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Pakistan Press ( 15 Dec 2020, NewAgeIslam.Com)

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Pakistan Press On Forced Conversions and Marriages of Hindu Girls, and Human Rights Day: New Age Islam's Selection, 15 December 2020


By New Age Islam Edit Desk

15 December 2020

• Forced Conversions And Marriages Of Hindu Girls

Aamir Yaqoob

• Human Rights Day

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

• To Be Babar’s Truer Offspring

By Jawed Naqvi

• Power Of Words

By Dr Niaz Murtaza

• Pakistan And Bangladesh: A Restoration In Ties?

By Saman Rizwan

• Biden’s Turkey Challenge

By Dr Murad Ali

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Forced Conversions and Marriages of Hindu Girls

By Aamir Yaqoob

December 15, 2020

 

Minorities in Pakistan started to feel like ‘minorities’ during the time of General Zia-ul-Haq, says Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, who founded the Pakistan Hindu Council.” Pakistani Hindus dancing on Holi, in Karachi. 

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The Pakistani state is failing to protect human rights of the women belonging to religious minorities.

In Sindh, the second largest province of Pakistan, abductions and forced conversions of Hindu girls frequently occur despite growing outrage from local and international civil society organizations.

According to reports by women rights groups, some 20 non-Muslim girls are abducted, forcefully converted to Islam and married off to their abductors each month. To curb this practice, Sindh Assembly in 2016 unanimously adopted the Criminal Law (Protection of Minorities) Bill but miserably failed to formalize it into law because of the mounting pressure by religious groups and right-wing political parties. However, it would be highly simplistic to suggest that such heinous crimes against women perpetuate in our society only because of the unavailability of a comprehensive legal instrument to prosecute the culprits. Instead, it is argued that violence against women of Hindu community has structural and intersectional foundations and must be understood therefore as a matter of human security.

Politically motivated and often opposing narratives of liberals and religious factions obscure the multilayer complexity of the issue of forced conversions. Without a variation, religious groups would claim that women from Hindu community get influenced by the teachings of Islam and choose to convert to Islam without any coercion. In contrast, liberals and human rights groups would always argue that women are kidnapped for sexual exploitation and later forced into marriage after involuntary conversion to Islam. These competing narratives leave little room for comprehension of patriarchal opportunism, its relationship with women’s agency and the social construction of Hindu women’s identity.

Forced conversions and marriages can be seen as structural violence against women of vulnerable community. Patriarchal feudal culture coupled with Islamic populism render impoverished non-Muslim women vulnerable to gendered violence. Since “honor” of a community in a patriarchal and feudalistic society such as ours is placed in female body, it is easy to understand why a Muslim man would violate dignity of Hindu women in Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The socio-political construction of the society in interior Sindh gives men of majority community (Muslim) a sense of entitlement over the women of minority community (Hindu) which is also a subject of hatred due to its origin in a country (India) which is perceived as enemy.

It is important to note that hatred against minorities especially Hindus is deeply entrenched in the history of the country. The Two Nations Theory which is vehemently protected by the state institutions and transferred to future generations through rigorous curriculum maintains that Hindus and Muslims are too different to live together in peace and that Pakistan is exclusively made for Muslims. Added to this are the painful memories of partition violence which occurred between the two communities around 7 decades ago. Moreover, religious narratives and rhetoric by firebrand clerics interpret the historic and political instances in a way that widen the rift between majority and minorities.

Similarly, feudalistic patriarchy ordained by religious norms and supported by socio-economic realities of interior Sindh strengthens hypermasculinity of Muslim men who are well-connected in the local elite to prey upon the vulnerabilities of (Hindu) women around them. In this context, conversions and marriages are employed as camouflage techniques to avert legal actions and to take the attention away from brute violence against women.

