SETA-DC panel on the “Future of Syria: Political Turmoil and Prospects for Democracy”, November 28, 2011.
Transcript of introduction and remarks by Helena Cobban.
Kanat:
Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to SETA-DC for the panel on the “Future of Syria: Political Turmoil and Prospects for Democracy.” It has been a historic year for the Middle East and the movements and clashes in Syria have been some of the most dramatic events in the region. After more than nine months of turmoil and violence in Syria, the Assad regime has failed to respond to international calls to end the violence. And despite the government crackdown, protests and demonstrations are still taking place in different parts of the country. Recent reports from the region show that prospects for a peaceful transition seem bleaker every passing day. Over the weekend the Arab League approved a very comprehensive package of sanctions which includes a travel ban for scores of senior officials, a freeze on Syrian government assets in Arab countries, a ban on transactions with the Syrian central bank and all commercial exchanges with the Syrian national government. Today Syria also faced additional pressure from the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where a long-awaited report on rights abuses by the country’s security forces documented patterns of summary execution, arbitrary arrest, torture, and forced disappearances. As one of the biggest external stakeholders in the future of Syria, Turkey has [undeterminable] to help Syria transition to an administration responsive to its people’s demands and, together with the United States, Turkey emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the Assad regime.
Our panelists today will discuss the prospects for a transition to a democracy in Syria and the possible impacts on the region. Our first panelist is Helena Cobban, who is a veteran writer and researcher on global affairs. She has contributed a regular column on global issues to the Christian Science Monitor for seventeen years. She is also a contributing editor of Boston Review and since 2003 she has published Just World News, a lively blog on international issues that has gained a broad international readership. She founded the publishing company Just World Books which she continues to head. In 2008, Ms. Cobban published her seventh book, Re-Engage: America in the World after Bush. She’s also the author of four books on Middle Eastern diplomacy, politics, and society, including most recently The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-96 and Beyond, which was published by the United States Institute of Peace. Ms. Cobban received her BA and MA from Oxford University, and from 1974 to 1981 she wrote as a Beirut-based correspondent for print and broadcast outlets. Ms. Cobban also served for many years on the Middle East Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch and as a member of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Our second panelist is Erol Cebeci, who is the executive director here at SETA Foundation in Washington, DC. He completed his undergraduate studies at Istanbul University and received an MS degree from Penn State University. He attended a PhD program first in managerial economics then in ecological economics at Rensselaer Institute of Technology. He taught several courses on economics and public finance. He has established and run private companies in business consulting and international trade, and he has served two terms as a member of Turkish Parliament. He also served as a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, first as a member then as the chairman of the Turkish delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. While in politics, he mainly worked on human rights issues, security and defense issues, and foreign policy. Today we start with Helena Cobban, and after her presentation, Mr. Cebeci will talk about Turkish-Syria relations, and finally we will open the floor for questions.
Cobban:
Thank you to Mr. Cebeci and all the colleagues at SETA for organizing this event. Obviously it’s a very big day in the Middle East and for Syria. It is so exciting that the Egyptian elections seem to have started off really well with high participation and almost no disorder at all. So that’s the optimistic end of the spectrum of the Arab Spring. The pessimistic end would have to be maybe Syria and Bahrain, where you have governments that continue to use force against their citizens. In between there are many other points on that spectrum. Today, of course, as Kilic also mentioned, we have the human rights committee report from the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva on Syria.
I want to leap right in here and make a few points and I’m looking forward to the discussion as well. The first is I’ve been writing a lot over this year about how one might think of moving toward democratization in Syria, which is a country that, like Iraq under the Ba’ath, is ruled by a minority, by an ethno-sectarian minority. Back in the 90s, when I was writing for al-Hayat newspaper, I looked quite a lot at what had happened in South Africa in terms of a transition from minority rule to majority rule that was negotiated between the parties and thank God it happened that way in South Africa; thank God that that bloodshed was brought to an end. And I started thinking about how could we have some sort of similar negotiated transition from minority rule to majority rule in Iraq or Syria. Obviously in Iraq it never happened. In Syria it may be too late for it to happen, but I’m just hoping that it is not too late, that a way can still be found.
