bus massacre from just 10 days earlier, over 30 Kenyan quarry workers near the northeast city of Mandera where rounded up by al-Shabab extremists, asked what their religion was, and those not Muslim were executed.

Victims being removed from scene of the attack. There were no heroics here, just innocent workers caught up in a vicious war where militants perpetrate incidents and the security forces apparently not up to the task. Photo from www.independent.co.uk

The incident like most of the above has quickly mushroomed into a larger event. From the UK Independent, "Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta, has scrambled to restore confidence in his leadership with a security reshuffle after Islamist gunmen shot and beheaded 36 labourers at a quarry in north-eastern Kenya in the second such massacre in less than a fortnight.

Amid growing criticism over his failure to tackle the security threat, Mr Kenyatta fired his Interior Minister, replacing him with the opposition figure and retired army General Joseph Ole Nkaissery, and accepted the resignation of the national police chief David Kimaiyo. ...

The attacks have highlighted the Kenyan government’s failure to provide security in vulnerable and remote border areas, where decades of underinvestment in public security have left the police thinly spread, and militants are able to move easily across the porous border from war-torn Somalia, either by paying off underpaid police officers or by avoiding the scarce patrols."

PS. Kenyan President Kenyatta, of course, is himself in danger of being tried by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for his role in inflaming ethnic violence after the country's 2007 presidential election.

Teatree can think of many others who could have been noted here .. a list of individuals caught up in larger struggles, some emerging as momentary heroes, while others dying.

Turkey follows its own course: disappointing the West, infuriating its Kurdish citizens

One hesitates to write even MORE on the ISIS attack on a Syrian town, Kobani (or Korbane), located on the border with Turkey, but there are a few points worth emphasizing.

The situation

The town sits on the Turkey/Syria border - quite a new city, beginning in 1912 as a railway station. Before the Syrian civil war erupted nearly three years ago, its population was 44,000 and distributed among Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, and Armenians. Of interest, it was built by Germany, as part of the Berlin-Baghdad railway. (As the first World War raged, Armenians fleeing vicious fighting in eastern Turkey found shelter here - setting up a fascinating sidetrip into the raging controversy about an Armenian genocide by Turkey of old.) In 2012, as Syria was disintegrating,Syrian Kurds took control of the city as a base from which to fight against President Assad, as well as fend off the more extreme of the Islamist groups.


Called Ayn al-Arab by Arabs, and Kobani by Kurds, pictures of this town before the recent ISIS attacks are not easy to find ... Photo from hereandnow.wbur.org

Today, of course, the whole world is aware that the town is under siege by ISIS forces, who have already overrun the many villages around the region. The result, so far, is 400,000+ residents of the region are now on the move (internally displaced refugees), with 100,000+ of that number having fled across the border into Turkey.


As in any conflict, the fleeing precedes the fighting. Here Kobani residents (and from the surrounding countryside) stack up against the border with Turkey, waiting to get in. Photo from johnib.wordpress.com

If one just accepts the main thrust of Western coverage of this situation, we will be pulling our hair out, asking why our Western ally Turkey - a NATO member, and EU candidate - isn't leaping to the defense of the mainly Kurdish fighters in the city defending it against the ISIS advance. Subsequently, we are exasperated and bewildered by Turkey's lack of response.

And we've been treated again and again to three major types of images: Refugees watching their city falling slow motion to the fanatical ISIS, a rather lethargic line of U.S. jets merely pestering ISIS with a take-out of a vehicle here and there, and finally, a row of Turkish tanks squatting on the same hillside awaiting further orders.


A view of the hostilities from inside the Turkish border. Photo from www.novosti.rs


An explosion from a U.S jet strike in the city. Photo from www.ekurd.net


The most baffling, and well photographed, image of the past two weeks. Turkish tanks in a line near the border of Syria, facing Kobani. Meant to intimidate ISIS?, project potent power to the world?, or simply content (on order of the government in Ankara) to watch two of Turkey's foes fight each other. Photo from matometesimaxtuta.blog.fc2.com

What is going on?

The Turkish calculation

Simply put, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan doesn't view ISIS as his most immediate threat. Rather, he views Turkey's Kurdish population as potentially a bigger concern, most likely to his own power.