Intersectionality approach is also helpful to explain why Hindu women more often than others are subjected to abductions, change of religion and marital coercion. In fact, these women are facing several layers of discrimination which cannot be dealt with by utilizing legal and social means available to address monocausal discrimination. One needs to look into the multiple identities assigned to the potential victim to understand the complexity of the issue. Feudalistic patriarchy constructs the victim woman as a commodified sexualized body. In the same way, proto-nationalism, embedded in politico-religious narratives, others Hindu women. Similarly, the economic hardship of a Hindu woman is perceived as an opportunity to exploit her for material gains. To sum up, Hindu girls are discriminated because of their class, gender, religion and perceived national loyalty. In other words, a Hindu woman is seen as a non-believer destitute enemy alien who is loyal to India.

Unfortunately, the conduct of state institutions suggest that this perception is shared to some degree by law enforcement and legal justice systems. As a result, the usual structure to protect human rights underperforms in the case of forced conversions and marriages of Hindu women.

Partly responsible for the blatant violation of the rights and dignity of the vulnerable women and subsequent inaction of the state machinery is overstress on national security. Now, Pakistani state must prioritize human security of its citizens without discrimination on the bases of gender, race, ethnicity and religious identity. A Hindu woman in interior Sindh is as good a Pakistanis as a Sunni male Muslim in central Punjab. Therefore, she must be entitled to the same rights and privileges not only in the books of law but in practice as well. This will be not be made possible by superficial amendments in laws and occasional Suo moto notices taken by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. What is needed is a basic transformation from national security to human security and from rigid patriarchy to inclusive equality. Surely, this will reconnect us to lost dream of a welfare state.

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Aamir Yaqoob is Fulbright PhD Student in Global Governance and Human Security at UMass Boston .

https://dailytimes.com.pk/701680/forced-conversions-and-marriages-of-hindu-girls/

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Human Rights Day

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

December 15, 2020


Last week I attended a “National Seminar” on Human Rights to commemorate the Human Rights Day. Members of the National Assembly and Punjab Provincial Assembly attended this seminar and spoke for 15 to 20 minutes congratulating themselves on the enormous success Pakistan has brought about in human rights. First and foremost, their speeches were replete with religious references, which is to be expected in a theocratic state. However it was their complete and total ignorance of the multifarious nature of human rights violations in this country.

First of all let me state unequivocally that a theocratic state like ours is incompatible with human rights. What happened to Aasia Bibi and continues to happen to other hapless minorities in Pakistan is the logical culmination of the kind of laws that are on our statute books. You cannot even talk about these laws because any legal analysis would ultimately lead to an accusation of blasphemy.

In this space I have written enough times of the unjustifiable persecution of religious minorities, so I do not have to repeat it here. The damnable persecution is so widespread that it has been normalized.

Pakistan has ratified and is a signatory to most of the major conventions on human rights, the most important of which is International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Under the ICCPR Pakistan would be duty-bound to allow complete religious freedom and freedom of speech. However, as mentioned earlier, Pakistan’s ratification has been made subject to so many reservations that it defeats the very purpose of the covenant. Further more since 2010 when Pakistan ratified ICCPR, there has been no progress on domestic legislation recognizing the rights protected under it. Since Pakistan is a dualist state, it needs domestic legislation like a Human Rights Act to implement ICCPR. This is not going to happen as long as our politicians claim that everything is hunky dory and that it is India, which violates human rights. Here is a truth that may be plainly put. India’s human rights record is woeful but even so, the human rights situation in that country is 100 times better than our theocratic state. As a Pakistani patriot this is a painful realisation but any honest person has to accept this reality.

The Constitution that Dr Ambedkar gave, and Ambedkar was an enemy of the Congress Party mind you, is one that will for ages protect Indians regardless of religion, caste or creed. It is a citadel against ancient dark forces that afflict the Indian society. Meanwhile other than Jinnah’s 11 August speech we have nothing. As long as he was there, he was a bulwark against reactionary legislation. Every action we have taken since 11 September 1948, the date that the old man died, has been a step towards a denial of fundamental human rights.

Objectives’ Resolution was the first blow. Nomenclature of the 1956 Constitution and the bar on the office of the President was the second. 1973 Constitution for all practical purposes buried fundamental rights altogether despite retaining hypocritically a chapter on fundamental rights. Taking the right to self identify in 1974 opened a door we should never have opened. Whatever edifice remained was destroyed by General Zia’s military dictatorship. The point is that Pakistan has absolutely no right to point fingers at India given that Pakistan has been doing this for decades and even at its worst moment in history, India is and is likely to remain better than Pakistan because of the simple reason that India is not a theocracy.

