ROULETTE

Us-russia face-off looms over anti-doping action ahead of Rio Olympics

IN THE NEXT few days, the world will descend upon Rio de Janeiro for the Olympic Games. However, Russia's participation in the carnival remains deeply ambiguous. On Sunday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) left it to individual sports federations to decide if Russia can be at the Rio Games. This comes a few days after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld a ban imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) on Russian track and field athletes, following provenance of widespread state-sponsored doping. In its independent panel report, the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA), banking on the testimonies of a whistle-blower, claimed that Russian secret service agents swapped positive urine samples for clean ones. The report also claimed that the Russian sports ministry was involved in the cover-up of 580 positive tests from 30 different sports between late 2011 and August 2015.

Under pressure to enforce a blanket ban on the Eastern European sporting giants, IOC president Thomas Bach, considered an ally of Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has put the ball in the federations' court. Meanwhile, Putin has warned the ban would be a “dangerous return” to the Cold War politics of the 1980s, when the US and erstwhile Soviet Union boycotted the Games hosted by the rival superpower. Russia views the doping scandal as a conspiracy by the West, the US in particular: Pole vault legend Yelena Isinbayeva described the ruling as “a blatant political order”. In a sarcastic Instagram post, she added: “Now let all these foreign pseudo-clean athletes sigh with relief and win their pseudo-gold medals in our absence." The ban, Russia believes, goes against the basic tenets of justice.

The IAAF, led by Sebastian Coe, is going by the book. They insist that bans are imposed based on the number of positive tests. The suits at the IAAF have repeatedly said that they have zero tolerance for dope cheats. Russia isn’t convinced, they complain that they are being singled out. And that isn't a groundless allegation. A range of top nations like Jamaica and Kenya have returned dope positives in recent years, while leniency had been extended to the Chinese and the Americans. High-profile drug cheats from these nations didn’t amount to blanket bans. The IAAF and WADA claim it is impossible to know which Russian athlete is clean under the current circumstances. Advocates of the ban say Russia has been outmanoeuvring the very anti-doping labs that are meant to catch the cheats. However, it is anybody’s guess if keeping the Russians out will ensure a dope-free Olympics. THE RECENT ATTEMPT of a military coup has raised more questions than it has answered about the emerging complexities of Turkish politics. This development has sent a shock wave among all the international stakeholders in the region as it generated fear of further destabilisation of an already destabilised region.

The narratives about the occurrence of the coup range from a possible involvement of the Erdogan regime itself so as to further consolidate its unfettered rule by controlling the institution of the military on the one hand to the alleged involvement of the Gulen movement, on the other hand. However, between these two poles, the possibility of a revolt by a section of Kemalist military officers can not be ruled out.

However, it is Erdogan’s allegation of direct involvement of Fateullah Gulen and the Gulen movement in the coup that has received worldwide attention. Gulen, a Turkish Islamic scholar living in the US since 1998, is credited to have inspired a worldwide Islamic voluntary movement, called Hizmet (service), which runs thousands of secular educational institutions along with interfaith dialogue centres. The movement has worked closely with Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule in pushing the agenda of democratisation of Turkish society and state, which eventually resulted in clipping the powers of the army and jolting the hegemony of the “White Turks” between 2002 and 2012 before the two fell out in 2013 — partly on account of the de-democratisation measures by the Erdogan regime.

The Erdogan regime’s hatred of the Gulen movement is both personal and political. Erdogan is personally convinced that Gulen and the movement have betrayed him by orchestrating the corruption charges involving his family members and inner circle in