by Wayne White

As 2014 draws to a close, there is no shortage of alternative suggestions about how to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS or IS). Most of them involve US escalation, driven by exaggerated notions of IS capabilities. Retaking IS’s extensive holdings will, however, take some time. All do acknowledge that regional coalition members are not pulling their weight.

Dismayed by the early December debate in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which many Senators sought to limit President Barack Obama’s military options, Senator Marco Rubio said Dec. 12 that it was “alarming” that IS “now reaches from North Africa…the Middle East, Pakistan, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.” Dismissing administration efforts as “half-measures,” Rubio also demanded that defeating IS include ousting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from power.

Retired Marine Corps Colonel Gary Anderson of George Washington University argued Dec. 22 that a mainly American “large scale punitive expedition” should swiftly crush the Islamic State. Georgetown University’s Anthony Cordesman pointed out, however, that US “airpower cannot resolve the religious, ethnic, political, and governance issues…at the core of Iraqi and Syrian…conflict.” Although Anderson believes a huge foreign ground offensive would clear the way for follow-on solutions, Cordesman, while critical of the inadequacies of the air campaign, warned against major escalation and said realistic endgames could be elusive.

Senator John McCain visited Iraq Dec. 26 and said the training of some 4,000 anti-IS Sunni Arab tribesmen allied to the Iraqi government should take no more than 6 weeks to 2 months and that retaking the IS-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul should be the first Iraqi goal in driving IS from Iraq. He praised Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi for “success in unifying the Iraqi factions.”

There also has been a burst of December peace and ceasefire proposals or feelers put forward by the UN, Russia, and some individual countries. Unfortunately, the motives behind Moscow’s initiative are highly suspect, and none would appeal to all combatants or be properly monitored.

Mission Creep à la Obama

Unfortunately, the Obama administration, whether spooked by hawkish critics or pressured by the US military brass, has steadily ramped up US military involvement. The Pentagon is seeking a contractor to deploy jet fuel and gasoline to the al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq (far behind IS lines) by mid-January. One thousand troops from the US 101^st Airborne Division also are scheduled to deploy to Iraq in January to train, advise and assist Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

If US aircraft begin using al-Asad, aircraft and US personnel would become a prime IS objective. When the US based aircraft inside South Vietnam, the need to deploy sizeable American ground forces to protect them was quickly generated. Furthermore, nearly 200 US troops sent to al-Asad in November may have fought IS forces in that area earlier this month; if this proves true, it would be the first such encounter between supposedly non-combat US troops sent to Iraq and IS forces.

The State of the Islamic State

Despite the jitters many have concerning the sweep of Islamic State forces, the view from the IS capital of Raqqa is hardly rosy. Still stalled in front of embattled Kobani, IS could not stop a sweeping Iraqi Kurdish, Yazidi, and Iraqi Army drive across northern Iraq to take Sinjar Mountain (again rescuing Yazidi refugees) and wrest from IS much of the town of Sinjar by December 21. Back in mid-December, the Pentagon also confirmed that an air strike killed Haji Mutazz, a deputy to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as the IS military operations chief for Iraq, and the IS “governor” of Mosul. Meanwhile, daily coalition air strikes grind away at various targets within IS’s “caliphate” (now increasingly wracked by shortages).

Senator Rubio’s notion of IS extending from North Africa to Southeast Asia is an exaggeration. It merely refers to a scattering of mostly small groups here and there—already extremists—simply declaring allegiance to or praise for IS.

The situation of IS forces beyond Kobani in Syria is meanwhile somewhat muddled. In the northwest Aleppo area, largely Islamic extremist elements like IS and the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front (plus a few mainstream groups) formed a “Shamiyya Front” alliance Dec. 25 to resist recent advances by Syrian government forces. In the south, seventeen mainly non-extremist rebel groups united in early December. Making slow gains against regime forces near Damascus, this grouping has received some moderate Arab aid. Rumors of a grand alliance between IS and al-Nusra, which still fight here and there, were premature.

The desire of some US politicians (and Turkey) for the US-led coalition to also take on the Assad regime is very risky. The fall of or severe weakening of the regime in the near-term would create a vacuum in western Syria and IS and Nusra would be best positioned to fill it. Both groups already encroach on the holdings of moderate rebels there. To block extremist exploitation of regime implosion, a large force of effective combat troops would have to be committed. No coalition member seems ready to do so. Finally, crafting endgames for Syria—now a chaotic, shattered land flush with raging ethno-sectarian hatreds—is an incredibly daunting task.

Iraqi Government Challenges

Despite Senator McCain’s claims, Abadi has not “unified Iraqi factions.” McCain probably got the “canned” tour limited to government successes. On Dec. 18, Abadi did expand press freedom, dropping predecessor Nouri al-Maliki’s official lawsuits against journalists and publications. Yet little else, particularly relating to the military front, is going well.

Only a relatively limited number of Sunni Arab tribes and former “Awakening” cadres continue to fight alongside the government. Worse still,  the Iraqi Army has not even rebounded enough to replace Shi’a militias fighting on the front lines against IS in many areas where they devastate recaptured Sunni Arab towns. And Abadi has offered no sweeping initiative to guarantee Sunni Arab inclusion and rights. Meanwhile, IS has been busily weakening Sunni Arab tribal structure by playing on intra-tribal clan rivalries to make major tribal desertions to Baghdad more difficult.

