Turkish president urges Saudi Arabia to act like the ‘Custodian of the Two Holy Places’ in Gulf diplomatic row.

President Tayyip Erdogan has firmly stood behind Qatar during the Gulf crisis.

by Al Jazeera

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has requested the full removal of a Saudi-led blockade of Qatar after approving the deployment of Turkish troops there, saying Riyadh needed to put brotherhood ahead of animosity.

Erdogan said isolating Qatar would not resolve any regional problems and vowed to do everything in his power to help end the regional crisis.

“We will not abandon our Qatari brothers,” Erdogan told members of his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party at a fast-breaking meal on Friday in Istanbul during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“I also have a special request from the Saudi administration. You are the largest and most powerful state in the Gulf. We call you the Custodian of the Holy Places. You especially should work for brotherhood, not animosity. You have to work for bringing brothers together. This is what we expect from Saudi, the Custodian of the Holy Mosques.

“I say it should be lifted completely,” Erdogan said of the embargo.

Late on Thursday, a joint statement by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the UAE accused 59 individuals and 12 charity organisations in Qatar of being “linked to terror”.

Speaking about the allegations, Erdogan said: “There is no such thing. I know those foundations.”

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Egypt severed relations with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting “extremists” and their arch-adversary Iran – charges Qatar calls “baseless”. Several countries followed suit.

The four countries also imposed a land, sea and air blockade on Qatar that precluded food shipments and led to cancellation of flights

Turkey, which has maintained good relations with Qatar, as well as several of its Gulf Arab neighbours, offered food and water supplies to stave off possible shortages.

“There are those who are uncomfortable with us standing by our Qatari brothers, providing them with food. I’m sorry, we will continue to give Qatar every kind of support,” Erdogan said, adding that he had never witnessed Doha supporting “terrorism”.

On Wednesday, Turkey’s parliament ratified two deals on deploying troops to Qatar and training the Gulf nation’s security forces.

The deal to sendTurkish soldiers in Qatar, aimed at improving the country’s army and boosting military cooperation, was signed in April 2016 in Doha.

“The ratification of the military treaties is not an anti-Saudi move at all,” Can Kasapoglu, a defence analyst from Turkey’s EDAM, told Al Jazeera. “Turkey still sticks to ‘I don’t want problems between my two good friends’ policy.

“Yet, although this is not an anti-Saudi position, it is a pro-Qatari one for sure. Ankara prioritised its geopolitical perspective, and showed that it holds its military presence [in Qatar] above the recent diplomatic crisis.”

After an initial deployment of Turkish soldiers at a base in Doha, Turkish fighter jets and ships will also be sent, the mass-circulation Hurriyet newspaper said on its website on Friday.

“The number of Turkish warplanes and Turkish warships going to the base will become clear after the preparation of a report based on an initial assessment at the base,” Hurriyet said.

A Turkish delegation would go to Qatar in the coming days to assess the situation at the base, where about 90 Turkish soldiers are currently based, it said.

Turkish officials were not available to comment on the report, but Hurriyet said there were plans send some 200 to 250 soldiers within two months in the initial stage.

Donald Trump green-lighting weapon sales withheld by Obama over concerns about Saudi Arabia’s conduct of war in Yemen.

US President Donald Trump and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House [REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque]

by William Roberts, Al Jazeera

Washington, DC – President Donald Trump’s highly touted deal to sell Saudi Arabia $110bn in weapons from the United States is coming under new scrutiny in Washington, DC, where politicians are increasingly concerned about the kingdom’s conduct of the war in Yemen and, now, the sudden blockade of Qatar.

As details have emerged about the arms sale, it’s become clear the $110bn value Trump claimed is exaggerated. The new sales are actually just proposed offers and most of the underlying weapons systems were previously organised under former President Barack Obama.