Turkey President Erdogan, walking a tightrope between the Syrian conflict (he wants Assad out); ISIS (he wants Western allies to handle it), and the defense of Kobani (he's not in a hurry to help the PKK Kurds).

Turkey's current boundaries, as so many others in the Middle East, are arbitrary, and in this country's case, include a broad swath of ethnic Kurd lands. Their inclusion in Turkey for nearly 100 years (based in the agreements after World War 1) has long been a struggle. Wikipedia puts it thus, "During the 1970s, the [Kurdish] separatist movement coalesced into the Marxist–Leninist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has since been listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey and a number of allied states and organizations around the world, including the United States, NATO, and the European Union. From 1984 to 1999, the Turkish military was embroiled in a conflict with the PKK." With the capture of the PPK leader, Abdullah Öcalan in 1999, the violence has since then tapered off, with desultory efforts by the government to unite the country in various manners.


Kobani, Syria - a Kurdish city located right on the border with Turkey. Go south from the "Y" in Turkey, heading to the "R" in Syria, and the town is right where that little bump is in the border. It is being defended by Kurds primarily aligned with the PKK. But one must admit that in spite of almost breathless Western concern for the city and its population, most of the residents have long fled, and the city isn't an ancient one.

From a Voice of America article, "Kobani was a test case for Kurdish autonomy, said Professor Ibrahim Sirkeci of Regents University in London. “They set up communes there. So it was kind of a little self-rule case study,” said Sirkeci. ... Kurds in Turkey have reacted angrily to Ankara’s stance and accuse the government of supporting the Islamic State. Riots in several cities have killed scores of people.

Kurdish separatists known as the PKK fought a decades-long war against the Turkish state, until peace talks began last year. Professor Sirkeci said Ankara is wary of strengthening the Kurds. “If you support PKK or fight against ISIS today in northern Syria, that will mean directly strengthening the PKK, and making it a stronger party in the negotiations, particularly within Turkey as part of the peace process,” he said.

Ankara does not share the Western view of the Kurds as allies, according to [Michael Stephens, head of the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar]. “They have made a calculation that ISIS and the administration of Kurdish Syria are both bad guys, and if ISIS wins it’s probably the lesser of two evils,” ...

He said allowing the fall of Kobani would backfire on Turkey. “I think in the long run it’s a disastrous policy simply because there are two other Kurdish cantons [in Syria], much larger with much better defenses, which won’t be taken. And are those going to be friendly to Turkey in the future? Absolutely not,” said Stephens."

P.S.

The PKK has labeled its forces People's Protection Units (YPG) while the Kurdish fighters in Iraq are called Peshmerga. Kurds across the two lands - the autonomous Kurd region in Iraq, and the eastern portion of Turkey - both freely utilize women as fighters and support personnel (similar to Israel).


Female YPG fighters and commanders in the PKK. Photo from revolution-news.com

For women fighters or for men, there is no mercy shown to any captured by ISIS.


A reminder of the brutish savagery of ISIS. Here a happy extremist holds the head of a female Syrian Kurd fighter. Photo from en.shiapost.com

So, there we stand.

* The Kurds of Turkey (and apparently those in Northern Syria) are NOT those of the Kurdish lands of Iraq.

* Erdogan has already angered Turkish Kurds by preventing a flow of Kurdish fighters wanting to cross back into Syria to defend Kobani, as well as controlling the extent of arms and ammunition heading to the Kurds in the besieged town.

* Though Turkey has provided safe haven for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, including Syrian Kurds, Erdogan has now sent the message to the Kurds of Turkey that the Kurds of Syria are NOT worth Turkish blood.

* Thus he risks a general re-alienation of the eastern portion of his country negating prior efforts to integrate Kurds into the mainstream of Turkish society.

* Kobani may yet be lost to ISIS, a massacre of the remaining population in the city may or may not happen. Journalists report that several hundred elderly remain trapped in the city, but solid numbers and facts are hard to come by.

* The fate of Kobani is hardly the end of the conflict with ISIS, but it may represent the beginning of a much bigger internal problem for Turkey.

The Syrian civil war spreads, and morphs towards a Sunni-Shia confrontation

The Syrian civil war is heating up and spreading, more countries are finding themselves pulled closer to the conflict.

