President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, arrived in Abu Dhabi as a part of his go to to the United Arab Emirates on February 14, 2022 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Presidential Press Office | dia photos by way of Getty Images
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in the United Arab Emirates to a heat welcome this week, praising renewed ties between the two regional powers after years of proxy competitors, unofficial boycotts and acrimonious accusations.
Erdogan and the UAE’s de-facto chief Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, previously adversaries, signed some 13 agreements in protection, commerce, expertise, agriculture and different sectors, together with important funding pledges from the UAE. Dubai’s iconic Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest constructing, was lit up with the colours of the Turkish flag and the phrases “Hos Geldiniz,” Turkish for “welcome.”
Just over a yr prior, Dubai-Istanbul flights have been suspended for months at a time and Turkish state information web sites have been inaccessible from the UAE with out a VPN.
“During this go to, we purpose to develop the momentum we’ve harnessed with the United Arab Emirates and to take all crucial steps for relations to revert to the stage they benefit,” Ergodan informed native media on Monday, earlier than a go to to Dubai Expo on Tuesday. “Dialogue and cooperation between Turkey and the United Arab Emirates carries nice significance for peace and stability in our whole area.”
Former UAE international minister and presidential advisor Anwar Gargash tweeted, “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s go to to the UAE … opens a new optimistic web page in the bilateral relations between the two international locations.”
Less than two years prior, in a 2020 interview, Gargash was calling for Europe to hitch forces in opposition to what he mentioned was Erdogan’s try “to revive the Ottoman Empire.”
Years of acrimony
The resolution to make up is a huge deal.
For years, Turkey and the UAE have been on opposing sides of regional conflicts on account of deeply conflicting ideologies. In the years since the Arab Spring, Erdogan and his pro-Muslim Brotherhood AK Party supported political Islam actions in quite a few international locations, one thing that is seen as a risk to Gulf monarchies like the UAE.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses the media after a cupboard assembly in Ankara, Turkey, December 8, 2021.
Murat Cetinmuhurdar | Reuters
In their competitors for regional affect, Ankara and Abu Dhabi backed reverse sides of the bloody Libyan civil struggle, which has now was a stalemate. Turkey vociferously opposed the blockade that the UAE and different Gulf states imposed on Qatar from 2017 to 2021, and Erdogan had beforehand accused the UAE of bankrolling Turkey’s 2016 tried navy coup.
‘Less threatening than earlier than’
Quite a lot of key components have led to the latest change.
“The greatest single issue is the collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood mission in the Arab world, which was the fundamental foundation for Turkish-UAE tensions over the previous decade,” mentioned Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan met on February 14, 2022 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Photo by Presidential Press Office by way of dia photos by way of Getty Images
Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political energy, which solely actually remained in Tunisia, Libya, Gaza and components of Yemen, has been dramatically depleted in the final yr with a coup in Tunisia and an open-ended constitutional suspension in Libya.
Turkey was seen in the UAE “as a chief, in cooperation with Qatar, of a potential community of Sunni Islamists all through the area that would rival and even outdo Iran’s community of Shiite armed gangs in neighboring Arab international locations,” Ibish mentioned. “But that did not emerge. Instead, the Brotherhood has just about collapsed as a viable political mission, so Turkey seems a lot much less threatening than earlier than.”
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, which has signaled it is now not giving carte blanche to its Gulf allies, is probably going one other issue. But extra apparent are financial wants and an obvious pullback by each international locations from regional conflicts in favor of diplomacy and enterprise hyperlinks.
“I feel for each side we’re seeing the reemergence of pragmatism after years of confrontationalism and adventurism in the Trump period,” mentioned Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and Africa analyst at Rane Risk Intelligence. “That’s in half as a result of there’s a new [U.S.] presidential administration, however I feel most of it’s pushed by their very own shifting imperatives attributable to the pandemic.”
Money talks
Turkey’s economy is in disaster, with inflation at a whopping 48.7% and its nationwide foreign money, the lira, having misplaced roughly 48% of its worth in the final yr. Meanwhile, the UAE has been pushing to additional diversify its economy away from oil and revive itself from the financial blow of Covid-19.
“The UAE is seeking to make investments cash. Turkey wants cash invested. It’s a pure match,” Ibish mentioned. And the timing means the Emiratis are getting a discount, due to the cheapness of the lira.
Abu Dhabi state funding car ADQ in January pledged $10 billion in investments into Turkey, saying that now was a “nice time” to purchase with the dramatically weakened foreign money and that it was taking a “long run view.” And throughout a go to by Mohammed bin Zayed to Ankara in November, the first in a few years, ADQ and Turkish funding our bodies and firms signed memorandums of understanding value billions of {dollars} in sectors together with power, expertise and logistics.
“For the UAE, Turkey turns into a main new conduit to new markets in Asia, and particularly Africa,” Ibish mentioned. “Turkey additionally offers an entrée into sure industrial fields and Turkish actual property is probably a bonanza, if all goes effectively.”
Iran and Israel
Turkey can also be in search of to fix ties with Israel, formally a good friend of the UAE since the announcement of the Abraham Accords in August of 2020. Israeli President Isaac Herzog is scheduled for an official go to to Turkey in March, regardless of the undeniable fact that Turkey in 2020 threatened to chop ties with the UAE over its normalization cope with Israel.
The rapprochement comes amid heightened tensions in the area as Iran’s nuclear improvement progresses, and in the wake of a sequence of drone and missile assaults on the UAE principally claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who’re backed by Iran.
“The new U.S. administration and western international locations’ coverage vis-à-vis Iran, and Turkey’s new diplomatic strategy to Israel … are a few of the causes behind this new web page” in relations, one former Turkish diplomat with expertise in the Gulf informed CNBC, talking anonymously on account of skilled constraints.
“For the Turkish aspect, the enhance of financial and industrial relations will probably be crucial. On the UAE aspect, [having] Turkey as a trusted ally vis-à-vis Iran will probably be the profit,” the diplomat mentioned.
Still, the coalescence of mutual pursuits does not imply the ideological variations between the two international locations have been resolved.
“At the second what it seems to be like is each side are licking their wounds and making good as a result of the prices of confrontationalism turned more and more too excessive for them,” Rane’s Bohl mentioned. “But that does not imply that they’ve come to any substantial agreements and so battle and competitors may return once more sooner or later.”
In the meantime, it is time for all the international locations which are “overextended” from regional sparring “to take a break from confrontation,” Ibish mentioned, “which means diplomacy, politics and commerce as a technique of securing their pursuits and projecting their affect.”