Iraq Accuses Turkey of Meddling - Wall Street Journal

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Iraq summoned Turkey's ambassador on Monday to protest Ankara's alleged meddling in Iraqi politics, the latest sign of how the Arab Spring and a waning U.S. presence have left Sunni Turkey in growing competition with its Shiite neighbors.

Iraq's government was angered by recent warnings from Turkish leaders that Sunni-Shiite tensions in Iraq could engulf the entire Islamic world, as well as by Turkey's support for a Sunni rival to Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

"Turkey interferes by backing certain political figures and blocs" in Iraq, Mr. Maliki said in an interview last month. "I believe Turkey is unqualified to intervene in the region's flash points."

In a weekend interview with Arabic language Al-Hurra TV station, Mr. Maliki went further. "Unfortunately Turkey is playing a role that could lead to a catastrophe or civil war in the region," he said.

Iraqi officials were particularly angered by public Turkish comments on the case of Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq's Sunni vice president. Mr. Hashemi took refuge in Kurdish-ruled northern Iraq late last year, after the government accused him of leading death squads against Shiites.

But analysts say the rapid deterioration of relations between Ankara and Baghdad also reflects the wider conflicting interests of Sunni Turkey and Shiite Iran in the wake of the U.S. drawdown from Iraq and of the Arab Spring, now lapping at the borders of both Iraq and Turkey, in Syria.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned on the eve of a visit to Tehran earlier this month against the risk of a "Cold War" developing between Shiites and Sunnis across the Middle East.

"Tension is now rising between Turkey and Iran and it will be increasingly difficult to manage as it's being aggravated by sectarian tensions. These problems are likely to be long-term; I don't see an easy solution," said Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Baghdad's concerns also have been fueled lately by fears that Syria's uprising is developing into a Sunni insurgency that Mr. Maliki has said could spread "like a house on fire," into Iraq. A fresh wave of violence has killed more than 200 Iraqis since the end of the U.S. military mission on Dec. 18.

Unlike Iraq, which is majority Shiite, Syria is about 75% Sunni, but it is governed mainly by a minority of Alawites, a Shiite sect. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad's Tehran-backed regime has expressed deep anger and distrust of Ankara due to its decision to provide safe haven to mainly Sunni Syrian rebels.

Turkey says its actions are purely humanitarian, made in the face of the Syrian government's brutal crackdown against protesters. It also denies any effort to meddle in Iraqi politics.

Turkish analysts say that for all its neo-Ottoman pretensions, Ankara is a reluctant hard-power player in the region. Only a year ago, Mr. Assad was exhibit A in Turkey's "zero-problems-with-neighbors" foreign policy. That approach boosted relations and trade with neighboring Muslim regimes, while downgrading relations with former ally Israel.

The Arab Spring, however, upended that policy as allies such as former Libyan leader Moammar Ghadafi were pushed aside and Shiite-Sunni tensions rose across the region. In a crucial change, Turkey agreed last fall to host a North Atlantic Treaty Organization missile-defense system, which was designed by the U.S. to contain Iran.

Turkish and U.S. diplomats say they now cannot remember a time when cooperation between Ankara and Washington was closer, after a period of significant strain in 2009-2010.

"When Prime Minister Erdogan came to Washington in 2009, he sounded almost like the ambassador from Iran. Now he sounds quite different…After a period of suspicion, Turkey and the United States have come closer together," said Stephen Kinzer, a visiting professor of international relations at Boston University.

Turkish officials insist that relations with Tehran remain strong. Turkey buys around 30% of its oil from Iran and is the second-largest consumer of Iranian gas, after Russia. Official data shows that Turkey's bilateral trade volume with Iraq in 2011 jumped by nearly 50% on the year to $11 billion, with much of the increase coming in the Shiite-dominated areas around Baghdad and in the South.

In an interview inside Iraqi Kurdistan, Mr. Hashemi, Iraq's Sunni vice president said that while his political bloc had received advice from Turkey and others, it was no tool for outside powers. "I am not part of the Turkish geopolitical project," said Mr. Hashemi. He criticized Mr. Maliki's "conspiratorial" mind and said that his frequent visits to Turkey last year were mostly private.

Still there is little disguising the building tensions between Ankara and its Shiite neighbors, including Tehran.

In December, Ankara sought an explanation from Tehran after Hussain Ibrahimi, chief of the Iranian parliament's national-security committee, told an Iranian newspaper that if Iran were to be attacked, its first retaliatory strike would be against the NATO missile defense radar in eastern Turkey.

