UNIPATH STAFF
After Daesh released barbaric video footage in December 2016 of two Turkish Soldiers being burned to death in northern Syria, Bahraini officials immediately condemned the “brutal terrorist crime.” Manama’s quick response was the latest sign of a growing Bahraini-Turkish partnership aimed at fending off growing regional security threats. Bahrain and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members seek to deepen ties with Ankara, which they see as similarly threatened by extremism and sectarianism and motivated to combat these destabilizing forces.
Since Turkey’s Justice and Development Party came to power 14 years ago, Ankara’s bonds with GCC members have warmed with Turkey’s increasingly “active engagement” in the region. In October 2016, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met with GCC counterparts in Saudi Arabia and released a joint Turkish-GCC communique that denounced “indiscriminate airstrikes on Syria’s Aleppo.” The communique emphasized the “complete rejection of the use of Iraqi territory as a safe haven for terrorist groups to carry out terror attacks, including smuggling of weapons and explosives.”
In August 2016, His Royal Highness King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain became the first Arab leader to visit Turkey after a failed coup attempt in Ankara. After receiving a warm welcome from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the king signed numerous agreements in the aviation, cultural, educational, legal and sports sectors. Hamad and Erdogan also discussed their countries’ “strong bilateral relations, regional and international issues and the latest developments,” the Bahrain News Agency reported.
For Manama, the possibility of Bahrain-born Turki al-Binali succeeding Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled caliph of Daesh, is troublesome, given the millennial cleric’s potential to recruit more youthful Arab Gulf citizens to his hateful cause. With defeats in Iraq and Syria, Daesh may direct more violence toward new targets in the region to demonstrate its ability to remain a security threat. Bahrain has been a target of Daesh propaganda.