Moreover, four thousand pro-government Sunni tribesmen is a paltry number stacked against many tens of thousands currently in IS’s pocket or under its sway. Opening an offensive against IS in Iraq by assaulting the vast Mosul area would also likely further grind up and demoralize recently trained Iraqi and other forces than empower them or result in victory. Finally, Baghdad is still preoccupied with simply trying to hold onto several key pieces of real estate behind IS lines, repeatedly under attack and poorly supplied.

Abadi appealed to his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu for greater support in battling IS. Davutoglu declared, “We are open to any idea,” but specifically noted only continuing to train Iraqi Kurds. Aside from intelligence cooperation and training, Ankara may well avoid most meaningful commitments to Baghdad, just as it has rebuffed other coalition members—including its NATO allies.

Long War Ahead

Short of a severe weakening of IS from the inside, the struggle against the group probably will be prolonged. The problem is not merely the limited Western forces willing to participate, but paltry support from the nearest coalition members.

Turkey, sharing a vast border with IS, is the worst offender. Nonetheless, the extreme reluctance of a nervous Jordan and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to become heavily involved is also a major drawback. Unless these reluctant allies enter the fray more forcefully on the military and economic fronts, and Baghdad grasps the need for a genuinely diverse future for Iraq, the fight is likely to be a hard slog. And the more the US does militarily further reduces the incentive for regional players to do their part.

Photo: President Barack Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden, convenes a meeting regarding Iraq in the Situation Room of the White House, June 12, 2014. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

by Umar Farooq

For more than thirteen years, Turkey has made a slow but steady transition towards a free and democratic society, despite the occasional pang of apprehension among some about where that road might lead. The men at the helm of that transition, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen, began as allies, perhaps the most powerful post-modernist Islamists in world. But now the two are estranged, locked in a downward spiral of distrust that may undo the progress made. At the heart of this estrangement lies a difference over how Turkey should assert its power in the Islamic world.

On December 18, a judge in Istanbul issued an arrest warrant for Gulen, following a week that saw the detention and questioning of dozens of journalists and police officers allegedly linked to the 73- year-old cleric. Gulen lives in Pennsylvania but is thought to lead a movement of millions in Turkey, popularly referred to as the “Hizmet,” or “the Service.” Erdogan has called for Gulen’s extradition, charging that he heads a “parallel state” within the country’s judiciary and bureaucracy.

Turkey has a history of violent crackdowns, but Erdogan claims this one will be clean: “Nobody is being lynched before the process is over,” he said December 20, before launching into a tirade against a statement by European Union that called the recent detentions “incompatible with the freedom of media, which is a core principle of democracy.” But the carrot of EU membership no longer seems important to Erdogan (or to most Turks).

Erdogan now sees the West’s support for Gulen, combined with an apparent indifference towards the military coup in Egypt last year and its reluctance to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as indicators it is not interested in seeing a democratically elected Islamist government in Turkey, or anywhere else.

While tensions between Erdogan and the Gulenists have been mounting for several years, the current crisis heated up last December, when prosecutors announced they would open corruption cases against 53 AK Party allies, including members of Erdogan’s cabinet. Police officers who, according to Erdogan supporters, were loyal to Gulen, had wiretapped hundreds of people’s phones; as well as Erdogan’s own offices. Turkish media had leaked incriminating recordings, providing right-wing and secular opposition parties with powerful ammunition in advance of this year’s presidential elections. The government responded by transferring or sacking hundreds of judges and police, and, in some cases, opening cases of abuse of power against them.

Since then, Turkish media outlets closely tied to the Hizmet have taken an increasingly confrontational stance against Erdogan. Boosted by his victory in August’s presidential election, Erdogan struck back this month, reactivating a three-year-old complaint of slander by Mehmet Doğan, a former Gulen ally who spent 17 months in prison before being exonerated on charges of being a part of al-Qaeda. Dozens of journalists, two top counter-terrorism police officials, and even the writer of a soap opera were hauled to police stations across the country for questioning, not just on the Doğan complaint, but on the wider aims of Hizmet and Gulen as well.

Erdogan and Gulen may both be Islamists, but they have different visions of how and whether Turkey should assert its historical Islamic identity. Erdogan’s popularity stems from his bluntness: “Our minarets are our bayonets, our domes are our helmets, our mosques are our barracks,” recited the then-mayor of Istanbul in 1997, who was successfully prosecuted for “inciting hatred” with those words and soon found himself shuttled off to prison, accompanied by a 2,000 vehicle-convoy of fans.

A self-educated Islamic scholar, Gulen spent much of his youth as a state-appointed imam at mosques in western Turkey. He set up dorms and study centers for pious students from the Turkish countryside who had arrived in cities for study or work. As his popularity increased, Gulen travelled the country, dishing out sermons and advice to crowds of thousands of young Muslims on how their faith could fit into a secular Turkey. During the 1971 military coup, Gulen spent six months in prison for his movement.

In 1999, Gulen found himself unable to return to Turkey after he issued a characteristically guarded statement, directing his followers in public offices to learn the workings of legislative and administrative bodies, but “wait until the conditions become more favorable” to show their Islamist intentions. Gulen’s movement only grew stronger in his absence.

