Syria-Turkey Relations, Israel’s Ongoing Domestic Tensions, the Pope Visits Hungary, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Syria's regime comes in from the cold. Israel's parliament starts a closely watched summer session. And, the pope makes a three-day visit to Hungary. It's April 27th 2023 in time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. So Bob, let's start at the negotiating table. Earlier this week, Russia hosted four-way talks with Syria, Turkey, and Iran. The goal is to normalize ties between Ankara and Damascus and there are a host of issues including Turkish military operation against the Kurds of northwest Syria, and the massive inflow of Syrian refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War, and Assad's brutal crackdown on his own people. And I'm usually a fan of diplomacy, but is this an effort to try to rehabilitate Assad? Russia whose war plane shattered Aleppo is certainly not a neutral arbiter, it's really a co-conspirator. Can anything good come out of these talks?

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, a lot is going on in and around Syria and I'm not sure how much of it might have to do with Assad himself as much as sort of cold calculations about the state of affairs and the way certain Arab states are viewing things as well as Turkey and Russia. First of all, even though we call this The World Next Week podcast, we don't know of any set piece events next week per se, although there is a lot of diplomacy going on as you indicated from this past week. And as we're going to see in the run-up to the Arab League Summit around the middle of May. Because Syria is being bandied about as a country that could be invited back into the Arab League for example. It has already had a number of high level diplomatic meetings involving... In addition to the countries you mentioned, the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia.

It is the Turkish angle is particularly intriguing. There's a great deal of expectation that things will pick up again on that front after the Turkish election set for May 14th. President Erdoğan seems to have a fight on his hands in that election, so we'll see what emerges in terms of any momentum on that front. So I guess I'll parcel out your question with that part first, which is the Syria-Turkey angle. I mean, there's huge consequences on a whole host of things. Turkey under Erdoğan has certainly indicated it's ready to come back to the table and start talking to Syria about things. It is not ready to do what Syria wants most of all, which is to completely remove itself from northern Syria. And it is there because it is seen as hedging and providing a front against Syrian Kurds who it says are in league with separatist Kurds in Turkey. This is a sort of an intractable issue for Turkey at this point. It's also put Turkey at odds with the United States, which backs the Syrian Kurds as well.

On Syria's behalf, the one part of the country it does not control is that northern section in and around where Turkish forces are and where Kurds hold some positions as well. And so Syria would like to have full sway over its entire territory. It has gotten obviously the backing of Russia and Iran. There's a momentum, I guess I would say in diplomacy that has also taken place since the massive earthquake that hit both Turkey and Syria because Syria gained a lot of sympathy and a lot of humanitarian outreach from Arab states. And really at this point, according to some of the latest diplomacy going on, the one state that has stood the ground in the region against bringing Syria back into the Arab League fold is Qatar. The Saudis seem to have opened up in quite a bit. They're obviously continuing their own diplomacy with the Iran brokered by China as we discussed recently. 

So again, as I said, there's lots of moving parts here. There are some things coming up in May that are going to show how far along Syria is going to go in terms of being accepted back into the arms of the region. But the other thing to note is that we've talked about China brokered talks with Saudis and Iran. We talked about Russia hosted talks with the Iranians and Turks and the Syrians. We have not talked about the U.S. involvement directly yet, although the U.S. does still loom as an important presence because of its sway with sanctions with its... Making common cause with the Europeans to continue to press on Assad. And that gets back to your Assad question. I think it's going to be very hard for there to be an embrace of Assad even if Syria is accepted into some chambers where it previously was persona non grata.

ROBBINS:
I'd like to talk more about the U.S. and the EU position on this. I mean the basic question of course is what's good for the Syrian people? And this is a country that's been shattered in a decade more of civil war and shattered, as I mentioned, in part through the pounding with Russian war planes. And the reason there have been sanctions on Assad is because basically he's a war criminal. 

