How Rogue Regimes Use Double Standards to Impose Their Will At Home and Abroad

What is striking about Turkey's demand for ransom to free an American pastor which eventually sparked the current reciprocal visa freeze between Turkey and the United States is Turkey's unironic expectation that that US (and international community) should grant equal degree of legitimacy to the US process and Turkey's clearly arbitrary way of going after anyone who is convenient at the time. Turkey unjustly imprisoned an American evangelical Andrew Brunson under trumped up charges in horrendous conditions that have cost him his health. In exchange, it demands US return clergy associated with Fetullah Gullen, Erdogan's political nemesis. Aside from expecting US to violate international agreements related to the return of political asylees who would likely face unjust imprisonment, torture, or execution in their home countries, Erdogan thinks nothing of arresting a  US citizen, fabricating charges against him, and mistreating him as a way to force a political solution to its witch hunt against other political factions.

A dictatorship's grotesquely distorted idea of national sovereignty thus extends far beyond its own borders. It is willing to violate all international norms of civil behavior to make a political point, imposing its will abroad, even if it means risking a serious deterioration in relationship with an important ally. To an authoritarian dictator, who thinks nothing of torturing and murdering his opposition, be they military, political rivals, or Kurdish citizens asserting their rights to distinct cultural heritage, human life has no value except as a bargaining chip in negotiations. The only lives that matter are those of the authoritarian leader and his equally corrupt cronies, who may be in favor today, and exiled or assassinated tomorrow if they grow too powerful or somehow cross Erdogan.

Erdogan's Turkey is not unique in this manner. Iran, North Korea, and other countries engage in this perverse strategy on a regular basis. Cuba has done the same with Alan Gross.  These countries expect to be treated as equals among nations despite having no respect for any other state or anyone else's interests but their own.  Despite the claim that these societies are obsessed with security and are thus safer and less prone to crime and espionage than more open societies, these states are inherently lawless and illegitimate, with one person or a small coterie of kleptocrats controlling all the means of governance at the time, and the rest of the society largely defanged, divided, brainwashed, and hopeless. Iran has an Orwellian strategy of making public enemies out of human rights defenders.

As per Kaveh Taheri, an investigative reporter focused on human rights, Iran frequently uses national security and blasphemy laws as an absurd way of shutting down dissent or simply arbitrarily grabbing anyone who needs to be detained, be that a regular person, caught drinking alcohol, a minority member demanding cultural rights, a political dissident or human rights activist, a member of a faction that has fallen into disfavor, a dual national, or a Westerner that appears to be good bait, or an errant artist, whose work is deemed threatening to the regime despite a lack of obviously disruptive agenda. Any freedom of thought that is not granted by the regime explicitly and strategically to select individuals resides in the shadows.

Kaveh states:

"Acting against national security" is one of the punishable crimes under Iran's Islamic Penal Code. The article 279 describes that the crimes including armed robbery, armed fighting, disturbing public orders through armed acting could be recognized as Moharebeh (Enmity against God) as well as judge can issues death penalty or long-term imprisonment, and life-time imprisonment for the criminals. 

Further, the articles 286-288 describe that those people act against national security through disturbing economy, spreading false news against the regime of Iran, spreading false news to disturb public order, ignite and destruction public or state properties, outbreaking of toxic and dangerous microbial substances, establishing of corruption centers for gambling or sex, high drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and those armed opposition groups who fight the regime of Iran could be recognized as Ifsad-e fil arz (corruption on the earth) [the member of the groups is identified as Mofsed-E-Filarz], whereupon, judge issues heavy sentences as long-term imprisonment, life-time imprisonment or death penalty.

Iran Islamic Penal Code is a complicated context that the IRI's Law Enforcement officials (judges, Prosecutors, attorney general, …) can have their own interpretation of the law which may lead them to issue death penalty or prison term for the detainees.

But, especially about your question, the officials (Judicial Department officials, Intelligence Service officials, and IRGC's Intelligence Service officials) use the ambiguity in the law to put pressure upon dissidents. The IRI officials convict the Iranian dissidents to death or heavy sentences for the ambiguous charges as "acting against national security", "propaganda against the regime of Iran", "spreading false news against IRI", "disturbing public order", "Moharebeh through membership of the opposition groups", "Ifsad-e fil arz through membership of the opposition groups", "insulting the Supreme Leader of IRI of the other state officials", … .

In instance, the imprisoned student activist Arash Sadeghi was sentenced to 19 years in prison. His wife Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee was sentenced to 6 years in prison. The human rights activist Atena Daemi was initially sentenced to 14 years in prison, which was commuted to 7 years imprisonment. And, many civil and human rights activists who have been jailed for their peaceful activism.  

In this manner, the Islamic Republic actually acts in a completely arbitrary and lawless manner, cynically manipulating both Islamic concepts and security jargon to go after its enemies, real and imaginary, sometimes simply for the sake of dividing or scaring any potential opposition that may emerge. In fact, randomness in enforcement, and periodic clamp downs, are part of a deliberate strategy to illustrate the absolute power of the state. By that token, the Islamic Republic is also ultimately a godless society, because arbitrary arrests and punishments serve to show that ultimately, the power lies not with Allah, but with the ayatollahs, who alone determine which sinners can be overlooked, and which will be penalized. 

They alone, human beings, not a deity, decide who is a danger, and who, though engaged in very similar action, is a good citizen and a good Muslim.  A society in which vast corruption permeates the higher circles, but only the danger to the regime that is a violation serious enough to warrant the kind of torturous ordeal that easily strikes a regular average Iranian who ate in public during Ramadan, who went out to demonstrate against oppression, or who was merely a dual citizen on a visit with his family - is not a society that promotes awe of some omnipotent being. It's a society that emphasizes state control, human power, above all else.

The dual standards that permeate these authoritarian states extend beyond their borders. Obsessed with spies and foreign agents, these states, nevertheless, maintain extensive intelligence networks all over the world, which consider espionage, active measures, psy-ops,  and even assassinations par for the course and think nothing of other countries' national sovereignty, international norms, or even potential repercussions of going too far too often. And it works. More open societies think it beyond their virtue to engage in disruptive activities concerning even their adversaries, much less of cynical abductions, overwhelming propaganda, or other actions that are supposed to intimidate and oppress the enemy. And open societies are generally open to infiltration, to the point of self-preservation becoming a secondary concern to the preservation of accepted civil norms.

For that reasons, we will find Erdogan's jaundiced view of the West's unwillingness to simply give up Gullenists in exchange for one of their own shocking, but to Erdogan, the only shocking part is how staunchly the West adheres to the norms of diplomatic proportionality and how it continues to treat violators of its own standards and laws with civil reciprocity, rather than crushing, overwhelming force.

What would that entail? Having a threat of reprisals against particular individuals in those regimes for the mere fact of violating national sovereignty, and certainly for the mere act of detaining, much less torturing, US citizens and permanent residents, under these bogus charges. Passing legislation, similar to Magnitsky Act, that would empower the US government to freeze the assets of corrupt and evil regime officials, and to deny them and their families entry to the US, would make compliance more likely, give us leverage during the negotiation, since the mere threat of such measures would make these officials less likely to engage in extortion, and prevent the US from having to restrict its own nationals' freedom to travel by having to institute travel bans for their own security. Indeed, holding specific individuals accountable for the harm done to the US nationals, even before any such harm is done to anyone, would go along way in preempting them from ever engaging in such behavior in the first place, and would contribute decisively towards making the world both a more free and more secure place for everyone.