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As a Turkey follower (I studied the country in grad school and wrote on it for my dissertation and first book) I’ve got thoughts on Turkey’s elections. But as someone not interested in hot takes, I’m going to wait until the election is over to provide some analysis.
Instead, I want to talk about Pope Francis’ “peace talks” between Russia and Ukraine. The Pope recently announced “secret” peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, although neither side seemed to be aware of this. His efforts have progressed, however, with Ukraine President Zelensky’s recent visit to Italy.
I should be a fan of this. I think Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was, and continues to be, a war crime: it needs to stop. I study religion and international relations, and thus should welcome an example of religion’s power in the world. But I’m concerned, not because I think he’ll fail but because I worry he’ll succeed.
My concerns have to do with the nature of the Pope’s current mission, and a past mission he conducted.
He is attempting to stay neutral in the conflict in order to find a middle ground between the combatants. Francis has been hesitant to call out Russia as the aggressor in the conflict while suggesting Russia was “provoked” into attacking Ukraine. He’s met with Putin supporters such as Viktor Orban of Hungary.
I can understand what the Pope is trying to do. Putin will never trust someone who condemns his actions, and–if the goal is peace rather than Russian surrender–this neutrality is the best way to achieve it.
But as I’ve argued before, peace at any cost isn’t really what Ukraine needs. Such a peace deal would likely give Russia some control over Ukraine, which is not acceptable. Ukraine needs a just peace that includes justice for the victims of Russian aggression, not just the end of fighting.
Most commentators believe Pope Francis’ peace efforts will fail…I worry they will succeed.
The Pope’s earlier peacebuilding in Syria demonstrates this concern. As I discuss in my forthcoming book with Cornell University Press, Francis opposed calls in 2013 for international military intervention in Syria in response to the Assad regime’s atrocities against the Syrian people. Some of this included explicit appeals to faith. Ultimately, Francis was successful in organizing a transnational coalition against intervention.
I was also opposed to military intervention in Syria. At the same time, I did not believe peace talks would cause Assad to start respecting human rights. And, unfortunately, Francis’ successful blocking of military intervention did not lead to a concerted effort to create a just peace for the Syrian people. Instead, it gave Assad the breathing room to crush his opponents. Some see this as a permanent stain on Francis’ legacy, and I worry his efforts in Ukraine will be as well.
Most commentary on the Pope’s Ukraine peace efforts seem to think they will fail. He is intervening in conflicts among Orthodox Christians, outside the Roman Catholic sphere of influence. Zelensky continues to receive support from Western leaders; he had a positive meeting with Italian Prime Minister Meloni, and both the UK and Germany have pledged military aid.
I think he may actually succeed.
In my forthcoming book I discuss why religious appeals affect power politics, by persuading leaders and resonating with domestic publics. I also discuss when they succeed or fail.
Pope Francis may not appreciate the immense power he wields.
The key variables are the credibility of the actor issuing the appeals and the material incentives facing their targets. A speaker credible on religious issues and targets amenable to their message leads to success. The absence of these conditions leads to failure.
Most situations in the real world, however, involve a mix of the two. Situations involve either a speaker with little credibility on religious issues but the ability to provide material incentives, or a credible speakers appealing to targets with disincentives to go along with their efforts. The theme of the book is that religious appeals have real impacts on power politics, but rarely in the manner intended by their wielders.
Pope Francis’ peacebuilding efforts are a rare exception. First, if anyone is credible on religious issues it’s Pope Francis. His ascension to the Throne of St. Peter was greeted by enthusiasm around the world, given the fact that he is from the Global South and has emphasized care for the poor and social justice. He has established (possibly problematic) religious ties with the UAE’s government. Even this proud Protestant, whose Lutheran ancestors had to flee the Palatinate because of the Thirty Years’ War, likes him. As seen in his work on Syria, he is able to mobilize transnational and inter-faith coalitions; he may do the same on Ukraine.
Additionally, everyone involved has material incentives to listen to him. Western backers of Ukraine are wary of being drawn into the war, and some worry about the drain on their military readiness from continued support. The war is not working out for Russia, and it’s not inconceivable Putin is looking for a face-saving out. Even Ukraine’s will may begin to wear down as this goes on.