A quarter of private schools in Turkey, as well as hundreds of others across the world, including at least 16 in the United States, are run by the Hizmet movement. Gulen’s political and religious commentary, often distributed by the media outlets currently under scrutiny, is widely read throughout the Muslim world. Hizmet also includes one of Turkey’s most powerful business groups, the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialist (TUSKON), and its own Sharia-compliant bank, Bank Asya.

Under the Justice and Development (AK Party) government, which took power in 2002, the 1999 case against Gulen was tossed out, but the cleric preferred to stay in Pennsylvania, watching Erdogan chart a path towards democracy, built on a wide mandate that probably would not have been possible without his movement’s support.

Buoyed by his success at transforming Istanbul into a cosmopolitan city with infrastructure on par with Europe, Erdogan’s party was swept into power twice with mandates never seen in the country’s history. Opposition parties issued statements lamenting the victory, and a Turkish court even heard a petition to ban the AK Party on grounds that it threatened the country’s secular foundation, but none of that panned out. In 2007, Erdogan stood firm against an implicit coup threat by the military command, sometimes referred to as the “e-coup” or “virtual coup.”

Erdogan and his allies pushed ahead with reforms widely praised as groundbreaking for Turkey and for the Islamic world, putting the country on firm footing towards meeting conditions for accession to the European Union. In 2007, the Israeli President addressed the Turkish Parliament, heaping praise on Erdogan’s reforms and his peace-making efforts between Tel Aviv and its neighbors. A referendum that year and another in 2010 pushed through constitutional revisions that, among other measures, enhanced labor rights, gender equality, and civilian oversight of a military that had a history of toppling democratic governments. In 2008, the government launched the prosecution of nearly three hundred military officers, journalists, and lawmakers accused of plotting to topple the government and spark a military takeover in what became known as the Ergenekon case.

Throughout these years, Gulen and Erdogan were allies, particularly with respect to efforts to subordinate the military.
But by 2010, each showed signs of growing uncomfortable with his partner.

Having broken with Israel over the 2008 Gaza war and re-oriented Turkish foreign policy toward the Arab Middle East with his “zero problems with neighbours” program, Erdogan was making a name for himself in the Islamic world to the growing annoyance of the more cautious and reserved Gulen.

After Erdogan stood behind the Mavi Marmara and its failed attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, Gulen openly criticized him, insisting that aid should have gone through only with the approval of Israeli authorities. As part of a confidence-building measure with Iran, Hakan Fidan, Erdogan’s head of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), also reportedly leaked the identities of ten Mossad agents operating in Turkey to Iran, prompting additional murmurs of disapproval from Gulen.

According to Erdogan supporters, Gulen directed his network of followers in the media, judiciary, and police to work together to undermine the prime minister and his hold on the AKP.

An allegedly Gulen-linked prosecutor summoned MIT head Fidan to explain 2009-2010 meetings with Kurdish rebels in Oslo, widely believed to be part of the government’s peace process with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which is still listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey.

The AK Party, which enjoys an absolute majority in Parliament, responded by changing the law to bar future such oversight of the intelligence agency and floating the idea of shutting down hundreds of Gulen’s private tutoring centers, a move that would decimate the cleric’s grassroots network in Turkey.

When Erdogan took a divisive stand on the civil war in neighboring Syria, calling for the removal of Assad, by force if necessary, prominent Gulenists publicly dissented.

This January, police allegedly loyal to Gulen raided the offices of an AK Party linked aid agency, İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri (IHH), in Kilis, near the Syrian border, and told journalists they had arrested 28 suspected members of al-Qaeda. The next month, police stopped a convoy of seven trucks belonging to the MIT near the Syrian border and claimed to have found a cache of weapons intended to supply the Islamic State.

These moves mirrored rhetoric from the cleric himself warning of Erdogan’s stance against Assad. When the Turkish parliament passed legislation authorizing military intervention against ISIS in Syria and Iraq in October, Gulen warned it could drag the country into “a new World War I.” Ali Bulac, writing in the Zaman newspaper, which regularly features Gulen’s views on Turkish politics, called the idea of Turkish intervention in Syria “an ambitious and imperialist project.”

To Erdogan, the Hizmet’s actions—warning against intervention in Syria, linking the AK Party to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, or to Iran, and branding it as a troublemaker in the Middle East—was seen as a betrayal by a former ally in the face of mounting pressure and frustration with the Turkish leaders by western leaders, some of whom have long been skeptical of the Turkish leader’s ultimate aims.

At home, opposition groups have adopted the narrative. When tens of thousands protested against Erdogan in Taksim Square in June 2013, Gulen issued a gentle reminder to Erdogan not to let things get out of hand by ignoring the protesters’ demands. A year later, Erdogan decried the opposition’s embrace of the demonstrators who he accused of being “terrorists who smash things up.”

Those kinds of remarks and the willingness to crack down on civil society seen this month have lost Erdogan a large number of secular allies in Turkey and may just isolate him from his remaining friends in the West. While Erdogan became the country’s first directly elected president with 52 percent of the votes in August, his mandate is built on the lowest turnout rate in Turkey’s history, partly due to millions of secular voters who saw no credible alternative.