Sudan- another theocracy not different from ours- became a secular state in September this year. Religion and state has been separated. When I was in College, I remember the Sudanese students to be the most “pious”. They would look at us Pakistanis in horror at our refusal to fit in with their ideas of religiosity. Not many have considered the implications of the Sudanese conversion to secularism but it will have ripples all over the Islamic World. If a country like Sudan can do it, so can Pakistan. Sudan did it because the Sudanese have realised that their democratic aspirations and human rights are incompatible with theocracy. The road went through the stony path of a deadly civil war. Let us hope there is no such civil war in Pakistan. The Islam in Sudan is a monolith. Islam in Pakistan is not. The civil war that may ensue in Pakistan will be much deadlier than Sudan. With the horizontal and vertical religious and ethnic divisions the only possible solution for Pakistan is to become a secular and democratic federation of autonomous constituent units. Powers that be will not allow it till enough damage is done.

https://dailytimes.com.pk/701692/human-rights-day-3/

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To Be Babar’s Truer Offspring

By Jawed Naqvi

15 Dec 2020

WATCH the video of Donald Trump’s visit to Agra and freeze the frame where the publicly anti-Muslim chief minister of Uttar Pradesh is seen presenting the US president with a framed picture of the Taj Mahal. Yogi Adityanath, whose open targeting of Indian Muslims has spearheaded Hindutva’s political march was presenting a celebrated Mughal relic to a fellow racial bigot. Hatred can be an opportunistic tool, of course, but Adityanath had put on a needless charade for a visitor who in any case didn’t care.

Cut to a recent online summit between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. India and Uzbekistan shared “civilisation and historic ties”, a readout of the talks said last week. It’s true that Uzbekistan, like Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey and other Central Asian countries, has had extremely close cultural links with India. What is difficult to figure out is the reason for a sectarian prime minister who doesn’t wish his own Indian Muslims on Eid and changes the name of Christmas Day into Good Governance Day to highlight a historical and civilisational link he appears to have grown up loathing.

After all, Modi has risen to power by hurling anti-Babar invectives at Indian Muslims, encouraging his supporters to mock them as Babar’s offspring. And Babar is a sweetheart romantic, a poet-prince revered in Uzbekistan, ranking second only to Amir Taimur.

That’s not the end of Modi’s overtures in Uzbekistan. Had the Indian prime minister been merely recalling an evocative civilisational link it would not be so puzzling. In diplomacy such stock phrases are used for effect. President K.R. Narayanan welcomed president Pervez Musharraf as a son of Delhi. These things happen.

Modi’s earlier Uzbek visit in 2015 saw him performing a bigger cultural somersault of sorts. He had presented his host an especially commissioned reproduction of Khamsa-i-Khusrau composed in Persian by the great 13th-century Sufi poet Amir Khusrau. One would associate such high-minded gestures from, say, Atal Behari Vajpayee or Manmohan Singh. But, Modi? He opened his gambit as prime minister by ordering the distribution of Gita, the holy book to Hindus, to foreign dignitaries. (The Pope would be wondering if he had sinned by not presenting copies of the Bible to his visitors.)

Khusrau’s quintet was inspired by an earlier work by Nizami Ganjavi, a much-loved Persian poet and philosopher, who lived a century before Khusrau. Both versions describe albeit with slightly differing plots — among other stories — the tragic romance of Shirin and Farhad. If Modi liked the story of Shirin and Farhad he should be commended for this pleasantly eclectic side to him. There’s no evidence of this being the case.

Modi’s gift to his Uzbek host was spurred alsoby the fact that Khusrau was born in Uttar Pradesh and his father hailed from Uzbekistan. In which case, isn’t this also the story of countless Indian Muslims (and those of other faiths) who were born in India but whose forebears came from elsewhere?