Thus, even if Francis cannot bring Putin and Zelensky together, his efforts may spark a transnational social coalition that puts pressure on all involved states to end the war.
Again, if the goal was just peace–i.e. the absence of fighting–this would be good. But this sort of “peace” means Russia will not have to repair the country it devastated, while Ukraine will likely have to give up full control of its territory. Pope Francis’ efforts may succeed, but leave the people he’s trying to help worse off. This would not be a failure of his influence, but, ironically, an unfortunate success for religious appeals in power politics. Pope Francis may not appreciate the immense power he wields.
Guest post by Marta Furlan
In 2014, the Houthis, a Zaydi Shia armed group from the Sa’ada region of northern Yemen, aligned with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been removed following the Arab Spring uprisings. Together, they defeated the government led by President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and established control over the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and the entirety of northern Yemen.
At that time, Iran began to progressively increase its support for the Houthis, seeing partnership with the group as an opportunity to advance its revisionist agenda in the region and establish its influence in the southern Red Sea, an area of immense strategic significance. Threatened by aggressive Iranian expansionism at its doorstep, in March 2015, Saudi Arabia entered the war alongside Hadi. As Iran sided with the Houthis and Saudi Arabia sided with Hadi, Yemen became the battlefield of both a domestic competition for power between different local factions and a regional competition for influence between Teheran and Riyadh.
The complexity that characterizes the Yemeni conflict is not unique. In the modern Middle East, countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Libya also experienced civil wars that developed into multi-layered conflicts involving local, regional, and international actors. In Syria, for instance, the confrontation initially involved the Assad regime, the secular opposition, a plethora of jihadist groups, and the Syrian Kurds. It grew, however, into a competition between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey over the regional status quo and a competition between the United States and Russia over influence in the Middle East. Despite the civil war scholarship suggesting that one-sided victories become harder with the passing of time, the Syrian conflict ended de facto with the one-sided victory of Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russia and Iran.
As far as Yemen is concerned, the conflict is still ongoing. A major development, however, occurred two weeks ago when Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic ties and reopen embassies within two months, seven years after they severed relations. Following the signing of the agreement, which was brokered by China, questions emerged as to whether the deal might have positive implications for the war in Yemen.
Prospects aren’t promising. The conflict in Yemen is at its heart a civil war between Yemeni factions, which is driven by social and political tensions that emerged in Yemen following the country’s unification in May 1990. On the background of those tensions, the inception of the current conflict can truly be traced back to the early 2000s, when six rounds of confrontation saw the government and the Houthi movement fight each other in Sa’ada. Rather than being a simple binary confrontation between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed government, the war in Yemen is a complex mosaic of multiple armed factions fighting against and, at times, alongside each other. Within the anti-Houthi camp, there is a significant degree of military and political fragmentation, with different militias harboring different interests and visions. Some of those include the Southern Transitional Council (STC); al-Islah; the National Resistance Forces led by Tareq Saleh; and the National Shield Force formed by Saudi Arabia.
A reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia will not address the deep-rooted and long-harbored hostility between the Houthis and their opponents, nor will it address the tensions and differences that dominate the anti-Houthi camp. At the very best, the Saudi-Iranian détente will facilitate the bilateral talks that have been ongoing between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. Those talks were initiated last October, when a six-month-long ceasefire expired, yet no side (Houthis, Saudi Arabia, the government) was willing to return to the battlefront amidst war fatigue. However, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC, Yemen’s de facto government) has been excluded from the Houthi-Saudi negotiation table. Its exclusion inevitably makes any Houthi-Saudi deal that might be reached in the future with Iranian support hardly consequential for the country’s peace and stability.
Will Yemen see a one-sided victory, similar to what happened in Syria? That’s unlikely. The Houthis and the government-aligned forces reached a mutually damaging stalemate in Marib that left them all weaker. Under these circumstances, academic research suggests that the warring parties could either take steps toward a negotiated settlement or persist indefinitely in a costly, stalled conflict.