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In spite of many nations hopes this conflict would find a solution in the past two years, negotiations have gone nowhere ...

Regarding the US, as the Wall Street Journal put it a few days ago, "It took two years, 93,000 casualties, the use of chemical weapons, and the growing prospect of victory by strongman Bashar Assad and his Iranian patrons, but President Obama has finally decided to arm the Syrian rebels." The question remains who to arm: moderate rebel groups are the preference, but over time those factions have been diminished compared to the rising influence and military prowess of the extremist rebels (al-Qaeda affiliates), and then with what type and amounts of weaponry. I guess we'll find out.

Is this the look of things to come in Syria?

Now Egypt has shut down official diplomatic contacts with Bashar al-Assad. As a CBS news article yesterday noted, "Egypt's Islamist president announced Saturday that he was cutting off diplomatic relations with Syria and closing Damascus' embassy in Cairo, decisions made amid growing calls from hard-line Sunni clerics in Egypt and elsewhere to launch a "holy war" against Syria's embattled regime.

Mohammed Morsi told thousands of supporters at a rally in Cairo that his government was also withdrawing the Egyptian charge d'affaires from Damascus. He called on Lebanon's Hezbollah to leave Syria, where the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group has been fighting alongside troops loyal to embattled President Bashar Assad against the mostly Sunni rebels. "Hezbollah must leave Syria. This is serious talk: There is no business or place for Hezbollah in Syria," said Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president."

Egypt's leader Morsi is being called a co-conspirator with the US and Israel, of all things, by Syria. He has openly called for a no-fly zone in Syria to protect rebel held areas.

As mentioned in the CBS quote, Sunni clerics started issuing calls for jihad last week against Assad and his new supporter, Hezbollah. And with those calls, the division between the two main Islamic streams of doctrine are becoming more apparent and strident.

Sunni Muslims are by far the largest of the two groupings. The division stems from a dispute after the death of the Prophet Mohammed over who would next guide the Muslim faith. Iran's Shia revolution in 1979 increased the tensions between the two groups as well, leading to a quiet but serious rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran.

Just to be clear - there are plenty of terrorist/extremists groups in both camps. The Sunni perspective has the clear lead with al-Qaeda (and all its affiliates across North Africa), the Taliban, Chechnyan groups, and Hamas. The Shia have their own, on the other hand, in the form of Hezbollah.

Headgear and clothing. Sunnis wear kerchiefs ...

Shiites prefer turbans ...

And in both divisions, the closer or purer (or more extreme) perspectives of Islam become in regard to women, they "get" to dress like this.

The latest outrage from Sunni extremist attacks on women occurred in the past two days in Quetta, Pakistan, where a bomb on a bus killed 14 female students and injured 22, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants attacked a hospital treating survivors, where they killed another 11 people. Educated women are apparently a huge threat and offense to these extremists. But control of women's activities and clothing extend throughout the faith - honor killings, voting restrictions, and even limits driving are in evidence everywhere.

At the moment, we have Shia Iran supporting Shia Assad, with the help of Shia Hezbollah. The Sunni Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar have been quietly but actively supporting the Sunni-dominated Syrian rebels - in which the more extremist forms are in the ascendancy.

Iraq is becoming fragile as Sunni extremists are blowing up Shia civilians with increasing intensity, Sunni Jordan and Turkey are trying to maintain low profiles, and now we have the most populous Arab nation - Egypt - headed by a reasonably militant group itself, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, putting pressure on Assad.

US President George W. Bush's war in Iraq has been loudly and repeatedly condemned on a number of metrics. The deaths in that nation from 2003 to 2011 (from US invasion to withdrawal)have pretty well been pegged at 120-160 thousand. Yet in just over two years, Syria's conflict is approaching 100,000 deaths by all accounts, and chemical weapons have been clearly used.

And this war is still on the front end of a rising trajectory ...

Hezbollah commits troops, Assad position firms

The Syrian civil war spread this past week with the public introduction of several thousand hardened Hezbollah fighters into the city of Qusayr in western Syria. The fighting in this city - which is by all reports a strategic junction for both sides - has left the infrastructure in ruins, the population cowered or scattered, and has sown the seeds for wider involvement.

