The Levant Union?

It is extremely weird that the Jordanian media did not mention anything about this, but it seems that Turkey had given up on the idea of the European Union; to be more accurate they gave up on the "European" but not the "Union".

According to Hurriyet daily news: Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, this last Friday in Istanbul, had signed an agreement to form a "Levant quartet", a step that aims to foster integration between the four countries on economic, cultural, and political levels, that might evolve into an economic and monetary union in the future. The agreement, it seems, is taking into consideration, and looking forward accommodating many countries in the region, including Iran, but excluding Israel, by the year 2015.

A couple of days ago, I was in Istanbul, and I came across many Turkish people, who when heard the group of peers I was with speaking Arabic, started speaking to us in whatever Arabic they could manage. They expressed their love to Arabs and Muslims, and even their hatred to Europe, as if that was a way to prove their hospitality. It might be that they wanted to demonstrate their skills in Arabic, nothing more nothing less, or a feeling of sympathy that grew in the aftermath of the flotilla raid, but, politically speaking, it is widely accepted that Turkey's attitude toward the Arabs had changed dramatically lately from Arabs are traitors to Arabs make good potential allies.

However, a prominent Turkish lady told me an interesting story; Recep Tayyip Erdogan is of a gigantic ego, and is a dictator. When she told me that, I felt stupid, I mean how come that I did not notice it. Arabs liked him, and Arabs do not like rational leaders, they are naturally endowed with an affinity to demagogues. Erdogan, it seems, is imprisoning anyone who opposes him, and his son started making a fortune out of nowhere ever since he became the president of Turkey.

But that is not the point; the "scary thing", according to that lady, was that he had made some referendums to change the constitution in a way that grants him more control. In light of this, I came to conclude that, logically speaking and away from the convolutions of politics, this Levant Union is one of four things:

• A trick that Turkey is playing on the EU
• Erdogan (as the head of his ruling party) wants to create a Neo-Ottoman Empire
• Turkey wants to sustain its economy in these harsh times
• The countries in the region want to form a Union for real (after digging a bit deeper, I found that Iran has been trying to do something like that lately, but the WikiLeaks, it seems, will have adverse effects on its relationships with the Arab states in the region)

Anyways, the story unfolded nonlinearly, befor me, while I was in Turkey, and what added to the thrill of it were two questions that I had been pondering about in the last couple of days: what would this region look like in 20 years? And will any of these young nationalities that were formed in the past centenary hold any longer? We can not predict, but we can observe, so lets take a seat, and watch as history comes out the way she is.

P.S.

6 days ago, before learning about this story, I decided to start calling my self a Levantine from Jordan, in the hope that in few years saying that I am a Primate from planet Earth won't sound like treason, so the thrill of it all is justifiable.

Link to the story in Hurriyet official website.