So everybody wants to rebuild Syria. Syria desperately needs to be rebuilt, not just from the earthquake but from this civil war. Arab states seem to want to bring him in from the cold as you said, Bob, but this guy doesn't deserve to be brought in from the cold. Is this time to make some sort of bargain here for the sake of the Syrian people or is keeping him isolated the only way to ensure that there's some change? I suppose that's the goal of the U.S. and Europe still.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and I think they reiterated their opposition to normalizing relations with the Saudi regime on the recent twelfth anniversary of the Syrian conflict. And as you say, there's a lot of blood on Assad's hands including the use of chemical weapons against his own people and all sorts of munitions used against civilians. And there is a growing track record of what his regime has committed and it's tough for the international community, writ large, to turn a blind eye to that because of those abuses and obviously the civil war that involved a number of factions. 

You had population in flight. Turkey is host to three and a half million, at least, Syrian refugees. If Turkey was to get seriously involved in some sort of rapprochement in which those refugees could return and there was an opening of the border for other reasons, including humanitarian aid regularly flowing and so forth, that would create difficulties for the U.S. and the EU to try to stand up against that. Especially the EU, which has stake in this as well because the EU and Turkey were involved in talks that basically Turkey would field the lion's share, the refugees that would not then go on and try to get to Europe and seek haven there. There are a lot of Syrians though who did make that trip and do live in European countries. 

So I think the Europeans, it's going to be very interesting to see how they regard this from both the human rights as well as the practical migration angle. The U.S. is not minded to do anything to try to open up to Assad, but they're also seeing the way the winds are blowing in the region. So I'm going to be curious to see how the U.S. might be pursuing a different tack and how it's going to deal with the Assad regime.

ROBBINS:
So bad deeds could potentially get rewarded?

MCMAHON:
Yes, although one other thing to keep an eye on, there is talk that even if you know things are fully normalized, there are parties with leverage including Arab states that want to move to a position in which Syria opens up and holds elections in which Assad cannot take part in. That was something that was on the table previously and then was skipped. There's a lot of cynicism that that could actually proceed. But if that was to be the case, then you might see some sort of a swallow hard and move forward approach to a Syrian transition process.

ROBBINS:
Not going to hold my breath.

MCMAHON:
Yes. Well, Carla, I'm going to stay in the region and move on to Israel. On Monday, the Knesset will return from its Passover recess to begin the summer session. Now in the past few months we have discussed what has been coming out of Israel, which are extraordinary protests over the proposed judicial reforms of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Carla, can you tell us what the current outlook is for his coalition in this upcoming session?

ROBBINS:
So Bob, I'm sure you recall it in late March when threatened with a general strike and possible even defections in his military, Bibi postponed voting on this legislation. I'm not going to call this judicial reform—this was going to remove basic checks and balances—and many people said undermine Israel's democracy by giving the legislature power to overrule the country's supreme court. Since then, Israel's President Herzog, who holds mainly a ceremonial position, have been trying to negotiate a compromise and it's just not clear how far he's gotten. He's been making positive noises but just not clear. 

It's also not clear how open Netanyahu's far right coalition is to compromise. The country's divisions were on full display this week as Israel celebrated its memorial day, a very solemn event, and its seventy-fifth anniversary of its founding. Even during those memorial services, Bob, they were marred by shoving and matches and shouting matches and there are more protest planned for this Saturday. So we'll have to watch and see. Bibi's been talking that he wants to do compromise, but he's got a really far right coalition that doesn't seem to want compromise. 

Amid all this tumult, Israel's been hosting a stream of U.S. politicians. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries was there this week, sixth visit, but first as minority leader. This is particularly significant because so many Democrats including President Biden have been expressing their opposition to this judicial reform and their increasing loss of patience with Netanyahu. And you'll recall also in late March just before Bibi announced this postponement, President Biden warned that, "Israel cannot continue down this road." That's exactly what he said. And he said when asked that Mr. Netanyahu would not be invited to the White House any time in the near term. 

Jeffries isn't the only one who's showing his support for team Netanyahu. House speaker Kevin McCarthy arrives on the 30th with a bipartisan delegation for a four-day visit. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is there as we speak. Second only to showing up in New Hampshire and Iowa. A pilgrimage to Israel is an essential stop for any politician with presidential ambitions, who wants to burnish his national security credentials while simultaneously playing to a small but very powerful ethnic lobby. 

