Day: April 21, 2013
Peace Picks April 22-26:
1. Between Turkish Sunnis and Iranian Shia Influences: Islamic Revival in Azerbaijan
Date and Time: April 22nd 2013, 4:00-5:00 pm
Location: Woodrow Wilson Center
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004
Speakers: Bayram Balci
Description: Azerbaijan has historically experienced three main influences, Russian secularism, Ottoman Sunnism and Iranian Shiism. In the two decades since the end of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan is once again a space of competition between different religious influences. An Islamic revival underway in Azerbaijan has awakened the old cleavage between Shia and Sunni Islam.
Bayram Balci contends that the Islamic influences from Iran (Shia) and from Turkey (Sunni) are recreating new dividing lines between Azerbaijani Shia and Sunni Muslims. In his talk he will analyze the various aspects of Shia and Sunni revival, including the roles played by Turkey and Iran, and how Azerbaijan is reacting to these new religious cleavages.
Register for this event here: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/between-turkish-sunnis-and-iranian-shia-influences-islamic-revival-azerbaijan
2. The Kurdish Initiative v2.0: Can Turkey Resolve it This Time?
Date and Time: April 23rd 2013, 12:00-1:30 pm
Location: Georgetown University
37 St NW and O St NW, Washington, DC
Intercultural Center 241
Speakers: Hamid Akin Unver
Description: Emerging from the ashes of a similar attempt in 2009, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has launched a more ambitious process in late-2012 towards the peaceful resolution of its most fundamental problem: the Kurdish question. The ‘new deal’ touches upon almost all of the taboo issues of the question, including the disarmament and disbanding of the PKK, formulating a new definition of citizenship in the new Constitution and easing the imprisonment terms of the organization’s dreaded leader, Abdullah Öcalan. But what is different this time? What led to this new process and can it work? What are the potential opportunities and pitfalls? Will the new process spill-over to Syria and Iraq, and how will it change the dynamics of the region’s power dynamics?
Register for this event here: http://unver.eventbrite.com/
3. How Turkey’s Islamists Fell Out of Love with Iran: The Near Future of Turkish-Iranian Relations
Date and Time: April 23rd 2013, 3:00-4:00 pm
Location: Woodrow Wilson Center
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004
Speakers: Hamid Akin Unver
Description: Turkish-Iranian relations have long been characterized by ideological polarity. Ever since the Ottoman expansion into the Levant in the early sixteenth century and the Safavid Empires acceptance of Shiism as the official imperial religion, relations between these two empires have been defined along the prime schism in Islam. From 1520 to 1920s this schism defined Ottoman-Safavid relations. Akin Unver argues that it was only during the modernist-revolutionary period of Ataturk and Shah Pahlavi that Iran and Turkey established good relations on secular-modernist lines, which defined the course of the relationship until the Islamic Revolution.
After the 1979 revolution, Irans Islamist regime emerged as the clear anti-thesis of a secular Turkey and two countries relationship was only sustained by political Islamists on both sides. According to Unver, this 1979-2010 Islamist connection is also being reversed by the sectarian faultlines unearthed by the Arab Spring. Irans rapid fall from grace with Turkish Islamists is one of the most important recent structural shifts in the Middle East, Unver suggests. Such a break is far from marginal and yields several important points for consideration.
This shift, Unver argues, validates the Ataturk- Pahlavi example, which shows that detente in Turkish-Iranian relations can only happen when both countries are ruled by a secular-modernist regime. If either countrys ruling government has an Islamist identity, relations can only improve to the extent dictated by the Ottoman-Safavid divide. If Islamism dictates both countries policies, then strategic conflict is inevitable, and the Sunni-Shiite historical memories and symbolism related to Karbala are evoked by both sides.
Register for this event here: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/how-turkey’s-islamists-fell-out-love-iran-the-near-future-turkish-iranian-relations
4. Iran Unveiled: How the Revolutionary Guards is turning Theocracy into Military Dictatorship
Date and Time: April 23rd 2013, 4:30 pm
Location: American Enterprise Institute
1150 17th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036
Speakers: Ali Alfoneh, Frederick W. Kagan- , Mehdi Khalaji, Karim Sadjadpour
Description: Iran is currently experiencing the most important change since the revolution of 1979: the regime in Tehran, traditionally ruled by the Shia clergy, is transforming into a military dictatorship dominated by the officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). As IRGC commanders have infiltrated Iran’s political, economic, and cultural spheres, they have eschewed diplomatic norms and left few policy options for the US other than to unsuccessfully contain the threat. Is Washington prepared to tailor its strategy based on an evolving Iranian power structure? What will further advances by IRGC leaders portend for Iran’s strategic calculations? Ali Alfoneh explores these and other issues in his new book ‘Iran Unveiled: How the Revolutionary Guards Is Turning Theocracy into Military Dictatorship’ (AEI Press, April 2013). At this event, Alfoneh and panelists will discuss the rise of the IRGC in Iran and the resulting challenges for American interests in the Middle East and beyond.
