THE GROWING STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TURKEY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 DOHA 000464 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/15/2019 TAGS: PREL PTER ECON TBIO SCUL IR IZ TU ZP SUBJECT: THE GROWING STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TURKEY AND THE ULF STATES -- TURKISH AMBSSADOR ANALYZES THE GCC-TURKEY ISTANBUL COMMUNIQUE DOHA 00000464 001.10 OF 004 Classified By: Amb Joseph LeBaron for reason 1.4 (b) and (d) -------------- (C) KEY POINTS -------------- -- Ambassador LeBaron met July 15 with Mihat Rende, Turkey's Ambassador to Qatar, to discuss the Turkey-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) High Level Strategic Dialogue after the July 8 Joint Ministerial Meeting held in Istanbul. -- Rende said Turkey and the GCC states identified several strategic issues for cooperation at the ministerial meeting. Among the most important: Gulf security, Gulf food security, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. -- The Joint Statement issued after the meeting also identiied counter-terrorism cooeration as a significant area of common interest for Turkey and the GCC. -- Cultural affinities underscored and strengthened the Istanbul meeting, the Turkish ambassador said. In fact, greater educational and cultural cooperation was treated as a strategically important issue by the Istanbul participants, according to Rende. -- He said the GCC was not ready to invite Iraq to join the GCC. And Iran remains a divisive issue within the GCC and between the Gulf states and Turkey. -- The failures to address the energy relationship and to agree to a meaningful position on Iran reveal the current limits to the GCC-Turkey strategic relationship. -------------- (C) COMMENTS -------------- -- his new Turkey-GCC Strategic Dialogue is more evidence that the power in the Arab Middle East is gradually shifting east, from Egypt and the Levant to the Gulf. With their growing economic and financial resources, and increasing political clout, the GCC states are considered enticing partners by any measure. Turkey certainly recognizes this, and its relationship with the Gulf states is steadily expanding. -- That said, the strategic dialogue underway is not between Turkey and the individual Gulf states, but between Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council. This could represent a structural weakness in the dialogue, unless the GCC is simply a convenient vehicle for orgaizing dialogues with the individual Gulf states. -- A full Embassy analysis based on the July 15 conversation between the U.S. and Turkish Ambassadors is below. End Key Points and Comments. ¶1. (U) This Ministerial was the annual high-level meeting mandated by the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by Turkey and the GCC at their first ministerial summit in September of 2008 held in Jeddah. -- Although Turkey and the GCC consider the 2008 MOU to be the "launching point" for their strategic dialogue, the parties began meeting in 2005 in Manama, where they established a framework for a free trade agreement. -- The aim of this meeting was to "institutionalize" modalities of cooperation to promote stronger relations in the future, according to the press. -- The next Ministerial will be held in 2010 in Kuwait. ¶2. (C) Turning to the Joint Statement that was issued at the conclusion of the Ministerial, Rende shared his knowledge of how the communique was composed and his interpretation of its meaning for the relationship. ¶3. (C) While the dialogue covered many issues, from the construction of a rail line connecting Turkey to the Gulf to scientific cooperation, Rende said six issues rise to the level of strategic importance -- security, food security, culture, Iraq, Iran, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Rende noted that the strategic dialogue will have toovercome spotty implemntation of these issues. -------------- SECURITY -------------- DOHA 00000464 002 OF 004 ¶4. (C) Both Turkey and the GCC states believe their threat horizons are interdependent. At an official dinner for participants on July 7, Turkey's President Abdullah Gul declared that Turkey will contribute to security in the Gulf because the region is important to his country. That declaration elicited a very positive reaction from GCC members, according to Rende. ¶5. (C) Pressed by Ambassador, Rende conceded that the meaning of Turkey's pledge to contribute to Gulf security was ambiguous and "broad." Although Rende raised the possibility of port calls and military training exercises, he later described the Joint Statement, including the part of the document that covers security, as not "action-oriented." ¶6. (C) Comment: Notably, counter-terrorism cooperation received its own paragraph in the communique, separate from other security issues. This subject's status, which seems to reflect more advanced discussions, speaks to the immediate threat both Turkey and the GCC face from extremism. Turkey has amassed considerable counter-terrorism experience that would be of value to the GCC, while GCC states, especially Saudi Arabia, could share best practices with the Turks. End Comment. ¶7. (C) Rende expressed great satisfaction that the parties overcame the distinction between terrorism and freedom fighters, condemning terrorism "in all its forms and manifestations" for the first time. He said that Turkey and the GCC will assemble a working group to discuss counter-terrorism issues on a continuing basis. -------------- FOOD SECURITY -------------- ¶8. (C) While there is only a single mention of food security in the communique, the Turkish Ambassador explained at great length the significance of this issue to both sides. (Note: Qatar recently established a Task Force on Food Security -- see reftel). Previously an exclusively bilateral issue, the GCC sees benefit in complementing their state-to-state efforts with a more multilateral approach to food security, Rende said. ¶9. (C) The GCC states see Turkey as a key supplier for diversifying food supplies, he continued, and