Now, going back to Egypt, which is right now my kind of lodestone, or Tunisia where the elections were also wonderfully successful recently—What are the differences between Syria and those two countries? What are the main differences that prevent Syria from being like those two countries? I’ve mentioned one, which is the minority status of the people in power, that is the communitarian minority status. Another is the institutional development of the country, the fact that you don’t have the same rich network of bar associations and journalist associations that operate more or less independent of the regime that you had in Tunisia or Egypt, and proto-political parties as in Tunisia and Egypt, although of course under Ben-Ali and Mubarak there was terrible political repression. But the institutional development is that much bigger in Egypt and Tunisia, as it was in South Africa even under apartheid, where you had a court system even though it was an apartheid court system. The other big difference between Syria on the one hand and Tunisia and Egypt on the other is that Syria actually is in a continuing state of war with Israel, and we shouldn’t forget that. When they claim that they need to have a security state, it’s not a completely specious claim. How much different, as I wrote earlier this year, things would have looked in Syria if the Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations had succeeded back in the 1990s or back then in 2000. I mean, we would have had a very different Syrian state today But we don’t; we have a state that is still in a formal and continuing state of war with Israel.
In addition, the Syrians are, from one point of view, blessed, and from another point of view cursed by their location. They’re not over in North Africa, which probably has its own challenges for Egypt and Tunisia. Syria is located at a very sensitive part of the Mashreq. It’s the crossing point, if you like, of a north-south axis of Sunni-dominated regimes, Turkey and Jordan, and an east-west axis of Shi’ite dominated countries, Iraq and Lebanon. Syria is part of the Kurdish-populated zone, or a part of Syria is part of the Kurdish-populated zone, which has its own challenges. Syria has lawless parts of its border; or rather, over its borders with both Iraq and Lebanon are lawless parts of those countries. So a lot of stuff can come in and out, especially through the Tripoli-Homs gap which historically has always been a great connector from Homs to the Mediterranean. It allows for considerable infiltration of people, arms and all kinds of things unregulated by governments, in addition, of course, to what governments might want to regulate or allow in and out of Syria in the case of Turkey, Jordan, or Israel. Then we have the Israeli border. It’s not a border with Israel, it’s a border with the Israeli-occupied Golan, but there are Israeli forces overlooking Damascus from Mt. Hermon, looking at everything that’s going on in the country and having demonstrated their ability to undertake operations against Syria in the recent past. Just to add to the kind of geopolitical mix there we have the Russians announcing they’re going to send a carrier battle group to Tartus. So we’re talking about some serious geopolitics going on here, very different from Egypt and Tunisia, which makes it much more complicated.
I have many Syrian friends on all points of the political spectrum, as probably must of us here do. My main hope is that non-Syrians all outsiders, all non-Syrians, would have two very clear priorities, as follows. The first is de-escalation of tensions, because everybody inside Syria is currently on a knife-edge. I don’t know how much you’ve been reading of, for example, Nir Rosen’s reporting or other great reporting from inside Syria just showing the degree to which many communities in the country are poised on the brink, if they haven’t already gone over it, of sectarian killings. I lived in Lebanon for six years during the civil war. I know how once a society goes into that kind of state, which the Arabs call fitna, which is a state of advanced sectarian or ethnosectarian breakdown of society, everybody’s rights get majorly and chronically abused in such situations. So you could say that there’s a clear human rights argument for doing x, y, or z. But if x, y, or z involves escalation of tensions then we’ll end up abusing everybody’s rights. As we have seen, for example, in Iraq, as we come to the end of our country’s nearly nine-year militarized invasion and occupation of that country, which we are leaving in a very sad state. I don’t know how many of you’ve read the lovely reporting that Dan Zak did in yesterday’s Washington Post where he just went around with a camera and talked to young Iraqis—the major story he got from the young Iraqis is that things were bad under Saddam but they have been worse since, or they are worse now. “How can we enjoy our rights when we have no public security?” was the question that several of them had. Iraq, obviously, is one of those countries that has suffered many years of fitna that was provoked by the violent actions both of Saddam, but even more, of our government.
