A sudden calm and rapprochement witnessed in the Middle East between parties that have been fiercely antagonistic over the past years, in what he described as a wave of diplomacy aimed at calming Middle East conflicts. What prompted these countries to this diplomatic path, and what are its chances of success?

Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed, the national security adviser to the United Arab Emirates, arrived in Ankara to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on August 18, a surprising move given that the two countries have been at odds for years over Erdogan’s support for moderate Islamist groups across the country. across the Middle East, according to a report by the British magazine The Economist.

Turkish officials have previously accused the UAE of instigating the failed 2016 coup attempt. However, none of those differences were mentioned in the official statement issued after their meeting, as the statement spoke instead of economic cooperation.

There is great secrecy in Ankara, but one thing is clear: the momentum for this reset is coming from Abu Dhabi, Erdogan is wary, the Turkish foreign policy establishment is skeptical, and both have Good reason to be careful.

A week after that meeting between the Turkish president and Tahnoun bin Zayed, Sheikh Tahnoun met the Emir of Qatar, becoming the most senior Emirati official to visit Qatar since the UAE and three other Arab countries imposed a ban on it in 2017. There was also encouraging language about cooperation between the two countries. Sheikh Tahnoun’s visit to Ankara and Doha indicates a shift in the course of the UAE’s foreign policy.

The Saudi Crown Prince, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and the UAE National Security Adviser, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, also held a friendly meeting.

The Director of the Private Office of the Saudi Crown Prince, Badr Al-Asaker, posted on Twitter a picture of bin Salman, Sheikh Tamim and Al Nahyan wearing informal clothes.

3 axes that ignite the conflicts in the Middle East

There are two major fault lines in the Middle East at the moment, one pitting the Gulf states and Israel against Iran and its allies, and the other between countries sympathetic to Islamist groups such as Turkey and Qatar versus Egypt and the United Arab Emirates diametrically opposed to those groups and to some extent Saudi Arabia with them.

This leads to the presence of three axes in the region fighting in several areas and rarely two of them allied against the third.

The Iranian-Shiite axis, the Turkish-Qatari axis supporting moderate Islamists, and the Emirati-Saudi-Egyptian axis supporting the counter-revolutions.

The Iranian-Turkish axis is facing each other in Syria, while their positions are converging in rejecting the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, and the Palestinian issue, while they differ relatively without conflict in Yemen. The Turkish-Qatari axis faces the Emirati-Egyptian axis, especially in Libya and Syria to a lesser extent, as well as in Tunisia.

While the Iranian axis is confronting Saudi Arabia specifically in Yemen, and to a lesser extent in Iraq and Lebanon, without much support from the UAE, and most of all, Egypt, which is trying to attract the Saudis and Emiratis to its conflicts with the Muslim Brotherhood, without being involved in Saudi Arabia’s conflicts with the Shiite axis.

Review.. Egypt and Qatar are converging, Saudi Arabia and Iran are in dialogue

However, the UAE is not the only country that is changing the course of its foreign policy, according to a report by the British magazine The Economist.

Old adversaries in the Middle East have begun to reopen the path of diplomacy over the past five months. Saudi Arabia and Iran began a dialogue last April, and Turkey sought to mend its relations with Egypt, which were strained after the Egyptian military ousted the government of elected President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Qatar and Egypt, who disagreed for the same reason, are talking again, and even Egypt has allowed Qatar’s Al Jazeera to reopen its Cairo office, which had been closed after the 2013 Muslim Brotherhood was toppled.

These new moves culminated with the holding of an international regional summit in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, on August 28 that brought together officials from Egypt, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other countries. Although this summit ended without concrete agreements being reached, the participants’ conversations with each other in and of itself represented a development and a breakthrough, as many of them were reluctant to attend such a gathering until recently. Optimists hope that these meetings will signal a thaw and a possible end to the region’s devastating conflicts. Although the Middle East has become a tough place for optimists, part of their hopes may be misplaced in this case.

The Saudi-Iranian dispute, which reshaped the region after 1979, has settled into the stalemate of conflict over the past four years. This is partly due to Iran’s success and Saudi Arabia’s failure to exert influence abroad. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made a series of blunders regarding Saudi foreign policy during his early days in power, but he redirected his focus to diversifying the kingdom’s economy away from dependence on oil.

Why did the UAE change its policy?

The UAE, after adopting an aggressive foreign policy, has also begun to seek a breakthrough to end tension, according to The Economist.

An Emirati diplomat points out that this new opportunity for diplomacy came as a result of the emerging Corona virus pandemic, saying: “The Corona pandemic has made us realize the need to return to the discussion of our internal issues and to abandon certain types of engagements in the Greater Middle East.”

This careful proposition may seem to justify retroactively, as the UAE began withdrawing its forces from Yemen in 2019, months before the outbreak of the epidemic. The UAE has failed to achieve any strategic goals from its involvement in the quagmire of war in Libya, and this is largely due to the Turkish intervention that supported the internationally recognized Government of National Accord against the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar.

