Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
Turkey is
Now in Syria; What it Means for the Middle East - Two Views
Robert Fisk; Vijay Prashad
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
The Turks don't want a Kurdish mini-state on their frontier any
more than the Syrians want to lose territory to the Kurds
By Robert Fisk
August 24, 2016
How the West would love to believe that Turkey's army in Syria -
all 10 tanks of it - are striking at last at everyone's enemy, the blood-soaked
cult of the "Islamic State". But few in Syria or Turkey will be
fooled. Isis have been sitting in Jerablus for many months; it is the advance
of the American-armed Kurdish YPG militia along the Turkish border towards
Jerablus that worries Sultan Erdogan.
And yet again as Turkish troops advanced, he bundled up the YPG
(People's Protection Units) - who the Turks believe have connections with the
PKK or Kurdistan Workers Party, whom they view as much more dangerous - as
"terrorists", along with Isis. In other words, he's calling both the
anti-Assad Isis and the anti-Isis Kurds the enemies of Turkey (as he did after
the suicide bombing of a wedding in Gazientep last weekend), lumping his pet
hates together. Only his obsession with Fethullah Gulen, whom he blames for
July's failed coup, has been omitted from his latest "battle"
objectives in Syria.
Erdogan's latest ally, Tsar Vladimir, will have no objections. At
one blow, Turkey strikes - however feebly - at both Isis and the pro-American
Kurdish militia with whose apparatchiks Moscow has remained studiously aloof.
The Syrians will know - and surely will have been told - that Putin supports
Turkey's little incursion. They will be in no mood to protest since their own
government army was fighting the same Kurdish group in the city of Hassakeh
until a ceasefire two days ago. Here, too, the YPG was trying to seize Syrian
sovereign territory.
Put simply, the YPG is getting too big for its boots. It is using
the anti-Isis war to carve out a little homeland inside Syria along the Turkish
border and gobbling up as much of Syria as it can before the civil war ends.
The Turks don't want a Kurdish mini-state on their frontier any more than the
Syrians want to lose territory to the Kurds. The anti-Assad "Free Syrian
Army" is supposed to be among Turkey's little squadron of armour heading
for Jerablus but this is likely to be of little interest to Damascus: Syrian
troops have long since ceased to regard the FSA as a serious military force and
will not worry if its men wish to "martyr" themselves in this
Turkish-run operation.
It's all bad news for Isis, of course. And deeply ironic, for it
was at the very same Jerablus - under Turkish shellfire today - where TE
Lawrence "of Arabia" spent some of the happiest months of his life
before the First World War, digging through the ancient ruins of Carcamish, and
where he began to frame his affectionate but also deeply racist view of the
Arabs. The sterility of the desert, Lawrence would later write of anyone who
lived there "robbed him of compassion and perverted his human kindness to
the image of the waste in which he hid."
He wrote of the Arab's "delight in pain" and of how the
desert became "a spiritual iceberg, in which was preserved intact but
unimproved for all ages a vision of the unity of God." Perhaps Lawrence
got closer to the mind of Isis than we might imagine. Now the Turks can discover
this for themselves in the new ruins of Jerablus.
Robert Fisk is the multi-award winning Middle East correspondent
of The Independent, based in Beirut. He has lived in the Arab
world for more than 40 years, covering Lebanon, five Israeli invasions, the
Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Algerian civil war,
Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, the American
invasion and occupation of Iraq and the 2011 Arab revolutions. Occasionally
describing himself as an `Ottoman correspondent' because of the huge area he
covers, Fisk joined The Independent in 1989. He has written
best-selling books on the Middle East, including Pity the Nation andThe
Great War for Civilisation. He was born in Kent in 1946 and gained his BA in
English and Classics at Lancaster University. He holds a PhD in politics from
Trinity College, Dublin.
Turkey warms up to Russia and Iran in a bid to exit before a total
rout of its proxies in Syria
By Vijay Prashad
August 24, 2016
Kurdish gains along the Turkish border have been anathema to Mr.
Erdogan's government. Women after being evacuated by the Syria Democratic
Forces from IS-controlled Manbij in Aleppo, Syria.
Photo credit: Reuters // The Hindu
Sharp changes in the war on Syria have impacted the policy of the
Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Initially Mr. Erdogan
believed that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would fall
precipitously. It did not. Rather than overthrow Mr. Assad, the war has placed
Turkey itself in danger - a `failed coup' on July 15 came alongside a renewed
war against Turkey's Kurdish population, just as Islamic State (IS) attacks in
the country have raised alarm bells about Mr. Erdogan's adventurism. An
adjustment of Turkey's policy is now on the cards. The President's August 9
trip to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and the warm words
exchanged when the Iranian Foreign Minister came to Turkey on August 10
indicate a change.
Failure in Syria
In 2011, Turkey had hastily come out in favour of the removal of
Mr. Assad. "It is not heroism to fight against your own people," Mr.