So for Syrians, the first priority has to be, in my view, the de-escalation of tensions, and the second, linked priority has to be the provision of hope to all Syrians. I mean, peace, de-escalation, reduction, elimination of tensions is not, on its own, a worthwhile goal. I think it was Menachem Begin who once said, we don’t want the peace of the grave. For Syria, we don’t want an oppressive peace, pacification if you like; what we want is a situation where all Syrian citizens, whatever their confessional, religious, or ethnic background is, have hope that they can build a future in their country for their families and live the good life as they see it, whether they see it in religious terms, secular terms, professional terms or whatever. This would be where the provision of hope exists, not only for members of the majority, but for members of all the minorities, including the minority currently in power, which is acting out of a large degree of fear. This was a point that was made in the recent Crisis Group report, that we have to actually address seriously the concerns of the ‘Alawites, that they might be the butt of terrible retribution and that only if those fears can be allayed, can you start to think how you get people to sit down in a negotiation.
Obviously Turkey has its longest land border, 910 kilometers, with Syria, and this is not a land border like the one between Libya and Egypt where 9/10 of it is desert. This is a border with people living more or less on each side of it, people who may be ethnic Arabs, ethnic Turks, ethnic Turkoman, ethnic Kurds, religiously Alawites, religiously Sunni—it’s a very mixed and rich human geography there. Turkey, because of the length of that border, is uniquely vulnerable amongst all of Syria’s neighbors to any situation of instability and fitna inside Syria. Of course, Lebanon is as well and will always be, but there’s not that much Lebanon can do to prevent fitna in Syria. There are parties inside Lebanon that are contributing to it, there are parties doing that from both sides, but it’s hard to see that Lebanon could be the peacemaker. It’s quite plausible to argue that Turkey could and should be the peacemaker. Turkey has great credibility inside Syria, with Syrians across the board. We were just talking a little bit earlier about how attitudes in Syria toward Turkey have really changed over the past nearly 40 years that I’ve been going to Syria. Back then when I would go there in the ’70s, people were still talking about how terrible it was that the Turks had taken Alexandretta (Hatay) province. The legacy of Turkish, of Ottoman misdeeds, was always played up in the Arab nationalist narratives.
ow, the past few times when I’ve been to Syria, Syrians across the board just love talking about Turkey and, I haven’t been to Syria this year, but when I went last year or the year before, they talked about going there for business, for pleasure, for tourism, for all kinds of reasons. It’s like a fresh air, a lung for Syria, for Syrians across the board. At the government level, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told us not long ago, that in the middle of the last decade, at a time when the policy of the Bush administration here was an undeclared but very evident policy of regime change in Syria, that Turkey saved the life of the regime by reaching out and providing diplomatic services and an opening to Europe for Syria. So there is still a legacy amongst all Syrians, including both the anti-regime Syrians and the pro-regime Syrians. I gather the government people there are pretty angry with Ankara right now, but maybe they can be persuaded that they really should work with Turkey. I don’t know why they weren’t persuaded early this year.
Turkey does have, and this is really important as well, a strong record as a successful, democratized regime. It hasn’t completed its process of democratization, but if you look at where it is compared with where it was in the mid-90s, it really is a remarkable role model for Middle Eastern countries that want to have a successful economic and social order that is reasonably just and that is in touch with people’s cultural affinities. It has also dealt thus far, remarkably well with the ever-thorny issue of civil-military relations in a democracy, not perfectly, but much better than any other regime in the Middle East and has dealt pretty well, also, with the issues of minority rights. So it is a political role model and it also, of course, has stunningly successful economics, especially when you look at the rest of Europe these days, which is imploding as we speak. People like that idea of being economically successful too.