Earlier, in October, a key aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini told Iran's Mehr news agency that Turkey should radically rethink its policies on Syria, the NATO missile shield and promoting secularism in the Arab world. Otherwise, Ankara would face trouble from its own people and neighbors, he said.

View the original article here

Accuses,Turkey,Meddling,Street,Journal

Read More | comments

Questions Surround Leadership in Pyongyang - Wall Street Journal

SEOUL—As North Korea on Tuesday marks one month since the death of Kim Jong Il, the most important question for outsiders trying to deal with the country remains unanswered: Is his young son Kim Jong Eun really in charge?

North Korea has projected an image of a successful transition and stability in its authoritarian government. State media calls the younger Mr. Kim "supreme commander" and produced TV and newspaper reports praising him. It reported several visits he made to military installations and cultural events.



AFP/Getty Images/KCNA This picture taken by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on Jan. 1 shows new North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun, front row center, posing for photos with soldiers.

But the regime's New Year's statement, a lengthy message that traditionally contained an exhortation from Kim Jong Il, had no quotations from Kim Jong Eun. The young leader's birthday on Jan. 8—he turned 28 or 29, though outsiders don't precisely know his birth year—passed with little notice in North Korea. That was far different from the national celebrations held on the birthdays of his father and grandfather Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founder and ruler for 46 years.

As well, Kim Jong Eun hasn't met anyone from outside of the country who could provide an assessment of his role.

Diplomats from North Korea's neighbors and other interested countries, such as the U.S., are taking a wait-and-see approach. "It's unclear what kind of attitude North Korea will take" in diplomacy, South Korea Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said earlier this month. "Even China is also waiting," he added, referring to the North's chief ally.

And with so little information, analysts who watch North Korea are reluctant to draw any conclusions about the direction of the regime and the viability of Kim Jong Eun as leader.

"I can't point to clear evidence of instability in Pyongyang," said Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, which studies and promotes U.S.-Asia relations. "But I would be reluctant to assume it is business as usual."

In 1994, when Kim Jong Il took over control of North Korea after the death of his father, he also maintained a low profile for weeks. North Korea sent a special envoy to Beijing seven weeks after Kim Il Sung's death to assure the Chinese that Kim Jong Il was in charge. But there was another sign of action in Pyongyang at that time: The North resumed disarmament talks with the U.S. a month after Kim Il Sung's death.

The behavior of the North Korean regime over the past month closely resembles the period in August and September 2008 when Kim Jong Il was stricken with a stroke-like illness.

In both instances, no meetings or contacts were made with diplomats of other countries. Legal border crossings stopped temporarily and authorities appeared to crack down on illegal ones.

Externally, the most visible activity in both times was the state media's numerous accounts praising Kim Jong Il's actions and steady criticism of countries it routinely portrays as enemies to North Korean citizens: South Korea, Japan and the U.S.

Such adherence to orthodox behavior is typical in authoritarian regimes in a leadership vacuum. And almost no one expects a major change from Kim Jong Il's policies. Rhee Bong-jo, a former vice minister of South Korea's Unification Ministry, said the son's authority derives completely from family heritage. "Kim Jong Eun has no choice but to uphold his father's legacy," Mr. Rhee said.

But Kim Jong Il's death poses a dilemma for the North Korean regime that will be harder to resolve with the usual diet of adulation for the leader and diatribes for outsiders.

The problem is that relying on the young Kim Jong Eun to lead and balance two massive forces—the political party and military—conflicts with a centuries-old tradition in Korea of deference to older people.

Though Kim Il Sung was in only his mid-30s when he became the country's leader, he was operating in a tumultuous period of instability after World War II and overcame the cultural barrier against youth by getting support from the then-Soviet Union and China.

His grandson Kim Jong Eun is several years younger and operating in an environment of where power networks and alliances are more entrenched. As a result, some analysts speculate North Korea will form a collective leadership in which Mr. Kim will share power, most likely with an aunt and uncle and several generals who were all close to his father.

But if that were true, it would signal a broader change in the operations of North Korea's leadership structure, which has for decades been designed in a way that only the leader had full access to all information. "Even if there is some dispersion of power or a committee, there's always a first among equals," said Dan Pinkston, analyst at the International Crisis Group in Seoul.

In the coming weeks, clues in the direction and shape of the North Korean regime are likely to emerge in the way it responds to the mid-February birthday of Kim Jong Il, mid-April birthday of Kim Il Sung and the annual spring training exercise by U.S. and South Korean militaries, which begins late next month.

Write to Evan Ramstad at evan.ramstad@wsj.com

View the original article here

Questions,Surround,Leadership,Pyongyang,Street,Journal

Read More | comments (1)