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

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Classified By: Amb Joseph LeBaron for reason 1.4 (b) and (d)

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(C) KEY POINTS
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-- 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.

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(C) COMMENTS
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-- 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.

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SECURITY
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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.

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FOOD SECURITY
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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.

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CULTURE
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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.

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IRAQ
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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

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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."

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IRAN
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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.

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ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT
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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.

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ECONOMIC ISSUES
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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.

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MECHANISMS OF COOPERATION
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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

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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