they have inquired about the possibility of leasing "large tracts" of land in Turkey, or participating in joint ventures with Turkish companies, for cultivating crops -- particularly wheat and cereals. -------------- CULTURE -------------- ¶10. (C) Cultural relations between Turkey and the GCC also garnered attention as a strategic issue during the Ministerial Meeting, he said. Building on the popularity of Turkish soap operas dubbed into Arabic, such as "Noor" and "Under the Linden Tree," the communique calls for establishing Turkish language and studies courses in GCC states and Arabic language and studies programs in Turkey in an effort to break down cultural barriers between the two sides, he said. -------------- IRAQ -------------- ¶11. (C) On Iraq, in addition to endorsing its unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, Turkey and the GCC agreed to a new formulation that called for preserving Iraq's "Arab and Islamic" identity. Ambassador Rende said the word "Islamic" was inserted at the insistence of Saudi Arabia and that Turkey was not completely comfortable with this formulation. ¶12. (C) Turkey and the GCC also had difficulty agreeing on a common approach to Iraq. On two contentious issues, Iraqi-Kuwaiti tensions and Iraq's relationship to the GCC, the Ministerial either offered a completely innocuous statement or remained silent. Indeed, there was such disagreement on Iraq and Kuwait's claims on each other that the start of the meeting was delayed while the parties hammered out a compromise, Rende said. ¶13. (C) In the end, the communique simply called for Iraq to "implement all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions" in its relations with Kuwait. This failure to DOHA 00000464 003.2 OF 004 name the "relevant" resolutions testified to the divisiveness that characterizes this issue. When asked by Ambassador whether Iraq's accession to the GCC was discussed, Rende explained that the GCC states "did not want to talk about it." -------------- IRAN -------------- ¶14. (C) Despite holding a common threat perception on Iran, according to Rende, Turkey and the GCC had difficulty reaching a common position with a clear direction. A Turkish newspaper account reported that Iran's occupation of the three UAE islands -- Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs -- also contributed to the meeting's delayed start time. ¶15. (C) Ultimately, the parties could only agree to a toothless, lowest common denominator approach, which "expressed concern at the lack of progress towards resolving the dispute over the three islands." When Ambassador pressed Rende on this weak formulation, the Turkish Ambassador seemed a little embarrassed. ¶16. (C) Turkey and the GCC likewise avoided a strong stand on the Iranian nuclear issue. In fact, there was no explicit criticism of Iranian behavior in the Joint Statement. While the communique emphasized the need to reach a peaceful settlement, the parties qualified their statement by pointing to the right of countries to acquire nuclear energy "for peaceful purposes." In a further attempt to reassure Iran, post-meeting press statements emphasized that the strategic relationship was not directed at any third party, a thinly veiled reference to Iran. ¶17. (C) Divisions within the GCC and between the GCC and Turkey appear to have prevented adoption of a more substantive statement, he said. Rende commented that although Qatar and Oman (both of whom have close relations with Iran) shared the other participants' perception of the threat level of the region, their policies made it more difficult to address Iran's place in the Middle East. Moreover, he suggested that Iran's desire for a similar strategic dialogue with the GCC exacerbated divisions within the Turkey-GCC relationship. -------------- ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT -------------- ¶18. (C) The Arab-Israeli conflict was the one regional issue on which the parties were able to agree unproblematically, he said, and the group emphasized the urgency of comprehensively resolving this dispute. While there were minor differences among participants, particularly on Hamas, all insisted on an independent, viable, and sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. -------------- ECONOMIC ISSUES -------------- ¶19. (C) Notably, other potential strategic issues like energy were barely discussed, even though they are among Turkey's major motivations for developing stronger ties with the GCC, Rende commented. The communique merely "advised" participating countries to hold consultations on oil and gas. Ambassador Rende, who seemed disappointed in this, explained that individual GCC states are not prepared to concede any control over their lifeblood. ¶20. (C) Likewise, discussions about a Free Trade Agreement, while more effusive, did not commit the parties to do anything specific, only encouraged them to conclude an agreement as soon as possible, he noted. -------------- MECHANISMS OF COOPERATION -------------- ¶21. (C) According to the Turkish Ambassador, while the parties to the GCC-Turkey strategic dialogue appear to be moving in the right direction by institutionalizing regularized contact, the mechanisms of cooperation between Turkey and individual GCC-member states are still only loosely mediated by the GCC Secretariat and other organizational mechanisms. GCC organizational participation has been confined to the Secretariat, with the Supreme Council and the Ministerial Council not directly involved. ¶22. (C) Comment: The decision to establish working groups on discrete issues composed of the GCC Secretariat, Turkey, and DOHA 00000464 004 OF 004 each GCC member is an important step as it ensures in-depth cooperation on concrete topics between annual meetings. However, the fact that each individual GCC country retains the right to appoint its own expert to the working groups makes it unclear whether this strategic dialogue is truly a relationship between Turkey and the GCC, as it is billed, or just one between Turkey and individual Gulf states. End Comment. LeBaron