Parliamentary elections are due in June of next year. If a viable opposition party springs up, one that can cater to seculars, minorities like Kurds, as well as Hizmet members, it could become a serious challenge to the AK Party. Any opposition would have to draw votes from millions of Turks who do not support the traditional nationalist parties, as well as AK Party voters who see no other Islamist alternative.

For now, however, Erdogan appears convinced that he has popular support for his actions, which he describes as a final purging necessary to save Turkey from an international conspiracy. His crackdown has effectively crippled the Gulen network in Turkey: graduates from the Gulen-inspired Fatih University can’t find jobs; newspapers like Zaman have lost advertisers and hundreds of thousands of readers; and Bank Asya, which caters to his TUKSON business network, lost a third of its worth this year.

For more than a decade, Erdogan has worked to establish what he regards as a stable democratic system to Turkey, and now he wants to reap the rewards of his labor by extending influence far beyond its borders. In his mind, Gulen stands in the way.

Umar Farooq is a freelance journalist based in Turkey whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and a number of other outlets. He tweets @UmarFarooq_

by Mark N. Katz

What a difference a few months make. During much of 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin was riding high. Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine quickly and relatively bloodlessly. Putin was also able to help pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine effectively secede from the rest of the country and prevent the Ukrainian government from retaking these areas. Western governments howled in protest and even imposed economic sanctions on Russia, but were unable to force Putin to back down. Putin’s unsettling actions also seemed to help keep the price of oil high, which Russia benefited from as a leading petroleum exporter. And while the West was highly critical of him, many governments elsewhere—most notably in Asia—seemed indifferent or even sympathetic toward Putin’s actions in Ukraine.

At present, though, things look very different for the Russian president. Western sanctions, which initially seemed quite weak, now appear to be having an increasingly negative effect on the Russian economy. More importantly, the dramatic decrease in the price of oil over the past few months has contributed to a sharp drop in Russia’s export income as well as to the value of the ruble. Eastern Ukraine has meanwhile become an increasingly costly venture for Moscow—not least because of the mounting deaths of Russian soldiers engaged in the fighting there. Absorbing Crimea is also proving costly for an increasingly cash-strapped Moscow. As Western disapproval and even fear of Russia have grown, the ranks of European political and economic leaders calling for accommodating Moscow and cooperating with Putin have thinned. Finally, those non-Western governments that earlier seemed indifferent or sympathetic to Putin’s policy toward Ukraine now seem either indifferent or eager to take advantage of Russia’s increasing economic difficulties.

Putin, in short, now seems to be facing something of a dilemma. Continuing his current policies toward eastern Ukraine will probably not bring about an end to what is becoming a quagmire there for Moscow, and will mean that Western economic sanctions on Russia remain in place or even worsen. Yet withdrawing from Ukraine could weaken Putin domestically since the Russian public has supported his forward policy on Ukraine and would not be happy to see it reversed.

So what will Putin do now? Many fear that he will lash out at the West by supporting Russian secessionists in the Baltics or elsewhere. Putin himself has contributed to this fear by talking about how a cornered rat will attack its pursuers. But despite the deteriorating situation that he now faces, the Russian president need not become that rat in the corner. Indeed, he can be expected to ensure that he does not.

This is because Putin is basically a pragmatist. While he can support Russian secessionists in the Baltics, Belarus, northern Kazakhstan, or elsewhere in Ukraine—as he did with those in Crimea and eastern Ukraine—Putin cannot now be certain that he can gain control over these territories quickly and easily like he did with Crimea. Instead, supporting such groups or intervening directly may only result in more drawn-out conflicts such as the one now taking place in eastern Ukraine. If it is increasingly costly for Russia to be involved in just one such conflict, it will be even costlier still for it to become involved in more of them. If he thought he could replicate what happened in Crimea, Putin might be tempted to do this. Indeed, his quick victory in Crimea may have persuaded him that he could also win in eastern Ukraine. But now that eastern Ukraine has proven to be so problematic, Putin must be aware that similar adventures elsewhere could prove similarly risky—and that Russian forces could only get more thinly spread if they become involved in more such conflicts.

Some fear that Putin might lash out in some other manner by, for example, ending Russian support for the ongoing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. But this also seems unlikely because: 1) Russia does not want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, either and 2) the United States and its Western allies could still reach an agreement with Tehran on this matter without Russian help—which would only serve to demonstrate Russian impotence.

Russia stepping up its support for the Assad regime in Syria is another possibility. Doing so, though, would make Russia more of a target for Islamic State (ISIS or IS). Nor does it seem plausible that Putin would want Russia to become more involved in Syria when Moscow is far more concerned about what is happening in Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

Some fear, though, that reported Russian submarine deployments in Swedish waters, military overflights over several countries, and claims in the Arctic are all signs that Putin is preparing something even worse. However, while hardly reassuring, these moves seem aimed more at showing the Russian public how strong Putin is than as precursors to Russian initiation of conflict.

What all this suggests is that while Putin is aggressive, he is not reckless, and he demonstrated this during a Dec. 18 press conference. Indeed, while insisting that any Russian troops in eastern Ukraine are “volunteers,” he seemed also to hold open the door to cooperation with Kiev—and with Georgia, too (which Russia won a brief war against in 2008).