The UAE’s meddling foreign policy has made few gains. So it would have been better off focusing on an economy that is not yet ready for a looming shift away from the oil sector, even though it is more diversified than its neighbours.

Emirati officials are already busy announcing a raft of economic initiatives ahead of the 50th anniversary of the nation’s founding in December.

Turkey seeks to reap the fruits of the victories of its drones and circumvent the economy

During the year 2020, Turkey entered into about four direct and indirect confrontations, in Libya against Haftar, supported by Egypt, the Emirates, France and Russia, in Idlib, Syria, against Assad’s forces backed by Russia, against the Kurds in northeastern Syria supported by the West, and the Caucasus War, where Azerbaijan, which supported She emerged victorious from the war against Moscow-backed Armenia.

In the four wars, the drones manufactured by Turkey were an effective and cheap tool with little human cost for Ankara and the opponents were forced to negotiate, and in the Greek case it did not come to war, but Turkey responded to the Greek-Egyptian agreement to demarcate the border, which violated the understanding of the truce between Ankara and Athens mediated by Germany with a military demonstration in the disputed areas.

For Turkey, these battles were not a means of escalation, but rather to ensure that its interests and the interests of its allies are taken into account. It seems that the message has arrived from Moscow to Abu Dhabi, passing through Washington, Berlin and Paris.

But the tension caused by the crises and then the Corona pandemic had economic effects, although the Turkish economy had the second highest growth rate in the Group of Twenty after China during 2020, but the lira is experiencing pressure, and there is a rise in inflation rates and a decline in foreign investments.

Turkey was recovering from the currency crisis, but it returned again due to the pandemic that affected tourism, not to mention its differences with America, the European Union and Greece.

Before the Corona pandemic, Turkish foreign exchange and gold reserves witnessed a significant increase, and Turkey was betting, after its exit from the 2018 crisis, on its ability to take advantage of the depreciation of the lira to increase exports and boost tourism to achieve a surplus in the balance of payments and the current account, while maintaining the interest-reduction policy that It led to good economic growth, and thus the dollar inside the country becomes more than what leaves the country away from the hot money. But the Corona pandemic came to spoil this balance, especially with regard to the decline in the tourism sector.

It seems that Turkey, after it has achieved political and military successes and rescued its allies in Azerbaijan, Syria and Libya and secured them a seat at the negotiating table, wants calm now to reap gains through negotiations and not hard tools.

“Reviving the Turkish economy needs de-escalation, as well as money,” says Galip Dalay of London think tank Chatham House. Emirati investors may provide some of this money needed for the recovery of the Turkish economy.”

There is no solution in the eastern Mediterranean without an Egyptian-Turkish agreement

Turkey also hopes to benefit from improved relations with Egypt. The volume of trade between the two countries last year amounted to nearly $5 billion, despite years of estrangement and estrangement. Turkish officials say the potential for economic cooperation is much higher.

Turkey will also reap political benefits from repairing relations with Egypt. Egypt, along with the European Union, America and Israel, sided with Greece and Cyprus in the dispute with Turkey over drilling rights in the eastern Mediterranean.

Erdogan’s government believes that reaching an agreement with Egypt may help it dismantle the situation in the eastern Mediterranean, especially as it says that what it is offering to Egypt in terms of border demarcation is better than what Greece is offering, and Cairo knows that it is difficult to benefit from energy sources in the eastern Mediterranean without Ankara’s approval. .

Ankara’s success in restoring its normal relations with Cairo will be a major turning point, especially since there are no longer any Islamist groups in Egypt to support Turkey, or at least they have become weak and marginalized.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has dismantled the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk and ruthlessly cracked down on its members and activities, The Economist reports.

Iran is the dilemma..it does not want to make concessions and may turn the Gulf into a desert

On the other hand, it is difficult to resolve differences with Iran. The regime in Tehran will not negotiate its hard-earned influence in the Arab world. Instead, the Gulf states may seek to secure their own backyard, because they have become fully aware of the extent of the danger threatening them after the policy of “maximum pressure” adopted by the administration of former US President Donald Trump led Iran to carry out sabotage of oil tankers in The Persian Gulf and supplying armed men with drones and missiles to launch a surprise strike against Saudi oil facilities in 2019.

The repercussions will be devastating if the conflict widens and intensifies. Officials fear, for example, that if a well-guided missile is launched against desalination plants, the Gulf region could become uninhabitable within days.

Accordingly, each country engages in these talks in its own way and from a position of strength and weakness to some degree. While the Gulf states have a lot of money, they are fragile. On the other hand, Iran and Turkey have the military power but are in a critical financial situation.

The Baghdad summit ended with the issuance of a joint statement in which the participating countries pledged to “not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.” However, countries famous for their interventionist foreign policies are unlikely to stop adopting this approach.

Hence, this regional diplomacy does not bring much comfort and reassurance to the citizens of countries like Lebanon and Iraq, which hardly appear to be sovereign states.