The Release of Andrew Brunson May Be an Opportunity to Reset U.S.-Turkish Relations

Last week, Ankara—likely trying to make the most of Saudi Arabia’s killing of the pro-Turkish journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul—set free Andrew Brunson, a pastor from North Carolina, after imprisoning him for two years on trumped-up charges. Turkey, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule, has in recent years moved in an Islamist and undemocratic direction, supported Hamas, broken longstanding ties with Israel, flirted with Russia and even Iran, and generally undermined its once-firm alliance with the U.S. To Soner Cagaptay, Brunson’s release could lead to a broader thaw in Turco-American ties, especially since the two countries share many interests:

Turkey borders Iran, Iraq, Syria (including territory until recently held by Islamic State), and Russia across the Black Sea. It’s much easier, less cumbersome, and less costly, to implement U.S. policies regarding those countries and entities with Turkey on board. And to be sure, Turkey needs the United States as well. . . .

Yet while, Brunson’s release is a good step toward normal relations, there is plenty more to do. Most immediately, Congress has threatened sanctions if Ankara goes ahead with its plans to purchase in 2019 the Russian S-400 missile-defense system, a move that [violates Turkey’s commitments as a NATO member]. To cement his reset with President Trump, Erdogan should reconsider his decision regarding the S-400 system. . . .

Donald Trump, [for his part], needs to reconsider U.S. policy regarding cooperation with the Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), an armed group that Washington has relied on to fight Islamic State (IS). The YPG is an offshoot of the PKK, a terrorist entity that Turkey has been fighting for decades. After defeating IS, YPG—a group with a Marxist pedigree—took over vast Sunni Arab areas of Syria. Washington needs to empower Sunni Arabs in Syria if it doesn’t want IS, which feeds on Sunni Muslim resentment over political exclusion, to return. . . . .

Erdogan should continue to support Trump’s new Syria envoy in pushing back against Iran, Russia, and the Assad regime there. If Assad is brought to justice, millions of Syrians brutalized by him during the war will have closure, also shutting the door to IS’s return. Erdogan can help Trump beyond Syria to isolate Iran. For example, Turkey could join U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, which are taking a toll on the regime in Tehran.

Read more at Time

More about: Kurds, Politics & Current Affairs, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Syrian civil war, Turkey, U.S. Foreign policy

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society