Hizbullah’s troublesome Turkish embrace

Hizbullah has been terribly excitable in recent weeks. It has threatened, condemned, demanded, and warned, all suggesting the party is not quite relaxed about the prevailing political situation.

First it was the party’s ambiguities about the ships to be sent from Beirut to Gaza; then its tough position on the offshore oil dispute with Israel. Then it was Hizbullah MP Kamel al-Rifai promising that the party would soon “confront American defamation campaigns” and prepare a list of individuals, parties and clubs collaborating with the US. And this week villagers in the south, in actions very likely orchestrated by Hizbullah, blocked roads and attacked UNIFIL vehicles. This came after an Alfa employee was arrested allegedly for being a Mossad spy, allowing Hizbullah to caution that Israel controls the Lebanese telecoms sector.

Hizbullah’s message is clear: the enemy is everywhere. For a party that needs enemies to survive, this is understandable. However, there is something deeper at play, a malaise with the fact that the situation in Lebanon and the Middle East is not to the party’s liking.

Hizbullah appears to have been put out by the Turkish reaction to the Gaza flotilla incident a few weeks ago. While many in the West saw only Ankara’s hostility against Israel, the perspective from the region was different, and played itself out against a backdrop of Arab fears of Iran’s rising power; or less subtly, Sunni Arab fears of Shiite Iran.

The Palestinian issue is at the heart of the so-called “resistance agenda,” which Hizbullah claims to embody best. Since 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has used the Palestinians as a battering ram to enhance Iran’s legitimacy among the Arabs, while delegitimizing the Arab’s own passive regimes. But now Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stepped in and the Arabs, their sectarian impulses kicking in, have elected Turkey as their foremost champion.

Turkey’s push on the Palestinian front may lead in several directions that Hizbullah finds worrisome. For starters, Erdogan has arrogated the right to speak in the name of Hamas, recently declaring that the movement is not a terrorist organization. Given Turkish influence over Syria, which hosts Hamas’ leader Khaled Meshaal, this throws a new variable into Hizbullah’s relation with the Palestinian Islamist movement.

Nor could Hizbullah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, have failed to notice the sudden outpouring of enthusiasm in Beirut for Turkey after the Gaza incident, especially from the likes of Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt. Their endorsements were implicitly and even explicitly directed against Iran’s way of doing things in the Middle East. Saying yes to Turkey has become shorthand in Lebanon and the region for saying no to Iran and its allies.

More generally, what does it mean for Hizbullah if Turkey displaces Iran and the party itself as the main spokesmen for the Palestinian cause – all the time remaining friendly with Tehran and even defending it internationally? What it means, in tangible terms, is that the Turks have a greater say in matters of war and peace in the region when it comes to Israel. It also means they will examine more closely how actions by Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah might affect Turkey’s interests. That complicates matters for Hizbullah, because suddenly the party’s freedom to use Lebanon on Iran’s behalf as an instrument of deterrence against Israel is lessened.

Even internally the situation has shifted. Hizbullah has growled in recent weeks that any domestic attempt to use possible indictments by the Hariri tribunal against the party might provoke a new onslaught against the Sunnis, similar to that of May 2008. But how realistic is that today? Not very. Hariri has played the Turkish card to the hilt, and the sudden consolidation of Sunni local and regional solidarity in favor of Palestine and against Iran, in many ways default positions for the community, greatly constrains Hizbullah.

And so, Hizbullah watches with trepidation as new actors are hijacking its symbols. If Turkey emerges as a new power, what will it mean for Syria’s dependency on Iran? The thought of an emerging alignment of Sunni-dominated states in which an unabashedly Muslim Turkey, led by moderate Islamists, seizes the choice role, is not something reassuring for Tehran, which still considers the weak states of the Gulf as an open field for Iranian hegemony.

This is what explains Hizbullah’s sudden burst of paranoid energy. By artificially playing up dangers left and right, the party is trying to reposition itself, both within the Shiite community and in Lebanese society, as the vanguard force defending against Israel and the United States. Hizbullah thrives on conflict, but Erdogan threatens to take the conflict card out of the party’s hands and play it at a table where Hizbullah cannot compete, and where Iran might lose out.

Above all, Hizbullah is concerned about its latitude to retaliate against an Israeli or American attack against Iran. Turkey may be critical of Israel, but it hasn’t severed diplomatic ties. It could come to play a crucial role as mediator to head off a Lebanese-Israeli confrontation, while also using its sway over Damascus to hold Syria in check.

Turkey has a contingent in UNIFIL, whose term was extended only last week. That southern villagers should be raising the heat on the international force now does not appear to be a coincidence in light of the decision. The party cannot afford to attack the Turks head on, but by discrediting the UN mission, Hizbullah may be out to undermine any eventual Turkish role, especially in conjunction with the UN, as the go-between with Israel over Lebanon.

Fear those closest to you, the saying goes. Hizbullah has never seemed so destabilized as when facing the troublesome Turkish embrace.

Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR. His “The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon’s Life Struggle” (Simon & Schuster) has just been published.