For an Indian leader who refuses to wear a cap lest it links him with Muslims, Modi was at his charming best a couple of years ago as guest of Indonesian President Joko Widodo. In Jakarta, where Indian leaders have relished their evenings with Muslim actors performing an amazing ballet from stories from the Ramayana, the prime minister drove off instead to visit Indonesia’s grand Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia. Has he been to a mosque in India with such enthusiasm, other than the Babri Masjid he helped destroy?

“Glad to have visited the Istiqlal Mosque, one of the largest mosques in the world,” Modi said in a tweet at the time. The foreign ministry spokesperson added a Ramazan greeting to boot. “Ramadan Karim! Indonesian President @jokowi accompanied PM @narendramodi during a visit to Istiqlal Mosque, the national mosque of Indonesia and the largest in southeast Asia, in the holy month of Ramadan.”

Khusrau’s Khamsa is a part of the manuscripts collection of the National Museum in Delhi. Years ago, a colleague from Aligarh was curating the mediaeval history section at the museum. His hands shook with sheer nervousness of handling another priceless Khusrau manuscript he showed me but didn’t allow to be touched. The poet composed this masnavi ‘Ashiqa’ and it should interest advocates of Hindutva since it involves the tragic love of Deval Rani and Khizr Khan, a Hindu princess and her Muslim suitor.

In its denouement the story is manifold more painful than the popular lore of doomed lovers, but it is also a complicated narrative. Sultan Alauddin Khilji was unhappy with his wife Mahru and falls in love with a Hindu princess Kamla Devi, and marries her. Alauddin’s eldest son Khizr Khan was born to Mahru. Kamla Devi had a daughter from a Hindu raja from a previous marriage. Queen Kamla has her daughter back. Then Khizr Khan falls in love with the daughter of his stepmother, a very complicated situation.

For a country where stories of tragic love abound in folklore and real life, India should have been nicely inoculated to deal with the outbreak of the dubious war on what Modi’s ideological factory calls ‘love jihad’. It has little to do with any Muslim man marrying a Hindu woman with the view to converting her to his faith. Only the other day, police stopped a couple from getting married in Uttar Pradesh in a case where the Muslim boy was getting converted to the woman’s Hindu faith, not the other way around.

Some say the genesis of the idea lies in Nazi Germany where ordinary Germans were forcibly segregated from Jews. Is there a moral of the story for Indian Muslims? Is it better to be a truer offspring of Babar in Uzbekistan than a fake one in India?

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Jawed Naqvi is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1595869/to-be-babars-truer-offspring

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Power of Words

By Dr Niaz Murtaza

15 Dec 2020

STICKS and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me, sages say. But we see the reverse today. Those immune to stick and stones have been hurt by the open words at PDM rallies about their rarely discussed illegitimate role in politics. The trance has been broken.

Still, it’s unclear if the opposition PDM’s words alone can have the desired effect. More basically, some even question its approach. First, there are the PDM’s dicey tactics of gathering thousands physically despite Covid-19 risks. It can keep protesting while keeping the Covid-19 risk low by only having a token, masked-up crowd at the grounds, for its real audience are the millions who watch on TV and those who already know about their ability to gather crowds. The PTI too is being lax about Covid-19 in the matter of the huge Khadim Rizvi funeral and congregational prayers, both equal to several PDM rallies. Yet the PTI’s follies don’t justify the PDM ones.

Beyond tactics, some question even its aims and credentials. The PDM says that the PTI’s misrule and illegitimacy justify toppling it via protests. However, misrule is a valid rationale for doing so if it is highly exceptional. Seen objectively, the PTI’s misrule is at most only somewhat worse than the levels seen over the last few decades. This includes the PML-N and PPP’s own past misrule norms. So neither misrule nor the PDM’s own credentials here provide a strong rationale.

Nevertheless, the issue of the PTI’s perceived illegitimacy is weighty. The EU’s 2018 election report, whose findings were muffled in Pakistan via media gags, starkly blames two ‘big’ unelected institutions of pre-poll rigging against the PML-N via fixing cases and horse-trading. Credible national civil society and media sources echo such charges. The PTI’s thin majority ups the weight of such charges.