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Qusayr, Syria

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The city is important to the Syrian rebels as it is a weapons route into Syria from their Lebanese supporters. At the same time, the city's location is important to President Assad's forces, as it sits on the way from the capital Damascus to his Alewite tribal stronghold in Western Syria, as well as to Syria's two Mediterranean ports.

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Syria's strongman, Bashar al-Assad, is a member of the Alewite tribe, an offshoot of the larger Shiite religious schism. His ethnic group provides core loyalty within the armed forces.

Describing the daily blow-by-blows of the path of this conflict seems pointless (and dark), however, the position of Syrian President Assad had apparently weakened so much in the past month that Hezbollah (with the blessing of its Iranian sugar daddy) felt it necessary to intervene directly and openly.

Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, openly vows victory in Syria...

... so now the coffins and burials back in Lebanon of Hezbollah fighters killed in Syrian fighting will add fuel to the fires

Summary -

* Injection of thousands of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon into the Syrian civil war. In retaliation, rockets are already being fired back into Lebanon, and the pot is being stirred by Sunni groups in Lebanon that support the Syrian rebels.

* Assad's position, bolstered by the open support of Hezbollah, has been strengthened at least temporarily, as Syrian rebels have begun reinforcing their own force levels in the Qusayr fight. At the same time, there are increasing reports of Assad's more than incidental use of chemical weapons. Over a month ago, use of chemical weapons was a red line that would prompt a "recalculation" of the US position. Apparently, isolated usage was tested by Assad, no one chose to officially take note, so his usage may be growing. Along with up-tempo Russian weapon shipments, these three factors have added to Assad's current uptick in advantage. ("Syria: French journalists catalogue extensive use of chemical weapons" May 27, UK Telegraph)

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This map provided by the BBC shows the extent of control by Syrian anti-Assad forces, and those of President Assad.

* Meanwhile, Sunni extremist groups in Iraq are roiling that country. The UN reports that over 1000 mainly civilians died in May alone from car bombs, etc. There are reports that al Qaeda in Iraq and in Syria have strengthened their own connections and may be trying to carve out their own new territory in power vacuums brought about by the Syrian conflict.

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Cleanup of a car bomb in Iraq. Fears are growing that government efforts to contain the most recent surge in sectarian violence are not sufficient

* As mentioned, Russia is declaring further shipments of advanced weaponry to Syria's Assad, even as the EU has ended its arms embargo to Syria, opening the possibility of more weapons headed to the Syrian rebels (already being armed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States).

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Weapons flow from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States into Turkey from where they are smuggled south into Syria. Iran supplies aid directly to Syria's Assad, crossing Iraqi airspace. The US wants Iraq to stop Iranian flights over the country, but Iraq's Shiite government does not consider it a high priority.

* Let's not forget Turkey. Last week, according to a Washington Times report, "Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said ... that Hezbollah, or “Party of God” in Arabic, should change its name to “Party of Satan,” blaming the terrorist organization for killing thousands of civilians in Syria. ... Bozdag made the remarks on Sunday at an international symposium in Ankara, titled “Problems of the Islamic World and Solutions,” Today’s Zaman reports." So much for the carefully measured words of diplomacy (while on the Syrian street, "Hezbshaytaan" is becoming part of the mainstream Arab Sunni lexicon - notes Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence blog). 

The conflict is spreading, not being contained. And Israel is watching closely.

Two apologies

Last week, there were two incidents from which we should take heart. In the opaque and often zero-sum (win-lose) world of diplomacy or positioning, there were three nations involved in two apologies.

From the Guardian newspaper, "Australian prime minister Julia Gillard delivered a historic national apology in parliament on Thursday [March 21] to the thousands of unwed mothers who were forced by government policies to give up their babies for adoption over several decades. More than 800 people, many of them in tears, heard the apology and responded with a standing ovation.

Prime Minister Gillard speaking before Parliament and mothers who lost their children to questionable adoption procedures. Photo from Australian Broadcasting Service

"Today this parliament, on behalf of the Australian people, takes responsibility and apologises for the policies and practices that forced the separation of mothers from their babies, which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering," Gillard told the audience. "We acknowledge the profound effects of these policies and practices on fathers and we recognise the hurt these actions caused to brothers and sisters, grandparents, partners and extended family members," she said. "We deplore the shameful practices that denied you, the mothers, your fundamental rights and responsibilities to love and care for your children," she added.

