Turkey is taking active military action against the Houthis (initially)?

Turkey is taking active military action against the Houthis (initially)? Following the signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement between Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and with its imminent ratification by the Turkish Grand National Assembly, Turkey has already sent (and plans to further reinforce) large quantities of specialised military equipment to Saudi Arabia.

Turkish assistance, within the framework of the “Mecca Agreement” as well as bilateral arrangements (with Saudi Arabia), has already begun with the dispatch, in a first stage (while the treaty remains unratified), of domestically produced defence systems: short- and medium-range air-defence systems, mainly for the protection of critical civilian and energy installations and natural-gas and electricity infrastructure. It has also proceeded with the dispatch (already on the ground) of electronic-warfare support units and various types of drones, including Akinci, for which the manufacturer Baykar already has an agreement with the Saudi company SAMI for co-production on Saudi soil, as well as intelligence-sharing systems. To reinforce and support the above, Turkey is also reported to have deployed, beyond “technical teams and drone operators,” “Emergency Response Teams.” The following developments should not escape our attention: 1. The “strange” advance/invasion by Houthi rebels and the occupation of Saudi territory. 2. Media coverage of Houthi attacks on “civilian” airports in Saudi Arabia and the “impious and irreverent” attacks on the Holy Cities. 3. The continuing Iranian attacks on Gulf kingdoms, almost every time American and Israeli aircraft bomb Iran. We have already repeatedly referred to the geopolitical conditions in the present internationally revisionist era of the creation of an intermediate Muslim (Sunni) geopolitical space, and we have explained the reasons—long before the Mecca Agreement became possible—why this space can, under certain conditions, now be feasible. We have also referred to: 1. The Turco-Arab competition for leadership of this space, but also the complementarity of the economies of Turkey (industrial production – military technology production) and the Gulf kingdoms (investments – petrodollars), which creates the preconditions so that, despite the (political) competition, the alliance ultimately becomes feasible. 2. The Turco-Islamic agenda, with its two major spearheads in foreign policy: the union of Turkic states in Central Asia (which recently suffered a strong blow when Azerbaijani President Aliyev took measures to contain the “Arab-Persian” Islamic culture by promoting that of his own country, banning the Islamic headscarf, etc., which has outraged many in Turkey) and the Islamic economic and defence Union, of which they regard the “Mecca Agreement” as a prelude. Here they believe they will find a privileged space both for their consumer goods and for their military industry and the strengthening of their military presence in these countries. 3. Turkey’s ambition to replace the United States in the region and to compete with Israel. For Turkey, the developments in the Gulf after the American-Israeli attack on Iran and the corresponding Iranian counter-attacks on American bases in the wider Middle East and on the infrastructure of the US-allied Gulf kingdoms constitute, within the above framework, an opportunity to advance its plan for hegemony in the Islamic space through a form of “Union of Islamic States.” They declare that the Mecca Agreement will be open to future memberships so that it can evolve into an “Islamic NATO.” The Turks respond with pleasure to the “call of history” and of President Trump (as they interpret it) to assume an active role in the Middle East security system. Especially after the tendency of the United States to withdraw from the region and from the specific role of protecting the wealthy Gulf kingdoms. Turkey has already received praise from President Trump for its “successes” in Syria. For Turkey, therefore, its involvement in a campaign to protect Sunni Islam from the heretical Shiites and the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina is a challenge that it CANNOT fail to undertake.

It also sees it as its return to the region after an interval of 100 years! It envisions the NEW TURKISH CENTURY and is systematically preparing for it. And when the operation is… self-financed by the surplus petrodollars of the region and yields additional profit, the challenge becomes impossible to ignore? Turkey thus declares that it has “tied the horses’ tails and does not turn back”; it gallops toward victory. The easy part of the puzzle is the communications/propaganda dimension: The “sentimental” Turkish positions of the distant forgotten past, expressed by the most official lips—for example those of the former Turkish Foreign Minister, who in a 2019 interview rhetorically “asked” Saudi Arabia “What are you doing in Yemen?” and to the rhetorical “answer” “we are fighting the Houthis” the… sentimental Turkish Foreign Minister replied “indignantly”: “No! You are destroying Yemen! With bombings, siege and hunger you have killed thousands of people! And Allah will call you to account!”—have now ended. The Turks are sending a much more… secular… bill to Saudi Arabia, which must be paid in… petrodollars.

And they are preparing, by equipping them and concluding an ambitious alliance with them, their own “humanitarian” and “respectable” attack on the former “victims of Saudi aggression”. The new narrative has already been set up: with the murdered Iranian General Qasem Soleimani as its spearhead (a convenient communications symbol for the new propaganda, since he has been demonised by the West), whom they baptise in the new narrative as the “father of the [understood as evil] Houthis.” And they also selectively recall, for the sake of their “objective,” his anti-Sunni and anti-Ottoman phrases, such as: “Of the 1,400-year great history of Islam, even less than 100 years is ‘Pure Islam’.” Obviously the passed general meant the present… Iranian regime and the historical “pure islamic” period of the Safavids! Or that Soleimani and, clearly, the now-enemy Iranian officials collectively considered Sunnis, Christians and Jews to be in the same group (the… blasphemers, if you please) and pursued and pursue victory over them indiscriminately! They are therefore heretics and deserve to be regarded and treated as enemies. Everything therefore appears either already ready or being prepared for Turkish involvement against the Houthis.

The next steps? Acceleration of the ratification of the Mecca Agreement, even within October, and the dispatch against the “infidel heretics” of accompanying combat units, including experienced pilots for confronting ballistic attacks and punishing the heretical Houthis with proper bombings of them (not like those that the former Turkish Foreign Minister disliked when they were conducted by their then-ally Saudi Arabia), and why not, the creation of a permanent Turkish military base in Saudi Arabia and ground involvement with the heretics within the framework of protecting the Holy Cities. Of course, this is not Libya, Armenia or Syria but a region very remote from the Turkish hinterland with a multitude of “actors.” Undertaking an operation against the Houthis could lead to Turco-Iranian tension or even something… more: an open Turkoiranian conflict. Here is the great geopolitical wager and… the HIGH risk! A challenge which, if accepted, has no return. The horses’… tails are, after all, tied. Or not? Dionysis Pantis, Lawyer at the Supreme Court and geopolitical analyst