And DeSantis loves to bill himself as the most pro-Israel governor and he's likely going to get into a bidding war with former President Trump on who's going to be a better friend to Bibi Netanyahu and Israel's hard right. In Jerusalem today, he even tried to take credit for Trump's decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem saying he worked to, "cajole Trump." Of course he didn't mention Trump by name, but he said he was trying very much to take credit for everything good that Trump had done for Israel. How all this stroking from American politicians affect Bibi and his willingness to compromise, we're just going to have to wait and see. I suspect it's not going to make him more flexible.

MCMAHON:
Carla, we saw a bit of softening on his positions and just in terms of him taking it off the table in terms of a vote and postponing that, is there any sense that whether he comes right out of the gates next week and comes back with these reforms unchanged or is there further delay expected? Any sense about is it going to be soft pedal for a while?

ROBBINS:
I don't think we know. I mean, they've had five or six meetings I gather which Herzog is mediating. Herzog put his own reform plan on the table. He has been sounding upbeat, but you just don't know whether he's jawing everybody along or whether they're really actually making progress. Certainly the protestors are still out in the street. There's more protests planned for Saturday and this is a profoundly divided society and Bibi has... Even if he wanted to compromise, and I don't know whether he wants to compromise, he has a very, very... He's got a coalition that doesn't want to compromise, so we'll just have to watch this space.

MCMAHON:
And it's, as you say, it's Israel sort of defining what its democracy is going to be going forward. And a lot of Israelis themselves are very disturbed about what's happening. But at the same token, I think they want to pursue this in a way that does not sort of tear the state of Israel apart.

ROBBINS:
Well, Herzog who's been overseeing these negotiations was speaking in really apocalyptic terms before this postponement took place. You see this polling data in Israel, people talking about how they fear the country is on the verge of civil war. And judging from the reaction on their Memorial Day, it doesn't look like people feel like they've backed all that much away from it. So it's still a really, really fraught place and a lot of pressure from the United States, which is one of the reasons why these political visits undercuts that pressure. So we'll just have to see whether Bibi's willing to compromise.

So Bob, let's move on to Hungary. Tomorrow Pope Francis will start his papal visit there. His itinerary is filled with public addresses, meetings with refugees, and he's of course going to be holding mass. He's expected to meet privately with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and President Katalin Novák. Orbán is infamous for his anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic rhetoric and he's moved Hungary ever closer to autocracy. The pope's an Argentine, which means he knows a lot about autocratic leaders. What kind of impact could this visit make?

MCMAHON:
So it's being billed by whoever you talk to, whether it's Hungarian diplomats or the Vatican as a pastoral visit. They like to call all papal visits such in which he will focus on getting the faithful to observe the example of Christ in his various sermons and in his meetings with various constituents in society. But it is also going to be a visit with political residents. First off, the very first meetings that the pope is going to have are with the president and prime minister as he arrives later tomorrow, we're taping this on Thursday. He then proceeds to go on and meet the diplomatic core and then has a meeting at the end of the day with bishops and priests and seminarians at St. Stephen's Cathedral. So right off the bat, he's going to be having a dialogue with Prime Minister Orbán, who it must be said, has taken on a softer demeanor towards the pope. There's been a very interesting development on that front. 

Hungary obviously in the vanguard of countries that are putting up tough border controls and also making it a cause of sort of national identity and kicking out people who do not share the Christian ethnic identity of Hungarians. And this has brought in the past some strong comments from the pope. Pope did a very brief visit two years ago to Hungary and brought up the migration issue and he had faced previously from the pro-government press in Hungary some pretty strong language. However, Orbán is now talking in a different way about the pope including vis-a-vis Ukraine. He's talking about how both he and the pope are among the few people talking about path towards peace in Ukraine and the need for a ceasefire and so forth. The pope has used the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to call for a ceasefire. He has mentioned repeatedly his interest in bringing that about. 

So I think you're going to have the twin issues of the Ukraine war and migration appearing both in private conversations as well as in some of the pope's public utterances, at public events, at sermons and so forth. He has never shied away from especially mentioning migration issues and Hungary has a mixed record on the migration front. More than a million Ukrainians have transited Hungary fleeing the country and by all accounts the treatment there was helpful in their welfare and in their family's welfare. Several thousand have stayed beyond and have some sort of a status that allows them to stay on in Hungary. Now these are white Christians, many of them. They are not people of a different ethnicity or different religious background as had been the case for when the country put up its major walls in the mid-2010's and that drew a lot of attention to Hungary but also brought Orbán a bit of additional fame and power in his own country.