Returning to the rodentine analogy that Putin himself has used: if a cornered rat lashes out, one that is not cornered is more likely to find a safe place to run to instead. What this means for the West is that while it should assist Ukraine in resisting Russian incursions, it should reassure Putin that if he compromises on Ukraine, the West will not use this as an opportunity to rout him altogether. By continuing to cooperate with Russia on problems of common concern (such as Afghanistan, the Iranian nuclear issue, and terrorism) and by reiterating how Western sanctions would be lifted if Russia modifies its policy toward Ukraine, we can help Putin achieve his own goal of not ending up in a corner.

Among the many confusing factors swirling around the whole ISIS phenomenon is the role, or roles, of Turkey in the situation. It might be helpful to tick off some of the major salient factors that compete to form Turkish policies towards ISIS under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at this point.

DEALING WITH ASSAD: First, Turkey fell into the same analytic error that most countries and most analysts, including myself did: the assumption that after Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, the Assad regime in Syria, now facing its own Arab Spring uprising, would be the next to fall. It did not happen. Erdoğan had been deeply and personally invested in mentoring Assad as a “younger brother” for nearly a decade, bringing him closer to western and especially EU ties, helping moderate a number of internal Syrian issues. After the uprising began in Syria, Assad then refused to follow Erdoğan’s strong advice about yielding some democratic concessions to the early anti-regime demonstrators in Syria; Erdoğan grew angry, felt he had lost face internationally with his claims to exert influence over Assad, and finally grew determined to overthrow Assad by force. The more difficult the task turned out to be, the more Erdoğan doubled down, determined to get him out using almost any means—now driven by deep personal grudge as well.

PREFERENCE TO SUPPORT DEMOCRATIC CHANGE. In fairness to Erdoğan and Prime Minister Davutoğlu, Turkey had been gravitating towards a regional policy of general support to democratic movements against shaky dictators. It would indeed have been desirable to see Assad go—in principle—and Ankara had supported the previous four uprisings against entrenched dictatorship in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. There is consistency in his expectations—demands now—that Syria follow suit.

THE ROLE OF JIHADI FORCES. The Assad regime turned out to be more deeply entrenched institutionally than many guessed; large portions of its population dislike Assad, but fear even more the uncertainty, chaos and likely Islamist character of a successor regime. No Syrian could want an Iraq meltdown scenario taking place in Syria either. But the longer the anti-Assad struggle went on, the more it attracted ever more radical Jihadi forces—the most radical ones sadly being the most effective anti-Assad forces, as opposed to the feckless and divided ( if more congenial) moderate opposition. Erdoğan, feeling more desperate, became willing to cooperate with ever more radical forces—to the point of no longer rejecting out of hand the activities of pro-al-Qaeda or pro-ISIS forces in the nearby region. Ankara’s policy doesn’t represent outright support for ISIS, but it does demonstrate a willingness to overlook many ISIS activities in order to facilitate Assad’s overturn.

ERDOĞAN’S OWN ISLAMIC AGENDA. Erdoğan comes out of a tradition of Turkish Islamism. His party, the AKP, represents its most moderate face—perhaps indeed the most pragmatic and most successful Islamic political party in the world. The Turkish form of the AKP Islamic tradition can be compared, very roughly, to the Muslim Brotherhood—although the Turkish AKP is vastly more advanced, politically experienced, practical, and sophisticated. Nonetheless, Erdoğan and some others in the AKP, do seem to look with some sympathy on the struggle of Muslim Brotherhood movements in the Arab world as the most promising, moderately grounded Islamist/Islamic political movement out there. The MB is generally open to concepts of democracy, globalization, tolerance and dialog—although in line with their own understanding of these terms, and depending where and when. Thus Erdoğan is predisposed to some sympathy with the Brotherhood. This accounts for his massive falling out with Egypt’s Sisi who is now crushing the Brotherhood as his chief rival, and Saudi Arabia that similarly deems the Brotherhood to be a “terrorist organization.” Erdoğan has been more willing to cut many Islamist opposition movements some degree of slack, such as in Syria. Compared to almost any form of Turkish Islam, ISIS is essentially an extremist movement, well beyond the pale of mainstream Islam and Islamism; the lines have grown blurred, however, due to Erdoğan’s continuing obsession with overthrowing Assad by almost any means at hand.

THE KURDISH FACTOR. Erdoğan and the AKP government over the past decade has done more to accept “the Kurdish reality” and advance dialog with the Turkey’s Kurdish guerrilla movement (PKK) than any party before. There is still great promise here. Turkey has also reached an astonishingly swift accommodation and close working relations with Iraqi Kurdistan and its leaders in forging political, economic and strategic ties with the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government. But the chaos and unrest generated in every major war in the Middle East over the past two decades have generally benefited the regional Kurds first and foremost (except in Iran), creating the space for them to assume more de facto regional sovereignty. But Turkey’s negotiations with the PKK are complex and still underway—encouraging, but far from a done deal.