Many in the audience were moved with grief and thankfulness for the public apology. Photo from China Post

Gillard committed A$5m to support services for affected families and to help biological families reunite."

It was particularly heartwarming to note the response from those affected - a standing ovation. How healing for a nation.

Members of the audience place flowers in remembrance of families split up by the adoption policies.

Israel and Turkey

While US President Obama visited Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan during a trip last week, a phone call either instigated or orchestrated by the administration was especially admirable.

As the Jerusalem Post describes it, "In a dramatic development that occurred just as US President Barack Obama was leaving the country, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke with Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan for the first time since the Israeli prime minister took power in 2009. Netanyahu voiced regret for the loss of life in the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, apologizing for any mistakes that led to the death of nine Turkish activists. Breaking a three-year deadlock, the two agreed to normalize relations.

The ship Mavi Marmara was a Turkish ship taking part in an attempt to break a blockade set by Israel to prevent arms smuggling to the Gaza strip. The ship was not smuggling weapons itself, but attempting to highlight lack of essential supplies in Gaza. Activists on board the vessel were killed by Israeli commandos, who maintained they were defending themselves upon boarding the vessel.

The conversation was facilitated by US President Barack Obama, taking place during Obama's prolonged meeting with Netanyahu on Friday afternoon. "The United States deeply values our close partnerships with both Turkey and Israel, and we attach great importance to the restoration of positive relations between them in order to advance regional peace and security," Obama said in the statement released by the White House just before he ended a visit to Israel.

"I am hopeful that today's exchange between the two leaders will enable them to engage in deeper cooperation on this and a range of other challenges and opportunities," the president said.

US President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. If some sort of face saving on the part of the two countries was all that was needed by President Obama to get these two leaders to talk on the phone, congratulations is in order. The two countries have a huge conflict on their borders and much to lose if the Syrian civil war spirals further, taking Lebanon with it.

From Ynet News, "Turkey, for its part, agreed to drop all charges against a group of former Israeli military commanders including former chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi [who was in charge of the IDF during the 2009 blockade - Teatree]. "Erdogan told Binyamin Netanyahu that he valued centuries-long strong friendship and cooperation between the Turkish and Jewish nations," the statement from Erdogan's office said. ...

Netanyahu [for his part] said he saw the interview that Erdogan gave the Danish newspaper recently, in which Erdogan stepped back from his statement equating Zionism with racism, and Netanyahu expressed his appreciation for the clarification."

So this apology could be optimistically viewed as an opportunity to reset these two countries longstanding relations, and a welcome relief to see a Muslim and a Jewish nation finding ways to get along. The chance to rekindle a working relationship is especially important in light of the unraveling of Syria between them (both Turkey and Israel having borders with Syria).

Securing chemical weapons, containing Hezbollah in Lebanon, shaping the Syrian opposition away from rising Islamic extremism are common goals for both Turkey and Israel.

The value of public apologies ...

US Secretary of State: What difference does it make ...?

Yesterday was US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton's last day on the job - John Kerry, former Senator of Massachusetts, will be sworn in Friday afternoon for this important post. As Mrs Clinton leaves her position, her rhetorical question in hearings several days ago regarding the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attack will, unfortunately, linger for some time.

A region where intelligence matters

Mrs Clinton was defending her agency and the administration's handling of the incident nearly 5 months ago when US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was killed by terrorists. When pressed to explain why the Obama administration clung to a theme of a video inciting passions from a mob for nearly two weeks after the killing, she shot back, "“Was it because of a protest or is it because of guys out for a walk one night and they decide they go kill some Americans?” she asked rhetorically, before adding: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

The difference is key - and strangely, neither reason mentioned by Clinton was yet the right one. "It" was neither a protest, nor a spur of the moment decision. The correct answer, for some reason still not able to be acknowledged by the Secretary of State, was a deliberate attack by al-Qaeda linked groups. Her answer, in retrospect, was also testimony to a variety of questionable foreign policy lines being followed by the US.

One of the more damning issues of the case revolved around repeated requests by the American diplomatic corps in Libya over the summer for more protection from growing extremist threats - assistance that never arrived. In the months that have followed the attack, there has still been no progress in determining the militant groups, and continued fog over when assistance was asked for, and how far up in the Obama administration did the requests go.