So there's an interesting dynamic playing out here about both Hungary's role as a humanitarian aid to Ukraine while also being still staunchly anti-immigrant in other ways. And how is the pope going to navigate that? How's the pope going to bring up his ongoing demand for a peace process and his own desire to even travel to Kyiv and Moscow potentially to try to broker that? A lot of intrigue could be going on right now ahead of this trip.

ROBBINS:
Why do you think that Orbán is putting on such a nice attitude toward the pope?

MCMAHON:
Well, for one thing, there has been favorable language from the Vatican since the invasion of Ukraine in terms of the way Hungary stepped up to help Ukrainians fleeing the initial ravages of the war and the invasion. That was recognized by Orbán. Orbán himself has actually, since the papal visit two years ago, has himself been to the Vatican and met with the Pope. I think in some ways they are simpatico in terms of the Christian values that Orbán likes to profess whenever he can. But by the same token, the Pope Francis, as you said, he recognizes autocratic behavior and he has been very consistent on the treatment and what should be the proper treatment of migrants wherever they are and whoever they are. So it's going to be very interesting to see whether or not they're going to announce anything involving Hungary's posture on this front or whether they're going to make common cause on trying to bring about some sort of a peace process in Ukraine. Perhaps they've decided to compromise and pursue that front. 

At the same time, Francis on many occasions has been very critical of Vladimir Putin and the Russian government's prosecution of the war, whereas Hungary has not. Hungary alone among NATO and EU countries has been much more favorable in its language and in its actions towards Russia. So again, as I said, a lot of interesting subplots going on here and we'll have to see what the pope says in public versus private.

Well Carla, it's time for the audience figure week segment of the podcast, which listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org Instagram story. This week Carla, our audience selected, "The Fourth Ceasefire Falters in Khartoum." What does this mean for Sudan?

ROBBINS:
Well, Bob, a seventy-two-hour U.S. brokered ceasefire, which brought some decrease in the fighting is due to expired in just a few hours. And Washington had hoped that the various countries that are backing the two sides in the conflict might use the time to pressure the generals to negotiate a more long-lasting ceasefire. The latest news that I saw, and as you said, we're recording on Thursday, Sudan's army is saying that it is willing to extend the ceasefire such as it is for another seventy-two hours and send an envoy to South Sudan's capital Juba for talks with representatives of its rivals, the RSF. It's not clear where the RSF stands on the proposal, which has been developed by the Presidents of South Sudan, Kenya, and Djibouti. But even before the current cease fire expires, the Sudanese army planes have been striking RSF fighters in Khartoum. So we'll see whether this has any chance of holding.

To make matters even more complicated. Sudan's army announced on Wednesday and we're not really clear how true this, what's really going on here, that the country's deposed President Omar al-Bashir, who's under indictment for the ICC for crimes against humanity and genocide, as well as several of his former aids were no longer held in prison but had been moved to a military hospital. And the RSF is charging that the army is now trying to bring Bashir back to power. So it is a major, major mess and in a country that badly needs a ceasefire. 

Now there are estimates at least 500 people have already been killed and the numbers have to be much higher than that. The World Health Organization says 60, 70 percent, maybe more of the health facilities are not working in Khartoum and has predicted many more deaths due to shortages of food, water, and medical services. This is an incredible mess. 

And the U.S. is coming under increasing criticism for not trying to rescue the estimated 16 thousand American citizens on the ground and only pulling out embassy staff and their families. Britain, France, Germany, India, Ukraine have already rescued their citizens and citizens of other countries either by air or with convoys to the Port of Sudan on the Red Sea. The Chinese are now sending ships. The Biden administration keeps saying it's too dangerous on the ground, that they warned people not to go there, but I can't imagine how they can hold the line much longer on that, Bob.

MCMAHON:
Do we have any sense, Carla, of who these 16 thousand people are? Are they extended family? Are they people involved in various business areas?