Erdogan said in November 2011. This was a curious call from the head of
government in a state that had been at war against its own people, namely the
Kurds, since the 1980s. The call amplified the chorus in the Gulf Arab and
Western capitals. Their main goal was to weaken Iran by overthrowing the Assad
government.
Mr. Erdogan hoped that his fraternal Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
would ride into Damascus on the wings of Western-driven regime change. But the
West was wary. It provided diplomatic and military support to the rebels, but
found the road to Damascus blocked by Russia, Iran and China. None of them
wanted to see the scenario of Iraq or Libya replayed in Syria. Furthermore,
Russia and Iran had material interests in Syria that they did not want to
jeopardise. Now, five years later, Mr. Erdogan's forward policy has failed,
which is why he has warmed up to both Russia and Iran in a bid to chart out a
path from the Syrian quagmire.
Turkey's long border with Syria proved to be the most accessible
route for arms and fighters. Gulf Arab and Western intelligence prowled the
towns of the borders, working with Turkish intelligence to provide support for
the motley crew of proxy armies. It was along this border that the Kurdish
fighters, supported by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group banned in
Turkey, began to make inroads. Last week, a coalition of the Kurds and Arabs
under the flag of the Syria Democratic Forces seized the IS-held town of
Manbij. Kurdish gains along the Turkish border have been anathema to Mr.
Erdogan's government, which had restarted its war against the Kurdish
population inside Turkey as well as against PKK camps in Iraq. It was this war
that opened up tensions between Washington and Ankara, with the former uneasy
with the Turkish assault on some of the main groups that had been fighting the
IS.
It is not yet clear who authorised the `failed coup' against the
civilian government in Turkey. Mr. Erdogan blames the movement of his former
ally Fethullah Gülen. Since Mr. Gülen lives in the U.S. and because of rumours
that the U.S. troops at the Turkish base in Incirlik had helped the coup
plotters, animosity against the U.S. rose sharply. In late July, thousands
surrounded the Incirlik base, burning U.S. flags and chanting `Death to the
U.S.'. This was the day before the head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
General Joseph Dunford arrived in Turkey to soothe the heated relations. The
firmest indicator that the U.S. opposed the coup, said Mr. Erdogan, would be
the extradition of Mr. Gülen. Since this is not likely to take place, tensions
between the U.S., North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Turkey will remain.
Russia and Iran outreach
Instability in Turkey as a result of the Syrian war has created
great economic problems. The doors to the Western market are not wide open,
while the war in Syria has blocked the West Asian marketplace. Renewed ties
with Russia have restarted the Turkish Stream gas lines and prompted a Russian
reaffirmation of its promise to build nuclear reactors in Turkey. The business
lobbies close to Mr. Erdogan can breathe again.
Over the course of the past year, both Turkey's proxy armies in
Syria and its Syrian political allies have seen their position weakened. Saudi
Arabia's games with the Syrian opposition bloc has snuffed out the dominance of
the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, under heavy Syrian and Russian
bombardment, the extremist rebel fighters of Aleppo, including the Turkish
proxies, have faced setbacks. It is clear that the extremists, including the
Turkish proxies, will not be able to hold on for too long. Turkey seeks an exit
before a full battlefield humiliation.
During his visit to Moscow, Mr. Erdogan suggested that Turkey
needed to coordinate Syria policy with Russia and Iran. On August 20, his Prime
Minister Binali Yildirim said that Mr. Assad could stay in power for a
transitional period. The slogan `Assad must go' is no longer fundamental to
Turkish foreign policy.
The day after Mr. Erdogan left Russia, a delegation of senior
Turkish military officers arrived to coordinate a military command centre.
Turkey is eager that the Kurdish forces not take territory along the border.
Russian military officers told them that this would be a priority. A few days
later the Iranian and Turkish Foreign Ministers announced close coordination on
Syria. This is surely a blow to Turkey's proxies, and indeed to the Gulf Arabs
who have come to rely upon Turkey as the pathway into Syria.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told the press in
Ankara that the "era of bullying and coups is over" and that
"people's choice cannot be suppressed by a military group". The
statement was about the `failed coup' in Turkey. It could just as well have
been with reference to Syria, a country destroyed by regional ambitions. The
rebalancing of Turkish foreign entanglements might finally allow Syria's future
to be less grim.
Vijay Prashad, a columnist for the Turkish daily BirGün,
is the author of fifteen books, most recently of The Death of the
Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (LeftWord Books). He is a
Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, a journalist
and commentator. In 2013 - 2014, Prof. Prashad was the Edward Said Chair
at the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon. He earned
his B.A. in History at Pomona College, Claremont and both an M.A. and Ph.D. in
History at the University of Chicago.
Links:
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/turkey-syria-kurds-middle-east-a7207506.html
[2] http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/ankaras-climbdown-on-assad/article9022512.ece?homepage=true
[2] http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/ankaras-climbdown-on-assad/article9022512.ece?homepage=true
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