Congress is poised to vote in the coming days on a resolution of disapproval of a portion of the announced deal. US law gives Congress the right to veto arms sales to foreign countries. While Republican lawmakers are likely to support their president, the resolution will draw more than 40 supporters in the Senate, more than previous measures and a sign of trouble for Riyadh.

“The $110 billion is definitely inflated, but it’s not zero,” said William Hartung, an arms trade analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC.

“It’s very hard to evaluate. They haven’t been very specific about some of the categories they are talking about,” Hartung told Al Jazeera.

What is new is Trump’s offer to Saudi Arabia of the US’ hi-tech THAAD missile defence system, now being deployed in South Korea, and the proposed future sale of 150 Blackhawk combat helicopters, as well as new cyber-warfare capabilities. These are all future propositions, analysts say.

More practically and immediately, Trump is green-lighting sales of precision-guided, air-to-ground missiles that Obama had withheld because of concerns over the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and civilian casualties.

In addition, Trump is moving forward to replenish and expand the Saudi supply of battle tanks and armoured vehicles, replacing equipment damaged in the Yemen conflict.

“The Saudis are in a war in Yemen and they need weapons. You want to win, you need weapons,” Senator John McCain, a Republican, told Al Jazeera. “We are in a war.”

Separately, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon both announced major sales in connection with Trump’s trip. But “this seems more in the nature of a promise than a finished deal”, Hartung said.

Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow and foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, published a blog post earlier this week saying Trump’s announced weapons deal with Saudi Arabia was “fake news”.

“There is no $110bn deal,” Riedel said. “Instead there are a bunch of letters of intent, but not contracts.”

About $24bn of the claimed $110bn in Trump’s deal are weapons sales that were already in the pipeline, analysts say. Obama had offered Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states new military assistance to gain their acquiescence to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015.

Trump attempted to score political points at home with the agreement, announced during his visit to Riyadh, by touting the economic value of US defence contractors. He claimed it would create “many thousands of jobs”.

Previously announced sales included more than $7bn in munitions and support for the war in Yemen, $3.5bn in Chinook cargo helicopters, and $1.15bn in tanks and armoured vehicles, according to a fact sheet put out May 20 by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

“That $110 billion is a mix of old sales and future prospective sales that have not been announced or signed,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, told Al Jazeera.

Four US senators led by Murphy are demanding a Senate vote to reject that portion of the arms sales related to guided missiles that Obama would not have approved. A companion measure is pending in the House of Representatives.

Citing the suffering of civilians in Yemen’s war, US Senator Ben Cardin said on Wednesday he would oppose arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

He noted the “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis with millions of Yemenis on the brink of famine, and hundreds of thousands at risk from a cholera outbreak.

“Given this deplorable context, I am disappointed that we have yet to learn of the administration’s strategy to support a political process, or any statement from the administration that more military action in Yemen is counterproductive, will disproportionally affect civilians, and will likely generate conditions for expanded activities by al-Qaeda and Iran, as well as Russian influence. Instead, this administration’s approach appears to be more weapons sales,” Cardin said in a statement.

With Saudi Arabia’s surprise move against Qatar, positions of senators on Murphy’s resolution are “shifting hour to hour”, said Trevor Thrall, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think-tank.

“It means something different to vote against this resolution now than it did a few days ago. Now a vote against it looks like it is more of a blank cheque to Saudi Arabia,” Thrall told Al Jazeera.

Trump’s speech to a gathering of Muslim leaders in Riyadh on May 21 was widely interpreted as a signal the new US president would not raise human rights issues. Instead, the US will focus on combating “terrorism”, for which Trump placed primary blame on Iran in the speech.

Middle East experts in Washington were scrambling to understand what prompted the Saudi move and how Trump’s conduct may have encouraged it. Qatar is a US ally and host of a major military airbase, the biggest in the Middle East.

“It’s possible just his blanket endorsement of the Saudis may have emboldened them to do something they’ve been wanting to do for a while. And they are certainly hoping to escalate the tensions with Iran. I don’t think they thought Qatar was on board with that,” Hartung said.