ROBBINS:
I think a lot of them are dual citizens because there've been warnings for a long period of time to not travel, I don't think people are there on tourism. But if Ukraine can rescue people, now granted they had a very limited number of people, I gather they evacuate eighty-seven Ukrainians and fifty-one citizens of Georgia and Peru and we have 16 thousand people evacuated, but we're the United States. And if there are 16 thousand American citizens on the ground, you can bet that there's going to be a rise in clamor for us to do something, particularly when so many other countries... And there are Chinese ships on the way to get Chinese citizens out.

MCMAHON:
Do we think on the broader diplomatic level that the U.S. is going to expend more capital to try to bring this to an end and maybe try to broker something that at least deals with an enduring ceasefire, if not some sort of a path to a resolution?

ROBBINS:
Well, certainly they were involved in brokering this latest ceasefire and encouraging the different countries that have been backing the sides to step in and do it. And we have a very strong interest in seeing a ceasefire, not least because we have those citizens on the ground. Biden administration has lots of things on its plate, but they can also do multiple things at the same time. I was actually surprised to see that they stepped in and did this, but they did. So I would suspect that their State Department's working overtime right now to move forward with extending the ceasefire.

MCMAHON:
And I saw some mention of Saudi involvement too, so we'll see if they step up their involvement further.

ROBBINS:
You've got the Gulfies backing one side in this and you've got Egypt backing another side in this, and yet you've got the countries on the horn trying to use their good offices on the negotiations right now. So you got a lot of different players involved.

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, last week as we were wrapping up, we wish for something more upbeat to talk about, and I guess we could say the same thing about this week, but the good news is that next week we have just the thing. Star Wars fans all know that May the 4th is their day and an opportunity to celebrate galaxies far, far away. But why on earth would foreign policy wonks be clued in on Star Wars?

ROBBINS:
So Bob, for anyone not from this or that galaxy, may the fourth comes from Star Wars, may the force be with you, which was first heard in the original 1977, episode four, A New Hope. In which a rebel general sends off his fighters to assault the Death Star with that great blessing. So when we talked about doing this, I thought I knew my Star Wars lore. I've always been very proud of my knowledge of Star Wars, but clearly I am a novice by compared with a lot of other people. 

So here are some very cool things to know. Reportedly, the first time it was used in mass communication outside of the Star Wars world was two years later in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister on May the 4th. And her Conservative Party read an ad in the London Evening News that read, "May the fourth be with you, Maggie." Now I have to give a caveat with this. I read this in numerous reputable news sites, but I didn't find the ad, so it may be one of those, and Bob, we as journalists know these, too good to check stories. 

Star Wars Day only took off as a full geek holiday in 2011 when the Toronto Underground Cinema in Canada organized a film festival and costume party. And since then the celebration has spread, including in non-English speaking countries, where I cannot imagine how you translate May the 4th into may the force be with you. But they somehow managed to do it. In May 2020, a Russian cosmonaut on the International Space Station tweeted out his may the force greetings and a picture of a crocheted Yoda floating on board. Last year, the Daily Telegraph in Australia had a list of things to do on Star Wars Day, including a costume roller skate ride around Sydney. I hope the Imperial stormtroopers on roller skates is quite a sight to imagine.

And Bob, just in case anyone considers all this stuff frivolous. In a true Return of the Jedi, Mark Hamill who plays Luke Skywalker has recorded the warning on the air raid app used all over Ukraine, urging Ukrainians to take cover. And when it's time to sound the all clear, Hamill says, "Attention, the air alert is over. May the force be with you."

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, that was the nugget I needed to wrap up the podcast. Thank you for wrapping that up, and I vote for doing that in future weeks too. I bet there's other things we can cast about for. So if any of our avid public, especially on Instagram has ideas, please let us know. Otherwise, that's our look at the world and galaxy next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Paraguay holds its general election. And the UNESCO International Jazz Day takes place.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast and leave us a review while you're at it. We really do appreciate the feedback. The movies mentioned in this episode, as well as the transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra, whom I see right now across the studio. Hey, Gabrielle. Special thanks to Sinet Adous and Rebecca Rottenberg for their research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Carla Robbins saying, oh Bob, I can't help myself. May the fourth be with you.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye. And may the fourth be with you as well.