Global Economy: G20 Summit kicks off in Saudi Arabia

In his opening speech, Saudi King Salman bin Abdelaziz focused on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on international economies. This as many human rights groups around protested Saudi Arabia's very poor human rights record.

Read more at: G20 Summit kicks off in Saudi Arabia

Turkey: Realpolitik ? What's behind Turkey's rapprochement moves towards Israel and Russia? - by David Barchard

Realpolitik or "Axis of Evil?

Turkey and Israel have agreed to bury their differences after a bitter dispute froze their relations for six years and have normal diplomatic relations, including ambassadors in each other’s capitals.

Given the long-standing public distaste of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Israel, and Turkish support for the people of Gaza, the news marks a massive policy turnaround. But it has been in the making for a while.

To soften any shock, news of the deal – some pro-government papers are even using the word "reconciliation" – between Turkey and Israel was signalled well in advance of its announcement on Sunday evening. President Erdogan also phoned the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Sunday to give him advance news of the agreement.

News of negotiations between Turkey and Israel has in fact been emerging steadily since late last year, with reports that despite their differences, they had discovered that they needed each other as both regional and energy partners.

Unfinished business from the recent past is being finally got out of the way. Israel will pay Turkey $20 million as compensation to the families of 10 Turkish citizens who died in May 2010 when the Israeli army stormed an unarmed humanitarian convoy carrying relief supplies to Gaza. It has renewed its apology, first issued in 2013, for the attack. The payment of compensation, withheld until now, makes the apology substantial. It will also allow a 10,000-tonne shipload of humanitarian supplies from Turkey to unload at Gaza on Friday this week.

Both sides are portraying the agreement – which will be signed on Tuesday this week – as a victory of sorts. Turkey’s Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, says that Turkey has secured the easing (though not the complete lifting) of the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Turkey is building homes and engaging in other projects to help the people of Gaza. Hamas officials will continue to operate from offices in Turkey.

However according to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Gaza blockade will continue, while Israel will now be able to strike an agreement with Turkey for the export of its newly discovered natural gas reserves to Europe via a pipeline. The two prime ministers issued details of the agreement simultaneously, perhaps in order to lessen domestic criticism in both countries.

For this is an agreement dictated on both sides not by sentiment but by realpolitik – national self-interest. With memories of the events of 2010 and afterwards still fresh, it looks very vulnerable to any possible fresh flare up in Gaza. But for the countries making it, the agreement is solidly underpinned by practical advantages on both sides.

Turkey has been looking for potential alternative suppliers of natural gas to take the place of the Russians, since relations were frozen following the downing of a Russian air force jet on the Syrian border on 24 November. Israeli gas would be a logical alternative, at least for some years.
However there are signs that Russia’s diplomatic and economic freeze against Turkey could also be about to lift, with a statement of "regret" about the jet incident from Erdogan on Monday.
Though Russia seemed to have set its face firmly against future relations with Turkey – and banned all agricultural imports – there have been signs in the last few weeks that Moscow was responding slowly to indications from Turkey that it wanted to normalise relations. 

The freeze in Turkish-Russian relations has not only hit Turkish food producers hard. Hotel bookings are said to be nearly 98 percent down and there has been uncertainty about future energy cooperation, including the construction of Turkey’s first nuclear power-plant at Akkuyu on the Mediterranean. Turkey’s media has continued to criticise Russian operations in Syria, but President Erdogan and Prime Minister Yildirim both made it clear that they wanted the restoration of relations.

The sticking point was a formal apology from President Erdogan for the shooting down of the Russian jet and the death of one of its pilots. According to Russian media sources, later confirmed by Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesperson for the Turkish president, it seems that Erdogan used a form of words in a private letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking relatives of the dead pilot to "excuse us". President Putin regards this as a sufficient apology - so normal relations look like being resumed.

If that does happen, one of Moscow's main moves is likely to be a continued guarantee of Russian natural gas supplies to Turkey - which in any case have so far not been interrupted. How far this would undermine a potential Turkish deal with Israel (by removing the need to buy additional gas) is unclear, but having come so far towards a deal with Israel neither Turkey nor the Israelis look likely to turn back easily.

 Read more: What's behind Turkey's rapprochement moves towards Israel and Russia? | Middle East Eye

Middle East: Turkey gives up on Obama, bristles over Syria deal – Roy Gutman

The Russian-American agreement on a partial cease fire in Syria, hailed by President Vladimir Putin as a “real chance” to stop the war, got a wary welcome this week in Turkey, whose government fears that Moscow will exploit the deal and continue with its bombing campaign to redraw the battlefield of Syria in favor of Bashar Assad’s regime.

It’s not only distrust of Russia, which according to Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus has completed 8,000 sorties since October, nine-tenths of them directed against the moderate opposition and civilian targets, and only a tenth against the fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Adding to doubts about Moscow’s intentions in Syria is the fact that the accord goes into effect on Saturday, more than two weeks after the U.S. and Russia announced there would be a cessation of hostilities. “Apparently the Russians had some things to do on the ground,” said a senior Turkish official.