Beyond this controversy, there is the debate that the PTI survives due to prop-ups allegedly by some in the establishment, given its thin majority and misrule. And then there is the huge crackdown on dissent. Thus, peaceful and safe protests, not for toppling the PTI directly, but for fair polls, civilian sway, free speech and an end to any extra-constitutional support for the PTI are legitimate. If the PTI survives on its own without support from other forces, fine. If not, its fall will serve democracy, even if some PDM leaders often give a muddled message: the PDM is not asking for the PTI to be removed unnaturally but is asking for a stop to alleged ongoing efforts to prop up the PTI and leave the rest to politics.

And on this count, the PDM has basic even if not perfect credentials. While the deep past of its key parties on these issues is dicey, at least during 2008-2018, they won polls fairly, allowed more dissent and quizzed the establishment more than the PTI today. Some doubt the PDM’s credentials since they did not deliver advanced democracy earlier, given their dynasties, sleaze etc. But such democracy is present hardly in any of the 100-plus developing states globally, even in many with much higher per capita incomes. Still many, perhaps even most, have fair polls and civilian sway. Thus, it’s inapt to use advanced democracy as a standard for our political system, which not just Pakistan but most developing states may not attain in decades.

The correct standards and realistic immediate democratic aims for Pakistan are fair polls and civilian sway, ie the procedural democracy it had from 2008-2018. In politics today, one rarely comes across classic battles between good and evil. Most are between shades of evil. From that lens, the PDM clearly represents a lighter shade than autocracy.

However, even with valid aims and credentials, can the PDM win via sit-ins and resignations as the second round starts? The PTI didn’t in 2014. But then, its rigging charges were flimsy; the PML-N had popular support and the economy was doing better. The PDM can also deliver bigger and tougher crowds for sit-ins and many more resignations. But nixing all this is the alleged establishment support for the PTI despite its misrule.

Institutional and personal interests appear to tempt the powers that be to ignore the national ones and prop up the PTI. Yet the poor economy and cool ties with big allies like the US and Saudis limit their attempts to thrust their will over an unwilling and unwieldy society. The autocratic system today is already as weak in just two and a half years as earlier ones became in eight to 10 years. So, if the PDM stays peaceful, united and persistent, it may succeed at least partially given this weakness. Its success will not lead to advanced democracy or much progress instantly. But even the end of autocracy will be a worthwhile fruit. The writer is a political economist and heads INSPIRING Pakistan, a progressive policy unit.

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Dr Niaz Murtaza ---- is a political economist and heads INSPIRING Pakistan, a progressive policy unit.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1595870/power-of-words

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Pakistan And Bangladesh: A Restoration In Ties?

By Saman Rizwan

December 14, 2020

In a rare move, Pakistan’s high commissioner to Bangladesh met with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, pledging to improve the otherwise dormant bilateral relationship between the countries.

Conceivably, the telephonic conversation of PM Imran Khan with his Bangladeshi counterpart paved the way in fusing the troublesome relations between the two countries. The backchannel diplomacy conducted over the year could upend the historic configurations of the South Asian region. The initiative of advancing cultural and economic ties is to be lauded. However, this series of diplomatic initiatives is breaking the long-standing impasse in maintaining cordial relations.

In the past years, cooperation remained limited. In fact, the two countries came at odds after the government of Bangladesh resumed the 1971 war crimes trials. The trials led to several leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami being tried and executed for siding with Pakistan (during the 1971 conflict). However, Pakistan claimed the executions were ‘politically motivated’ and had not been conducted to mete out justice. Bangladesh viewed these comments as interference in its domestic affairs. As a response, the Saarc summit in September 2016 was boycotted by Bangladesh to protest against Pakistan’s stance on those Bangladesh called war criminals who were guilty of participating in the 1971 war. Following the trials, relations between the two countries reached a low.

Now, with the changing geopolitical realities, regional actors should move past their historical baggage and see their relations with other countries in a new light. There are two routes to reconciliation, as suggested by academics Arie Nadler and Tamar Saguy: a) Socio-Emotional Reconciliation; b) Trust-Building Reconciliation.