The US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans, including the US Ambassador to that country, were killed

Connected to the lack of response to providing increased security, another question is whether the Obama administration has allowed its own narrative of describing the last two years of unrest in Arab nations as a positive "Arab Spring" to cloud a clearer, and more sober assessment. Also linked, the Obama administration trumpeted its Libyan response - one of leading from behind and gaining the support of the Arab League and the UN before it acted to topple Gadaffi - as the smart approach versus the previous administration's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Does intelligence matter?

First, even Teatree recognizes that Mrs. Clinton's answer was 100% political, in response to 70% politically motivated questions by preening US Senators. It is Teatree's opinion at the same time, that the current administration is only 50% as interested in pursuing the matter as it should be.

With that said and returning to the question, in the middle of the Iraq war, many journalists noted that the intelligence gathering efforts by young US captains among the Iraqi population was the key to a slowing of the civil war. Deliberately putting US forces out in the neighborhoods during the 2006 surge also spurred further "understanding" between arguments, revenge killings, ethnic fighting, and al-qaeda attacks - all critical to the country's return to less violent levels.

The "horrors" of rendition, enhanced interrogation, and Guantanamo's detention center all revolve around collecting intelligence in order to act more precisely. Teatree notes that the unease over these actions ebb and flow with a high degree of correlation to the political winds ...

The Obama administration's reliance on drone attacks are increasingly being challenged, though only quietly in articles or speeches that do not become mainstream media fodder. The UN is even out front on this one by beginning an inquiry into the use of lethal drone strikes where collateral damage to those around the target person are seemingly discounted. More practically, military experts note that each drone strike obliterates future intelligence gathering from that individual in question, or those around that person.

The increasing reliance on armed predator drone strikes by the current US administration as its preferred approach to handling the "war on terror" is only heightened by the near unanimous and silent acquiescence by the Western media.

The question lingers

The ill-put question by Mrs Clinton has no partisan boundaries. Intelligence or the lack thereof concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003 will forever taint that conflict, even if Iraq is able to successfully emerge with hope from its dark and brutal days under Saddam Hussein.

Mrs Clinton testifying and defending her actions, along with the Obama administration, in Benghazi Libya prior to September 11, 2012, and the nearly five months since.

In contrast to the vague responses by the US, the UK, Netherlands and others called for their citizens to leave Benghazi due to possible further terrorist attacks just since Clinton's Senate grilling. And the increasingly apparent lack of followup in Libya as to securing weapons caches has resulted in security turmoil in the Sahel.

Yes, Mrs Clinton, who did what, when, why and how makes all the difference ...

As one opinion piece from America's Southern Wisconsin heartland summarizes: "It was like asking: “What’s the difference between hitting a deer that bolts out in front of your car or running over some kids on a field trip because you’re blind drunk.” One is an accident; the other is a catastrophic failure of judgment.

The administration now acknowledges the assault in Benghazi was a deliberate, planned terrorist act. It is reasonable—indeed, necessary—to ask if State did everything reasonable to mitigate the risk.

We know there was no shortage of funds or other resources. Senior State Department officials have repeatedly testified there was no problem there—though some politicians continue to cry poverty on behalf of the administration. Clearly, the problem was the department’s failure to plan adequately before the attack and respond adequately once it began.

Seeing no difference between a riot and a raid also suggests Clinton doesn’t understand the nature of the threat. “Islamist terrorists,” wrote my colleague Middle East scholar Jim Phillips, “are motivated to kill Americans not because of emotional reactions to alleged slights such as the questionable video on Mohammed, but because they seek to seize power and impose their Islamist totalitarian ideology on other Muslims.”

Clinton just doesn’t get that. Her testimony revealed a leader unapologetic for her failure to act or understand. Worse, she showed no real interest in learning from the incident. Such knowledge could help her department better adapt to the emerging threats in the region."

Fast rising issues where what we know makes a difference

The validity of intelligence gathering will be critical in containing the fallout of yesterday's Israeli strike in Syria over weapons being moved to Lebanon.

The left-wing terrorist suicide bombing at the gates of the US embassy in Turkey today (Friday, February 1, 2013)has been more quickly characterized than has been the Benghazi attack in September.