Then there’s the loophole that allows Russia — or the U.S.-led coalition — to continue bombing ISIL and Jabhat al Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate, whose fighters are mixed with moderate rebels in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province.

And, above all, the skepticism about the cease-fire deal reflects the Turkish ruling establishment’s loss of confidence in Moscow’s negotiating partner in Syria — Washington. Officials in Ankara say they doubt the U.S. has the political will to see that this or any other agreement is upheld.

After nearly five years of watching Washington fumble the Syria crisis, Turkish officials say they are giving up on the Obama administration and will await its successor to craft a strategy for sorting out the Middle East’s expanding conflict.

Since the beginning of Russia’s air campaign on September 30, Syria’s low-intensity conflict has morphed into a high-stakes geopolitical contest. From the Turkish perspective, Washington silently stood by as rebel groups, backed by the U.S., Turkey and other allies were ousted from vital locations by Assad’s Russian-backed forces. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were sent fleeing their homes.

The relentless Russian bombing of cities, towns, villages and farms to prop up the Assad regime’s tenuous hold on power has killed at least 1,500 civilians, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR). In February alone, the bombardment displaced more than 75,000 civilians in the war-wrecked country, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.

Read more: Turkey gives up on Obama, bristles over Syria deal – POLITICO

Iran: Saudi Arabia severs Iran ties - intability on global oil market possible

Saudi Arabia on Sunday officially severed ties with Iran over the storming of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, following the execution of Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr Al-Nimr. Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir told a news conferenc.

 Iran’s diplomatic mission and related entities in Saudi Arabia had been given 48 hours to leave. He said Riyadh would not allow Tehran to undermine the Kingdom’s security.

He added that all Saudi diplomats and staff have arrived in the UAE from Iran and are on their way to the Kingdom.

He called Tehran a regional menace for its smuggling of arms and explosives and its previous harboring of Al-Qaeda militants.

In Tehran, angry crowds hurled Molotov cocktails and stormed the Embassy. Fires were seen burning inside the building.

Read more: Saudi Arabia severs Iran ties | Arab News

Middle East: ‘America in Retreat’: Why Neo-Isolationism Exploded Under Obama and What We Can Do About It - by James Kirchiek

Pulitzer Prize winner Bret Stephens’ new book looks at an America in retreat from global engagement.

One of President Barack Obama’s more annoying habits is a rhetorical propensity for describing policies in black-and-white terms. The nation can either accept his ideas or risk ghastly consequences.

Naturally when you paint the world in such stark colors, you see any and all opposition as delusional, malevolent, venal or a combination of all three. In no realm of policy-making has Obama’s obduracy been more profound than foreign affairs, the area about which he knows the least but presumes to know the most.

An early and memorable indication of Obama’s tendency to portray disagreement unfairly was his response to John McCain’s suggestion, during the 2008 presidential campaign, that America maintain a troop presence in Iraq for “maybe 100 years.” The U.S. maintains forces in Germany and Japan as a stabilizing presence decades after defeating those countries in war, the Republican nominee said, and the lives of its soldiers there are not under threat. Deliberately misconstruing McCain’s remarks in both letter and spirit, Obama assailed McCain as a warmonger, “willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq.”

A generous appraisal of Obama’s comments might chalk them up to mere campaign rhetoric. That might have been possible had not Obama—acting against the advice of his Secretary of State, Joint Chiefs Chairman, two Secretaries of Defense, and numerous other national security officials—executed plans to remove all American troops from Iraq by December 2011. The results of that rash decision, the most dire of which has been the rise of ISIS, are now plain for us to see. Obama had inherited an Iraq that was largely pacified, yet so committed was he to reducing America’s footprint in the Middle East that he sacrificed a set of hard-won gains to fulfill an ideological commitment.

Read more: ‘America in Retreat’: Why Neo-Isolationism Exploded Under Obama and What We Can Do About It - The Daily Beast

Iraq: Obama 'urgently' considering air assault on targets in Syria and Iraq - by Spencer Ackerman

The Obama administration is urgently considering an air assault on Islamic extremists that officials told the Guardian could be directed at targets in Syria as well as Iraq.

President Obama announced on Friday that in the "days ahead" he will decide on a package of military and diplomatic options to halt the rapid advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), as the jihadist army's march from Syria through Sunni Iraq has upended Obama's achievement of extricating the US military from the Iraq conflict.

Obama has ruled out sending US soldiers and marines back to the Iraqi streets they patrolled from 2003 to 2011, but signalled a new, reluctant openness to returning the US to war in Iraq.

Isis "could pose a threat eventually to American interests as well," Obama said in a televised address, but vowed not to be "dragged back into a situation in which, while we're there keeping a lid on things, and after
enormous sacrifices by us, as soon as we're not there, people end up acting in ways that are not conducive to the long-term stability and  prosperity of the country."

Obama 'urgently' considering air assault on targets in Syria and Iraq | World news | The Guardian