As the United States struggles mightily to navigate its way through a broken, fragmenting, and largely dysfunctional Arab world, the non-Arab states in the Middle East pose significant challenges as well.
Turkey, Iran, and Israel -- perhaps the three most functional and consequential states in the region -- have much in common, even though they remain at odds on key issues.
All are relatively stable domestically, and although the recent coup attempt in Turkey rattled the reigning Justice and Development Party, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is rapidly reasserting control. All of these states are led by determined leaders who have long survived; all have tremendous economic potential; all are highly functional in ways that key Arab states are not; and all have the capacity to project their power overtly and covertly in ways that can both help and hinder U.S. policies in the region.
Even before the failed coup, Turkey has been an important but problematic partner for the United States. Since his first election as prime minister in 2003, Erdogan has become increasingly authoritarian, and has sought to gobble up more power. He has arrested journalists, removed judges, and tried to manipulate the system in order to amend the Constitution and increase his power as president. Abroad, Erdogan’s efforts to burnish his credentials in the Arab and Muslim world through support for Hamas, Qatar, and the Palestinians have alienated Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. His refusal to effectively monitor the border with Syria, and his opposition to U.S. efforts to support the Syrian Kurds against the Islamic State, has also created the image of a leader more focused on defeating the Kurds and preserving his own Islamist credibility than on defeating the jihadis.
It is clear that the failed coup attempt will only feed Erdogan’s political ambitions at home and increase his drive for power. The coup attempt has already produced worrisome signs of tensions with the United States. Anti-American rhetoric has increased in Turkey, with government ministers accusing the United States of fomenting the coup and lamenting America’s harboring of one of Erdogan’s key enemies, Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he wants extradited to Turkey. In the weekend following the coup attempt, Turkey cut power to the U.S. air base at Incirlik and grounded American flights. Those have now been resumed. But it’s clear that Erdogan may use his role in supporting U.S. efforts against ISIS as leverage in trying to get Washington to move on Gulen’s extradition. That, Erdogan’s opposition to U.S. support for the Syrian Kurds, and his crackdown at home will ensure that Turkey remains a difficult and potentially troublesome partner for the United States.
If Turkey has been problematic, Iran has launched a determined effort to oppose key U.S. policies in the region. Tehran is adhering to its strict obligations under the nuclear agreement reached with global powers in July 2015, and in some ways, Iran and U.S. interests coincide on thwarting ISIS. But in many other ways, including Iran’s repressive human rights policies; its support for insurgencies in Yemen and Bahrain; its support for the murderous policies of the Assad regime in Syria and its backing of Shiite militias in Iraq, Tehran is showing its determination to ensure that its influence remains paramount, and America’s constrained. The reality is that Iran is likely to remain one of America’s most obstinate adversaries in the region, leaving very limited space for serious cooperation, let alone for a rapprochement outside the bounds of the nuclear accord.
As a close ally of the United States, Israel belongs in a different category. It is the only one of the three non-Arab states with which the United States shares values and interests, and the only one where there is broad public support for the country’s relationship with the United States. However, divisions have grown on some key issues -- particularly on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program; Tehran’s expanding influence in the region; and on the Palestinian issue. These gaps are unlikely to be closed during this administration, and probably during the next. Still, given the special character of the U.S.-Israel bond, there’s clearly a better chance that those differences will be muted, and managed in a way that separates the U.S.-Israel relationship from Washington’s ties with governments in Turkey or Iran, where there is little coincidence with U.S. values and interests as well as little public support.
For America, the Middle East is getting to be a very lonely place. Not only is the United States stuck in a region it cannot transform or leave. But it is dealing with imperfect partners whose interests on many issues do not coincide with its own. Nor is this challenge likely to abate anytime soon. Indeed, for the foreseeable future, Washington will likely face Arab and non-Arab partners increasingly determined to pursue their own interests at home and abroad in a turbulent region with little regard for those of America. And the politically inconvenient reality is that there may well be little Washington can do about it.