Register for this event here: http://www.aei.org/events/2013/04/23/iran-unveiled-how-the-revolutionary-guards-is-turning-theocracy-into-military-dictatorship/
5. The Future of Israel and Palestine: Expanding the Debate
Date and Time: April 25th 2013, 9:00 am
Location: Rayburn House Office Building
45 Independence Ave SW, Washington, DC
B338 & B339
Speakers: Stephen Walt, Henry Siegman, Philip Weiss, Hussein Ibish
Description: The Middle East Policy Council invites you and your colleagues to our 72nd Capitol Hill Conference. This special conference will be a discussion about expanding the space in U.S. media to encourage a more frank public debate on U.S. foreign policy toward Israel. Live streaming of this event will begin at approximately 9:30am EST on Thursday, April 25th and conclude around noon. A questions and answers session will be held at the end of the proceedings. Refreshments will be served.
Register for this event here: http://www.mepc.org/hill-forums/frank-discussion-israel
6. The New Egypt: Challenges of the Post-Revolutionary Era
Date and Time: April 25th 2013, 1:15-5:15
Location: Center for Strategic & International Studies
B1 Conference Center 1800 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20006
Description: Following its 2011 revolution, Egypt has been undergoing a period of political upheaval and transition toward a still uncertain new order. The direction the country chooses – and its future relations with the West and its Middle Eastern neighbors – will have profound ramifications throughout its region and the wider world.
The panels include some of Egypt’s most prominent personalities, who have been at the forefront of developments in post-revolutionary Egypt, presenting a unique opportunity to discuss the country’s future global role and policies with some of the most influential actors in Cairo. The panelists are part of a larger delegation of Egyptian leaders attending the inaugural conference of a new global forum, the Williamsburg-CSIS Forum, a meeting that constitutes the first such high-level gathering outside Egypt since the fall of the Mubarak regime just over two years ago.
Register for this event by emailing: williamsburgforum@csis.org
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What Serbs get
I am struck in rereading the Serbia/Kosovo agreement that it is called “First Agreement of Principles Governing the Normalization of Relations.” I assume this reflects mainly Pristina’s view, since the agreement does not go as far as it would like in recognizing Kosovo as a sovereign state. In practice though, this is a moment of strong leverage for Pristina, as the EU is insisting on a settlement of the north as a condition for a starting date for Serbia’s EU accession negotiations. With a date comes money, which Belgrade needs. It is also negotiating a standby arrangement with the International Monetary Fund, but in practice that too may depend on acceptance of the Serbia/Kosovo agreement.
So what else is there in the agreement for Serbia and Serbs?
First and foremost, they get an “Association/Community of Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo.” Established under Kosovo law, the association will “have full overview of the areas of economic development, education, health, urban and rural planning” as well as other areas delegated by the Kosovo authorities. It will also represent the Serb municipalities to the Pristina authorities, including in the council of communities. None of this is new. It is foreseen in the Ahtisaari plan, which Belgrade rejected. It looks to me consistent with the Kosovo constitution.
Belgrade has been particularly concerned to get something on police and justice. Here the agreement is unequivocal in providing for integration of the Serb police into the Kosovo police, with salaries paid only by Pristina. What Serbia got on police was a regional police commander for the north chosen by Pristina from a list of four nominated by the northern Kosovo municipalities. This seems eminently reasonable and hopefully workable.
The agreement is also unequivocal in providing for integration of the justice system in the north under Pristina’s legal framework, but with “a panel composed of a majority of K[osovo]/S[erb] judges to deal with all Kosovo Serb majority municipalities” established by the Appellate Court in Pristina to sit permanently in Mitrovica. This too seems to me consistent with the Ahtisaari plan, though not explicitly provided for in it.
Belgrade has also agreed to elections in the north conducted under Pristina’s legal framework.
The picture is clear: Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo will have wide-ranging authority over their own affairs, as provided for in the Ahtisaari plan. But the parallel police, judicial and electoral structures are to be integrated into the Kosovo constitutional and legal framework. This is precisely what German chancellor Angela Merkel has been asking for: an end to the parallel structures and acceptance by Serbia of Kosovo’s territorial integrity, with wide-ranging self-governance for the Serb community.
I might have liked the EU to go further, and in a back-handed way it did. The final point of the agreement is this:
It is agreed that neither side will block, or encourage others to block, the other side’s progress in their respective EU path.
Belgrade is saying that this provision originally asked that neither side block or encourage others to block entry into international organizations. Certainly it is less expansive than that in the final version. But the implicit meaning here is clear: Kosovo is an independent and sovereign state that will progress towards the EU at its own pace and enter without Serbia exercising a veto. This provision is ample basis for EU non-recognizers to proceed with recognition of Kosovo, if they are so inclined with Belgrade standing down from its campaign against.
What Serbs get then is this: Ahtisaari-style arrangements for the governance of Serbs in Kosovo with some modest additional details of implementation, unequivocally within Pristina’s constitutional and legal framework. It is not a bad deal at all, but one they might have had six years ago.
Belgrade is still claiming it will not recognize Kosovo, but for many practical purposes it already has. If Kosovo governs, polices, administers justice, holds elections and also applies for EU membership like a state on a well-defined territory, it is one, independent and sovereign. This agreement confirms it.
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