The regional dimension of the war might gradually be moving toward a negotiated settlement between the Houthis and Iran, on one hand, and Saudi Arabia, on the other. Pummelled by years of fighting, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia seem to view bilateral negotiations favorably. But the domestic dimensions of the war continue to evade any negotiated settlement between Houthis and the PLC and between different PLC-affiliated militias. As the civil war literature suggests, the trajectory of the conflict will depend on how those parties assess what they can gain or lose from fighting versus negotiating. As the Houthis appear once again determined to resort to force, prospects for peace do not look particularly encouraging.
Marta Furlan is a research and policy consultant at Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) in Germany.
Enlarge / People queue for clean water on February 9, 2023, in Hatay, Turkey. (credit: Getty | Burak Kara)
Deaths from the massive earthquake and aftershocks that violently struck parts of southern Turkey and northern Syria in the early hours of Monday have now surpassed 20,000—a staggering toll of devastation.
As of Thursday, Turkey’s national emergency management agency reported more than 17,000 deaths, as well as over 70,000 injured. Syrian Ministry of Health, meanwhile, reported 1,347 deaths and 2,295 injured. Rescuers in rebel-held northwest areas of the country reported at least 2,030 deaths and at least 2,950 injured.
As heroic rescue crews continue sifting through the rubble of collapsed structures, concern is growing for those tens of thousands injured and countless others made more vulnerable by the crisis.
Like many, I woke up in shock at the massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria. The earthquake, centered in Gaziantep, has killed 3,000 as of Monday afternoon devastated southeast Turkey and northern Syria. In addition to Gaziantep, other affected Turkish cities were Sanliurfa and Diyarbakir [Note-these aren’t the proper spellings as I can’t figure out how to insert Turkish characters].
Any destruction and death on this scale is a tragedy, but the earthquake followed a string of other problems for the region. Turkey’s southeast was long marginalized, and the site of an insurgency by its Kurdish population. This seemed like it may change when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey in 2002; the AKP invested in the southeast’s economy and made overtures to the Kurds.
It seemed particularly unfair that this region should suffer further.
When I first visited Gaziantep (also known as Antep), in 2009, it was booming. Expanded relations between Turkey and Syria led to a rise in Syrian tourism, from which Antep–on the border–benefited. New construction projects dotted the city and the local officials and civic groups I met with were full of pride and optimism. Nearby Sanliurfa (or Urfa), was quieter but still vibrant, attracting tourists to its many holy sites.
This did not last, however. As the Arab Spring spiraled into civi war in Syria, this region of Turkey absorbed many of the refugees fleeing the conflict. The resulting social and economic strain reversed some of this progress. Meanwhile, the AKP’s Erdogan slid further and further into authoritarianism, while the Kurdish conflict broke out again. And the bordering region of Syria–centered on the city of Aleppo–was devastated by the civil war.
So it seemed particularly unfair that this region should suffer further. Given Erdogan’s administrative and economic struggles, and the Syrian government’s lack of concern for its citizens, I’m skeptical that they will rebuild this area.
When I read the news this morning I thought I should say something. I try to avoid Facebook, and have increasingly avoided Twitter since Musk’s takeover, so the usual post on those sites wasn’t going to happen. I have this platform, but it felt lame to write a blog post that just says “how horrible.”
Is it a problem to write about how horrible a disaster is if I have nothing helpful to contribute?
I tried to think of some analytical spin on this. But it didn’t feel right. Should we really take a tragedy and use it to highlight our research? It would be one thing if I studied post-disaster reconstruction, but nothing I work on would really contribute to the response to this disaster.
At the same time, “thoughts and prayers” has come under fire, at least in the United States. This tends to be how conservatives respond to mass shootings, instead of taking action to prevent them. Does that extend to international relations? Is it a problem to write about how horrible a disaster is if I have nothing helpful to contribute?
Maybe.
I’d say definitely if I used this post to talk about how this disaster affected me (i.e. “I hope that kebab place I liked survived). And anytime a Westerner writes about the tragedy and promise of the Middle East it comes off a bit Orientalist. But maybe there is a way to just express solidarity, and maybe that’s better than trying to force an analysis onto a tragedy.
At the least, here is a useful article listing the organizations currently on the ground in Turkey and Syria.
FreshRSS 