The newfound, vocal, de facto autonomy of the Syrian Kurds as well, now taking advantage of the Syrian civil war, has worried Ankara that perhaps all the Kurds may be now moving too far too fast in what could become a dangerous new Kurdish dynamic harder for Ankara to deal with. In any case, any kind of a pan-Kurdish state is still far down the road, if ever feasible. But Erdoğan is worried about anything that enhances the identity, role, profile and military proficiency of the Syrian Kurdish movement, especially since it will not officially sign on to the anti-Assad struggle. (That movement hates Assad, but also fears an even harsher anti-Kurdish regime under Islamists than it has had under secular Assad.) Ankara’s bottom line through all of this is fear of spreading armed Kurdish activism (such as against ISIS) that only enhances Kurdish armed strength and capabilities that can easily affect Turkey’s own negotiations with its own Kurds. It’s a tough call, and whatever happens, regional Kurds are gaining greater prominence and sense of identity with every passing month…

THE US FACTOR. Many US analysts still worry about Ankara not getting on board with Obama on fighting ISIS–as if relations are newly strained. The fact is, Ankara declared its foreign policy independence from the US a decade ago, in multiple areas. Turkey will never again play the role of “loyal US ally.” It has its own regional and global interests and will pursue them; Washington’s preferences will play only a modest role among the many factors influencing Turkish decision-making. Obama may help/persuade Erdoğan to back off from his reckless willingness to tolerate even the ISIS card to bring down Assad. But Erdoğan may well remain intractable on the Assad issue. That policy, among other things, has served to seriously damage Ankara’s relations with Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. So we should not look forward to much cordial cooperation between Ankara and Washington except to the extent that Washington changes its policies on Palestine, Israel, Iran, and overall military intervention in the region. The two countries essentially do not share a common regional strategic outlook.

These issues roughly summarize the complexity of the Turkish calculus on ISIS. Most important to note though, is that Ankara does not share at all the ISIS view of Islam or regional politics. But Ankara does not regard US military policies in the region as desirable either. Turkey’s best prospects lie in backing off from further support to the armed overthrow of Assad, cutting its losses, thereby improving its strained ties with Iran and Iraq, and in returning to the relatively successful “zero problems with neighbors” that marked the AKP’s first decade in office.

Photo Credit: Ra’ed Qutena/Flickr

This article was first published by Graham E. Fuller on his blog and was reprinted here with permission. Copyright Graham E. Fuller.

Erbil—After a period of frostiness, Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Turkey seem intent on mending the ties, as each of the parties show signs of needing the other.

But the Kurds appear more cautious this time around, leery of moving too close to Ankara lest they alienate the new Iraqi government in Baghdad with which they signed a breakthrough oil deal Tuesday.

The agreement, which will give Baghdad greater control over oil produced in Kurdistan and Kurdish-occupied Kirkuk in exchange for the KRG’s receipt of a bigger share of the central government’s budget, may signal an effort to reduce Erbil’s heavy reliance on Turkey.

The warmth between Iraqi Kurds and Turkey was a rather strange affair to begin with. It emerged unexpectedly and evolved dramatically since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Whereas Turkey is a major player in the Middle East and Eurasia regions, Iraqi Kurdistan is not even an independent state. The imbalance of power between the two parties made their development of a “strategic” relationship particularly remarkable.

Given the deep historical animosity in Ankara towards all things Kurdish, the change of heart on its leaders’ part also seemed almost miraculous, even if highly lucrative to Turkish construction companies in particular.

But those ties suffered a major blow in August when the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) marched toward Kurdish-held territories in Iraq.

With IS threatening Kurdistan’s capital city, Erbil, Turkey did little to assist the Kurds. Many in Kurdistan and beyond were baffled; it was a case of “a friend in need is a friend indeed” gone wrong.

The overwhelming sense in Erbil was that Turkey had abandoned Iraqi Kurds in the middle of a life-and-death crisis. KRG President Masoud Barzani, Ankara’s closest ally, felt moved to publicly thank Iran, Turkey’s regional rival, for rushing arms and other supplies to Kurdish peshmerga fighters in their hour of need.

In their efforts to simultaneously develop an understanding and save face, some senior KRG officials defended Ankara, insisting that its hands were tied by the fact that more than 40 staff members in its consulate in the Iraqi city of Mosul, including the consul, had been taken hostage by IS. Other officials were more critical, slamming Ankara for not having acted decisively in KRG’s support.

The that the country was experiencing elections where the ambitious then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was running for the newly enhanced office of president was also invoked as a reason for his reluctance to enter into war with such a ruthless group.

It also appeared to observers here that Erdogan did not want to do anything that could strengthen his archenemy, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, even if that meant effectively siding with the Sunni jihadists.

But last month’s visit to Iraq by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appears to have helped repair the relationship with the Kurds in the north. Davutoglu turned on his personal charm to reassure his hosts, even visiting a mountainous area where Turkish special forces are now training members of the Kurdish peshmerga.

The question of how long it takes for the relationship to bounce back to the point where it was six months ago is anyone’s guess.

It’s clear, however, that despite the recent slide in relations, both sides need each other.

As a land-locked territory, Kurds will be looking for an alternative that they can use to counter pressure from the central Iraqi government.

Focused on laying the foundation for a high degree of economic and political autonomy—if not independence—from Baghdad, the Kurds’ strategic ambition is to be able to control and ideally sell their oil and gas to international clients. And geography also dictates that the most obvious and economically efficient route runs through Turkey, with or without Baghdad’s blessing.

As for Ankara, Iraqi Kurdistan is now its only friend in an otherwise hostile region.