I’ve set up (perhaps unrealistically, but I think it’s worth doing) Turkey as necessarily a major power and player if we want to de-escalate tensions in Syria and to provide hope to Syria’s people. I think what needs to be done is something like the following: the creation of an authoritative group of governments able to oversee a transition to democracy. So that would be the goal, that within a date certain, and I think this should probably be between nine and eighteen months, we want to see a fully free and fair election in Syria. Thus far we have the Arab League with Foreign Minister Davutoğlu there as an extra, not-quite Arab participant. The problem with the Arab League is that the big players in the Arab League right now are not credible leaders in a move toward democracy, to say the least. Let’s say in a couple of years, Egypt might be, and Egypt with its natural, strategic, and human weight will become again, could become again the outstandingly powerful player in the Arab League. But it’s not right now. It is still in the middle of its own very complicated transition to democracy and I hope that it succeeds, but the last thing it needs is to be distracted by something as very, very difficult as helping Syria’s people get to democracy. I just don’t see anybody in Egypt who’s in a position to do very much of that, but obviously if there is a push toward democratization it needs great support from the Arab League and from the UN.
The well-known expert on Syria, Patrick Seale, was writing about this recently. He has my same critique of the Arab League countries, they’re not credible as midwives of democracy, if you like. Nor are the Western powers in the context of a country like Syria, in light of what happened in Iraq. Patrick was instead proposing the BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Again, I don’t think that Russia and China are credible as midwives of democracy. So, what I think actually could work would be the lead participants in this groups being Turkey and South Africa—South Africa, in particular, because of 1) its anticolonial history and 2) its experience of that transition from minority to majority rule, which is really crucial in this context. You could include countries like Indonesia—successful, third-world, non-aligned movement, especially a Muslim democracy, like Indonesia.
Obviously I came here this afternoon to try to persuade everybody here and all the Turkish media that this a great idea and so that you’ll go back and your foreign minister will call the South African foreign minister and soon it will happen! What this group should do, it should be to confer with all the parties in Syria and establish a brisk timetable for preparing for and holding democratic elections. As in South Africa, all parties would be allowed and encouraged to participate—even those accused of crimes against humanity. Remember that the apartheid regime in South Africa had been committing crimes against humanity for decades at the time that it was included in the elections. (Indeed, the U.N. designated the apartheid system itself to be a crime against humanity as long ago as 1974, though the terrible abuses that successive ‘White’-controlled regimes had committed there against all non-‘White’ South Africans had been continuing for 400 years prior to that.) Actually, according to my friends in South Africa, the leaders of the ruling National Party thought they would win the democratic elections held there in 1994, which is fine. Whatever people think going into an election doesn’t really matter so long as they agree to participate in good faith, and in good order, in the electoral process.
Obviously, in Syria, there’d be huge questions of assuring public order in the preparation for those elections. That most likely will have to be done by the regime under monitoring from the ‘midwives of democracy’ group. In South Africa, it was the South African ‘White’-dominated apartheid security forces that maintained security of the electoral process through the whole run-up to it, but they did so in good faith. What they got was amnesty, which was worth it to them, but it was also worth it to all the other South Africans to get them out of the driver’s seat! And I think that main requirement from all the other countries, our country here in the States and all the other countries that are not part of the ‘midwife’ group, is that they stay out of interfering. That’s the best thing we can do, especially as our troops are being pulled out of Iraq. One of my fears is that somebody in the Pentagon may say, “Oh look, there’s Damascus. We can go and have a little humanitarian intervention there,” and we’ve seen that before. We saw it as the US troops withdrew from Lebanon in 1983: they went to invade Grenada. We saw that when the US troops were pulled out of Vietnam in the 1970s they went and bombed Cambodia. This is a live fear and it’s one that I want to spell out so that I want to make sure that it doesn’t happen as much as possible.
Can my kind of a plan be implemented amidst all the regional turmoil, with Israel still occupying part of Golan, with everything that’s going on in Iraq, in Palestine, in Lebanon, with regard to Iran, can this happen? It’s not going to be easy, but if a reasonable plan for transition to accountable majority rule is not formulated and implemented by Syria’s friends, then the alternative of a social breakdown, widespread fitna and sectarian killing inside Syria is far, far worse to deal with at the end of the day.