The first route of reconciliation centers around the actors' wish to avenge the wrongdoings committed against them in the past and the perpetrator to pay its debt by apologizing and accepting the responsibility of its actions. The second deals with joint projects which can result in establishing an atmosphere of mutual trust and cooperation.

In the case of Pakistan-Bangladesh ties, the application of the first route will account for an official recognition from Pakistan concerning the 1971 debacle. On the other hand, the latter route for reconciliation seems more viable as Pakistan and Bangladesh can work on improving their trade relations which will lead to enhancing the diplomatic mechanisms.

The combined trade potential of Pakistan and Bangladesh is $345 billion, with a consumer market of around $346 million, as per writer Zahid Shahab and Musharaf Zahoor. The rationale for the two countries to enhance their bilateral relations appears promising.

Recent developments in the region provide both the countries with an opportunity to establish a common ground and work towards building a concrete relationship. New Delhi faces a reduced sphere of influence vis-a-vis Bangladesh after the passing of the controversial citizenship law in India led to an increase in deportation of the Bangladeshis’ living in the eastern wing of India.

The prevailing regional dynamics might pave the way for recalibrating the policy decisions in both countries. A look at the redundancy of Saarc puts into perspective the low level of integration within the South Asian region. While the forum aimed to enhance regional cooperation and act as a catalyst for development in the region, the political realities of the region have kept the member states rather ambivalent towards its functionality. It is imperative to understand that these regional frameworks have become dysfunctional due to the underlying scepticism and mistrust. These are the very reasons that restrict the rapprochement between Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The associated historical baggage significantly limits both the countries to take concrete steps in maintaining cordial ties. However, if the countries can manage to bury the hostility and start anew with restored commitment, then the incentives of increasing regional collaborations are high. The other regional blocs such as the EU and ASEAN are sustaining their regional frameworks despite sharing a bitter history. That is a lesson in itself for other regional actors.

Bilateral tensions between Pakistan and Bangladesh act as a hindrance and sabotage the spirit of multilateralism, Initiation of cultural and economic activities will help the countries reconstruct the existing narrative within their people. Lastly, shifting away from conflictual patterns will lead to greater prosperity and cooperation.

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Saman Rizwan is a research assistant at the Centre for Strategic and Contemporary Research.

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/758151-a-restoration-in-ties

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Biden’s Turkey Challenge

By Dr Murad Ali

December 14, 2020

Like multiple foreign policy challenges in countries such as Afghanistan, China nad Russia, another key challenge for the incoming Biden administration will be how to deal with a more assertive Turkey under Erdogan.

In recent years, Ankara has pursued its own foreign policy objectives via various military offensives in Syria, provided assistance to Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia, has been in confrontation with Greece, Cyprus and the EU, and particularly has shown no restraint over drilling rights in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

The most significant and thorny issue that has affected Turkey-US bilateral ties is Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 defence system, ignoring all US threats. Whether or not to impose the US Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) will be a tough test for Biden. While Turkey was severely pressurised by the Trump administration not to go ahead with a military deal with Russia, Trump also repeatedly refused to enforce the said sanctions despite multiple calls from Congress and State Department officials’ threats to Turkey.

Following the purchase of Russia S-400 components, the Trump Administration announced in July 2019 that it was “removing Turkey from participation in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program”. Hence, there is also the possibility that the new US administration could impose sanctions or some kind of arms embargo on Turkey as it did in the 1970s on the Cyprus issue.

Historically, Turkey has mostly remained a key US ally. Outside Europe, it was the only nation that received US aid under the Marshall Plan aimed for the reconstruction of war-battered European countries. Turkey was provided $137 million from 1948 to 1952. The 1950 Korean War also played a key role in bringing Turkey and the US closer as the former sent about 4,500 military personnel under the US command. In terms of troops, Ankara provided the fourth largest number of soldiers following the US, Britain and Canada. Because of Turkey’s vital support in this overseas military mission under the US command, the latter fully endorsed Ankara’s membership to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato). Consequently, Turkey became an important member of Nato in 1952.