Once upon a time, not long ago, politicians in Ankara boasted of the success of their “zero-problems-with-neighbors” policy that had reshuffled regional politics and turned some of Turkey’s long-standing foes in the region, including Syria, into friends. But that era is now gone.

Ankara has come to see Iraqi Kurdistan as a potential major supplier of its own energy needs and has generally sided with the KRG in its disputes with Baghdad.

Kurdish leaders have been criticized for putting most of their eggs in Ankara’s basket.

The last time Kurds invested so much of their trust in a neighboring country was during the 1960s and 1970s when they were supported by the Shah of Iran who used them to exert pressure on Baghdad. This produced disastrous results when the Shah abruptly abandoned Kurds in return for territorial concessions by the Iraqi government in the Shatt al-Arab River separating southern Iran from Iraq.

Turkey’s indifference and passivity in August when all of Iraqi Kurdistan came under existential threat by the IS jihadists reminded many here of the consequences of placing too much trust in their neighbors. The hoary proverb that “Kurds have no friends but the mountains” suddenly regained its currency.

IS’s siege of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani—just one kilometre from the Turkish frontier—compounded that distrust, not only for Iraqi Kurds, but for Kurds throughout the region, including in Turkey itself.

Indeed, Turkey’s refusal to assist Kurdish fighters against IS’s brutal onslaught has made it harder for the KRG to initiate a reconciliation.

Although Ankara has now changed its position—under heavy US pressure—and is now permitting peshmerga forces to provide limited assistance and re-inforcements for Kobani’s defenders, the process of mending fences is still moving rather slowly.

While that process has now begun, it remains unclear how far both sides will go.

Will it be again a case of Ankara and Erbil jointly versus Baghdad, or will Erbil play the game differently this time, aiming for balance between the two capitals?

Indeed, the much-lauded oil deal struck Tuesday between Baghdad and the KRG may indicate a preference for the latter strategy, particularly in light of their mutual interest in both confronting the IS and compensating for losses in revenue resulting from the steep plunge in oil prices.

Still, given the history of deals sealed and then broken that have long characterized relations between the Kurds and Baghdad, nothing can be taken for granted.

Photo: KRG President Masoud Barzani at the official opening of the Erbil International Airport and Turkish Consulate in 2011. Credit: Official KRG Photo

Mohammed A. Salih is a journalist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. He has written for almost a decade about Kurdish and Iraqi affairs for local and international media.

Within a few days we will know whether President Obama’s efforts to negotiate an agreement with Iran over the latter’s nuclear power ambitions have proven successful or not and, if final compromises are not reached, whether the talks can be continued. The tens of thousands of words devoted to these efforts by negotiators over the last year have naturally focused on the details of an agreed protocol on the number of operating centrifuges in Iran and the pace of sanctions relief.

The president has invested much political capital into this endeavor and the failure to reach a final accord could end his aim of trying to alter the political and military balance of power in the Middle East. The effort has been so arduous and controversial that he has very carefully avoided a full explication of his strategic aims. The recent letter he reportedly sent to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—the full text of which has not been released—in which he is said to have suggested working together in battling Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, might be the closest we could get to Obama’s reasoning.

The long freeze in US-Iranian affairs is softening but where that process is headed is yet to be determined. The election last year of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the delegation of authority to him of testing US intent by the supreme leader reflects not only the pressures of broad economic sanctions but also the slight easing of revolutionary strictures, as well as the shared concern by both countries that events were threatening to run out of control. The US policy of aligning with Israel and the Sunni monarchies has long required adjusting, and President Obama has taken on that initiative with Iran in mind.

Every area of the globe presents a complex mix of old and new frictions, serious and minor conflicts of interests, and the rise of new and challenging issues that further the sense of confusion and helplessness. More than anywhere else, the Middle East evades a clear US strategy or a broad domestic political consensus on clear, rational, and practical interests. In the Middle East the United States contends today with the consequences of its failure to bring democratic governments to old societies; the rise of well-armed militias based in part on extremist Islam; severe tensions between political and religious divisions within Islam; waves of anti-western and anti-American sentiment; the regional antagonism to the close US-Israeli relationship; and the regional efforts to adjust the political boundaries of a post-Ottoman world. American financial assistance to the Sunni militias from the Arab monarchies has meanwhile created a monster that defies our interests.

The Bush administration’s efforts to cope with new and old adversaries and challenges typically were military—the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Both have had, charitably, very limited success and have further distorted the political landscape. At the moment, there is no recognizable and acceptable balance of power, no consensus on limits of national rights and no regional institutions to cope with shared questions.

President Obama has recognized this hapless and dangerous condition and accordingly tried to adjust American policies in the region. He has tried to withdraw militarily from Iraq and Afghanistan while pursuing a more diplomatic posture, starting with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Until recently this year, he was also reluctant to engage militarily in Syria, having understood that the collapse of the country’s government would introduce an array of additional threats to regional peace.

Ending the 35-year-long cold war with Iran has also been a top priority in Obama’s vision of America’s future, but resolving fears, both regional and domestic, over Iran’s putative ambitions for nuclear weaponry has been the prerequisite. Beyond allaying fears of regional nuclear proliferation is the hope that over time, a new relationship will constitute a path to political realignments—a new direction for us and the nations of the area.

