Where will the lost unity in the Gulf be found?

The 39th Gulf Cooperation Council meeting was held in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The planned objective of the meeting, within the framework of a future plan centered on the Gulf countries, was to remove all obstacles in front of a common Gulf market in order to achieve economic union by 2025, and to complete the procedures necessary for putting a unified Gulf military command into practice. Or rather, all the announcements were made in this way, and all the statements pointed in this direction. But no concrete proposal, plan or program regarding these objectives was heard.

In fact, because of the embargo the other three member states have imposed on Qatar for two years, it is no longer possible to speak of something called a Gulf Union. This embargo, which Kuwait and Amman in fact did not approve but also could not openly say they did not approve, was above all a step that has effectively ended the existence of the Gulf as a political and economic Union. This was the summary of the situation into which MBZ & MBS, with their adventurous personalities that recognize no rules or traditions, have dragged the region. And this situation stood in great contradiction to the reality, underlined at the latest summit and in fact known to everyone, concerning the importance of unity.

The last meeting had taken place in 2017, with Qatar not even invited and with an eagerness that the operation of annihilation against it could continue like this to the very end. It had likewise taken place in an atmosphere in which Kuwait and Oman openly showed their dissatisfaction with this course and even hinted at their concern that, if it continued like this, the concept of the Gulf as a political and economic Union would be left defunct.

The truth is, there is no union in the Gulf. As for cooperation, there is none at all at present, apart from cases of dire necessity. The agendas of BAE and SA under the control of MBZ & MBS are very different from the agenda of the Union so far. They were trying to drag not only their own countries but the entire Gulf into a great adventure and to push it into a channel that tears it away from the priorities of the Islamic world.

The normalization of relations with Israel, the thorough marginalization of the Palestinian cause, the imposition of a relationship of unreckoned submission to the USA, mobilization rhetoric against Iran in theory while continuing covert cooperation in practice, and thereby keeping the Islamic world constantly in a cold-war order within itself. The outcome is an adventurism, whose result is blood, bloodshed, oppression, tyranny and massacre everywhere in the Islamic world, and whose destination is unknown.

It seems that the Khashoggi affair has had a warning, even a shockingly warning, effect with regard to a return from the adventurous journey of MBS & MBZ, at least as far as Gulf Cooperation is concerned.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, who hosted this year's Gulf Cooperation meeting, invited the Emir of Qatar to the meeting with a step that surprised everyone. This was in fact also a sign that the policy of excluding Qatar would be quickly reversed.

The pressure that the Khashoggi affair is exerting on Saudi Arabia all over the world seems to have forced the country to behave a little more like a normal state. The blockade imposed on Qatar had no logic or legitimacy to begin with. What was demanded of Qatar was to shut down television and media channels, above all Aljazeera, to give up supporting names close to the Ikhwan, and to pledge complete allegiance to Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps because these demands appeared to rest on some logic within the context of the dispute between them, they did not attract sufficient attention from the outside world. Yet the Khashoggi affair put all the policies of the Gulf under a magnifying glass and made the oddities, abnormalities, irrationalities and human rights violations in these policies fully visible. Today everyone now looks at all these oddities with different eyes, as the deeds of a will capable of doing things like the Khashoggi murder.

From now on everyone will look in the same way at the affairs these two have meddled in in Yemen, at the support given to the Egypt of the coup-maker Sisi, who massacred thousands of his own people, at the support given to Haftar, who barged into the middle of a national dialogue that was continuing, for better or worse, in Libya under the pretext of fighting terrorism, a pretext that fools only the stupid, and of course at the treatment of businessmen, family members and scholars who are currently held, in the name of fighting corruption, without any accounting and without judicial process in their own country...

This view comes about by the very nature of things. In a way, by the very manner of his killing, Khashoggi provided this perspective and cast a different light on these events as well.

Of course the Emir of Qatar did not attend King Salman bin Abdulaziz's Gulf Cooperation meeting in person. But the Minister of State attended to represent Qatar.

The final statement of the meeting in fact gave all the clues as to how this Union works. As expected, Saudi Arabia treated the meeting as a simple tool for securing international support for itself in the Khashoggi affair. On this subject, expressions entirely and very specifically Saudi Arabia's own were declared as the statement of the Union. It was stated that, regarding the Khashoggi murder, Saudi Arabia's efforts toward clarifying the incident and establishing justice were appreciated. It is like a joke. But the seriousness of the situation cannot bear this joke.

Yet such things were not discussed at the meeting, and these expressions were matters that at least the other three countries would never have signed. Indeed Qatar objected to the statement said to be "joint", both because of this subject and on the grounds that no reference was made to the Qatar crisis.

It is very clear that Saudi Arabia is not seeking truth and justice in the Khashoggi matter. But it should at least not make jokes, like "calling on Turkey to cooperate further for the clarification of the incident", that do not fit the seriousness of the situation at all.