It has been appropriately pointed out that, unlike Israel or Greece, Turkey did not have any domestic constituency in Washington to lobby for it but despite that it emerged a key country in the cold war theatre due its geo-strategic location as it was situated at the fulcrum of three distinctive regions comprising Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

During the cold-war period as well as during the two Iraq wars and in the US-led ‘war on terror’, Turkey sided with its Western allies and reaped the dividend in the form of US economic and military aid as well as getting access to US defence arsenals. According to data obtained from USAID, from 1948 to 2008, the US provided a total of $30 billion in economic aid and over $40 billion in security assistance.

Similarly, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Turkey has purchased military arms worth $57 billion from 1950 to 2019, out of which the US alone has delivered Turkey arms worth about $34 billion. It is more than half of the amount that Turkey has purchased from all other countries together. These figures indicate the significance of Turkey for successive US administrations and policymakers.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, Turkey’s geopolitical importance decreased for a while. At the same time, there was a brief period of the end of the honeymoon era in the Turkish-US relations. However, the first Gulf War once again proved Turkey’s geostrategic significance. It would not have been possible for the US and its allies to successfully conduct military operations without the military and intelligence support provided by Turkey.

Hence, Turkey’s vital role during the Gulf crisis once again ensured US policymakers who had their own acumen, pertaining to “Turkey’s enduring strategic importance”. Because of Turkey’s contribution in the Gulf crisis, President Bush paid an official visit to Turkey in 1991. The aim of the visit was to offer his country’s gratitude for Turkey’s pivotal part in the US-led military campaign against Saddam Hussein. It was the first visit of a US president to Turkey in more than 30 years as Eisenhower was the last president who had travelled to Ankara in 1959.

However, Turkey did not offer much assistance to the US and its coalition forces in the Second Gulf War. In October 2003, the matter was brought to the Turkish parliament to decide whether to send its troops to Iraq or not. During the voting, the Turkish parliament voted 358 to 183 to respond positively to the US request for about 10,000 Turkish troops to help contain the rising wave of insurgency in Iraq following the ouster of Saddam. Although the US offered billions of dollars in loans to Turkey, it decided not to send its security forces to Iraq because there was a strong objection from the Iraqi side. Although Turkey declined to send its troops to Iraq, it allowed US flights more than 4,000 sorties over its territory into Iraq.

Because of unabated civil war and instability in neighbouring Syria and volatility in Iraq, Turkey has been hosting over 2.5 million refugees from war-ravaged Syria and over 200,000 from Iraq. Turkey criticises the role of the international community, particularly the US-led coalition forces which are largely responsible for the destruction in these countries. The US and EU countries have not been able to provide sufficient support to Turkey to bear the costs related to hosting such an unprecedented influx of refugees.

In addition to the above issues related to the role of Turkey in Syria and purchase of the latest weapons and defence system from Russia, there is another set of issues that has become contentious between the two countries in recent years. These issues include the Eastern Mediterranean tensions with Greece and Cyprus, evading US sanctions in dealing with Iran, matters regarding democracy and human rights violations, Erdogan’s highly critical stance towards Israel and sympathies with Hamas and the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. There has been increasing divergence between the two countries on these matters.

Although Turkey established diplomatic and trade relations with Israel long ago, the Zionist state has been consistently chastised by President Erdogan by highlighting human rights abuses by Israel against Palestinians on various international forums including at the UNGA. It is believed that Ankara has been tacitly supporting Hamas. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and some other members of the Congress were openly critical of the conduct of the Turkish government when the regime decided in July this year to reconvert Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque. It must be mentioned here that the building had been built as a church in the 6th century and was transformed into a mosque during the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. However, the mosque was designated as a museum in 1934, following Turkey’s declaration to become a secular republic.

In sum, all these issues have become major points of concern and have caused some kind of estrangement in the Turkey-US relations in recent years and will be an additional headache to the new US administration.

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Dr Murad Aliholds a PhD from Massey University, New Zealand. He teaches at the University of Malakand.

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/758150-biden-s-turkey-challenge

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