Eastern Mediterranean: Turkey, Cyprus and Syria

Lord Sharkey Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Sharkey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the situation in the eastern Mediterranean with particular reference to Turkey, Cyprus and Syria.

[Lord Sharkey (LD)]

My Lords, the Question calls for an assessment of the situation in Libya, Egypt, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Cyprus. Not a single one of those countries is now without significant problems—problems which are a direct threat to the larger regional stability and an indirect threat, at least, to the West. Some of the problems are long standing; some are of recent origin; some are the consequence, or at least the aftermath, of western military intervention.

I start with Libya. Here, a tyrant who oppressed his people was removed by the power of the West. We supported the idea of bringing democracy and pluralism. We had stability and security as objectives. None of that happened, except for the removal of the tyrant. There is no real democracy, no pluralism, except in the very worst sense, no stability and no security for the people. The country is left in the grip of civil war. Can we argue that intervention was beneficial there?

Then there is Egypt. Once seen as the most promising instance of the Arab spring, the country has reverted to what looks like and feels like a pre-uprising Government.

Gaza, after North Korea, has the world’s largest confinement of people and the longest lasting. Has western policy improved the conditions of the people there?

Israel is a flashpoint for conflict locally, regionally and internationally. It is a close ally of America and the West, yet an unrepentant and serial flouter of UN resolutions. Has western policy helped the course of peace and reconciliation here? Has it reduced the dangers that the Israeli situation has generated and continues to generate?

The people of Lebanon have suffered terribly from civil war and civil strife, all connected with the root Israel/Palestinian problem. April’s House of Commons report on Lebanon made the point that instability is increasing in the country, with cross-border fighting and armed clashes between Sunnis and Shias. In addition to all this, there are more than 1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a country of 4.5 million people. It is to our credit that we have already given more than £110 million to help the country with the refugee crisis. None the less, no one would pretend that the current state of affairs in Lebanon is stable. No one would pretend that the current situation is what western policy would have wanted.

As for Syria, the world knows how truly dreadful the situation is. There is in progress a three-cornered civil war. There are the supporters of Assad, the moderate opposition and the jihadist opposition, all of whom fight each other, and of course there is the appalling and widespread use of barrel bombs by the Assad Government against their own population. All this has inflicted and continues to inflict death and destruction on the entire population on a truly dreadful scale.

According to the UNHCR, 9.3 million Syrians need humanitarian assistance—that is 43% of the entire population. Some 6.3 million of these people have been displaced internally and 2.8 million have fled the country, and the UNHCR expects this figure to rise to 4.1 million by the end of this year. This mass flight places intolerable burdens on neighbouring countries. Jordan, for example, a country of 8 million people and not without its own problems, now has 600,000 Syrian refugees.

The same House of Commons report sets out some of the major criticisms of western policy towards Syria. They range from a failure to recognise the need for negotiation with Assad to western encouragement and then lack of support for an uprising, to a lack of support for the moderate opposition and an absence of military intervention.

Whatever the failings of western policy, it is surely clear that the current situation in Syria is unsustainable, getting worse and a direct threat to western interests. Here in the UK, Parliament has decided against military intervention—in my view, very wisely—but obviously we have not been inactive. We are the second largest contributor of humanitarian aid, with £600 million committed to date. This aid is a credit to UK foreign policy, but it is a patch. It is necessary but it is obviously not a means of bringing long-term stability to the region.

Then there is Turkey—a NATO member, an accession candidate and a good friend of the UK. It is now host to three quarters of a million Syrian refugees in its most sensitive border areas. Since independence, Turkey has endured long periods of unstable government, periods of military rule and very slow economic growth. All that began to change in 2002 with the victory of the AK party. The country has prospered. It has become a true regional power and seems to have moved past the possibility of military intervention in political life. The regime has demonstrated that a large, Islamic country can operate a democratic and economically successful society.

All this, of course, is critical to the interests of the West. It is directly in our interests to have a strong, prosperous and stable Turkey as a NATO member and committed to democratic values. But Turkey is now under immense strain. Until very recently, Turkey had been largely driven by an admiration of and respect for western values. This admiration and respect is in decline. Turkey continues to imprison journalists and restricts freedom of speech. Its Executive interfere in the police and in the judiciary, and their tone with their own people has grown increasingly hectoring and peremptory. There is growing civil unrest. There is the unresolved Kurdish question, which is not made easier by the events in Iraq. Turkey appears to be turning away from the EU. Many Turks see the prospect of EU membership as neither realistic nor desirable. The glacial progress of EU accession negotiation feeds this point of view.

As a friend of Turkey, I am very glad to be able to say that Her Majesty’s Government remain strongly in favour of Turkey’s EU membership. We must continue to make the case to our EU partners for Turkey’s membership. Turkey sits at the fulcrum between the East and the West, as it always has. It needs the West’s encouragement, empathy and help as it faces internal difficulties and very great difficulties on its borders with Iraq and Syria. The West needs to be sensitive to Turkey’s alarm at the prospect of a Kurdish state straddling these countries and to the prospect of a prolonged Sunni/Shia conflict in the region drawing it into dangerous interventions in Iraq and in Syria. The West needs to help or, in our case, continue to help Turkey.

Where we can help to solve problems, we should. Cyprus is a case in point. The island has been divided for more than 40 years. In those 40 years, talks for reunification have been an enduring feature of political life, without any success. The Annan plan of 2004 was the last and most comprehensive proposal for a settlement. It was enthusiastically accepted by the Turkish Cypriots and comprehensively rejected by the Greek Cypriots. The reasons for rejection have been intensely analysed. Essentially, the Greek Cypriot political elite and the Greek Cypriot people saw no benefit to them in the proposals, so they voted against.

We are now in the middle of a renewed negotiation. Many see this as the best and final hope for reunification. It is clear this time that both sides must see the benefits to them of any proposal for reunification or—as the Turkish Cypriot chief negotiator, Dr Kudret Ozersay, puts it—they must at least see the real harm to their interests that rejection would bring. The negotiations are by Cypriots for Cypriots, as they should be, although the benign interest of the UK and recently of the US has undeniably been of some help.

I particularly commend the FCO for its bold step in inviting the Turkish Cypriot leader and his chief negotiator to London. This is the first time that an official invitation has gone to Northern Cyprus and it is a helpful and very imaginative step on the part of the Government. I urge the FCO to continue to do all that it can to provide any welcome assistance in and around these negotiations. Cyprus is, after all, a Commonwealth country and an EU member state, and we are a guarantor state. I ask the Minister to tell the House this afternoon what steps the Government are taking to help and what progress is being made in the nomination of a UN replacement for Alexander Downer. Does she agree that it is vital that a choice is made very soon?

In conclusion, I return to some of the larger questions raised in the summary of the situation in the eastern Mediterranean countries. It is clear that the whole region is unstable and becoming more so; that we are witnessing a religious war between Sunni and Shia; and that the situation in Iraq and in Syria has profound consequences for the whole region and for the West. This weekend, Tony Blair argued that the situation in Iraq is not the consequence of our illegal invasion, which strikes me as nonsense. But it is surely indisputable that the current state of affairs is not desirable and not in conformity with western policy objectives.

If stability, the rule of law and justice are the policy objectives, western policy has not delivered very much of them. I acknowledge our outstanding humanitarian efforts and our belated military restraint. I acknowledge too our occasional willingness to be bold. Today’s announcement about our relationship with Iran is a case in point. But I ask the simple question: what else can we do? If stability, the rule of law and peace, and an end to cruel oppression are among the West’s policy objectives for the region, what do we do now that is different?