Of course, the president still has to contend with his predecessors legacy in Iraq. Following the withdrawal of US forces in 2011, Obama repeatedly said that there would be no more US boots on the ground in that country, yet nearly all his military officers have been quoted saying that without ground forces, air power will be insufficient in thwarting the new militant force of Islamic State (ISIS or IS). If not us, then who? Turkey, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt? Wishful thinking; they are hardly equipped for the job.

Iraq, of course, has its own vision and demands. What is necessary is the very ephemeral realization of greater cooperation and coordination of those who recognize a common threat to their well being—if not their existence. Like it or not, Iran can play a significant part in the attempts to defeat IS and find an acceptable solution for Syria, which is currently the most affected by the rise of Islamic militancy.

Quarantining Syria makes little sense; it’s domestic politics may be loathsome but its leaders are not causing American casualties and losses. It may be time for a realistic debate over the role of Syria in its own defense and the struggles against IS and the other extremist forces ravaging the country.

Unfortunately, nothing is easy in the Middle East, and such initiatives will also continue to meet the strong opposition of American conservatives who do not trust Iran and are subject to lobbying pressure from Israel, the Sunni Arab states and Turkey. In this light, the reach for a greater rationality may simply prove impossible.

by Derek Davison

A former senior analyst for Mossad, Yossi Alpher, told an audience in Washington Thursday that Israel sees the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) as an “urgent” national security concern, but the context of his talk at the Wilson Center implied that the extremist Sunni group does not top any Israeli list of threats. In fact, Alpher seemed to suggest at times that the actions of IS, particularly in Iraq, may ultimately benefit Israel’s regional posture, particularly with respect to Iran. He also called the American decision to intervene against IS “perplexing.”

Iran, unsurprisingly, topped Alpher’s list of “urgent” Israeli security threats, but he downplayed the prospect of a nuclear deal being struck by the Nov. 24 deadline for the negotiations and focused instead on the “hegemonic threat” Iran allegedly poses. Indeed, the former director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies was mainly concerned with an Iran strengthened by close alliances with Iraq and Syria as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon and now potentially expanding its reach into Yemen, whose Houthi rebels have made major military gains in recent weeks.

Alpher identified the threat of extremist/terrorist organizations as Israel’s second-most urgent threat, but within that category he placed Hamas and Hezbollah ahead of IS. He allowed that IS “threatens to reach very close” to Israel, particularly if it manages to make inroads in Jordan, where polls indicate that a significant minority of the population does not see IS as a terrorist group, and where there has been vocal opposition to King Abdullah’s support for the US-led anti-IS coalition. Indeed, Alpher suggested that Israel should try to defuse current tensions over the Temple Mount, which have caused Abdullah to suffer politically at home, in order to forestall an increase of IS sympathy within Jordan.

Several of Alpher’s later remarks seemed to suggest that the activities of IS in Syria (at least those that have targeted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) and in Iraq may actually pay dividends for Israel. If the primary threat to Israel’s security is, as Alpher claims, Iran, and not just Iran’s nuclear program but also its regional hegemonic aspirations, then any movement that opposes Assad—a long-time Iranian ally—and that threatens the stability and unity of Iraq—whose predominantly Shia government has also developed close ties with Tehran—is actually doing Israel a service. It apparently doesn’t matter if that group might also someday pose a threat to Israel. It’s in this context that Alpher described America’s decision to intervene against IS as “perplexing.” He questioned the US commitment to keeping Iraq whole, noting that an independent Kurdistan would be “better for Israel,” and said that, as far as Syria’s civil war is concerned, “decentralization and ongoing warfare make more sense for Israel than a strong, Iran-backed Syria.”

The tone of Alpher’s remarks on IS echoed a number of recent comments from top Israeli government and military figures. Earlier this month, the IDF’s chief of staff, Lt. General Benny Gantz, told the Jerusalem Post that “the IDF has the wherewithal to defend itself against Islamic State,” and then went on to describe Hezbollah as Israel’s most immediate security concern. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon also told PBS’s Charlie Rose on Sunday that Israel is contributing intelligence to the anti-IS coalition, but suggested that it was doing so because it has “a very good relationship with many parties who participate in the coalition,” not because it perceives IS as a near-term threat to Israel. Finally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 29 made several references to IS, but only as a secondary threat to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program or in conflating IS with Hamas and, really, every other Islamic extremist group in the world.

Alpher made pointed criticisms of the US-led effort against IS in an exchange with Wilson Center president and former House member, Jane Harman, who pushed back against his characterization of US “mistakes” in the region. He was particularly critical of the Obama administration’s handling of Egypt, arguing that it “made things worse” by failing to support the Mubarak regime in 2011 and trying instead to “embrace” the democratically elected (and now imprisoned) Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, and then by failing to welcome the military coup that eventually put current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in office.

Harman questioned whether a stronger show of American support for the increasingly authoritarian direction of Egypt’s politics would hinder any effort to counter the anti-Western narrative upon which much of IS’ support and recruitment is based. Alpher’s answer, and indeed a recurring theme in his remarks, was that the question of narratives and terrorist recruitment is irrelevant to an Israeli security framework that is focused only on the most immediate threats (or, as he put it, “on what will bring short-term stability”).

The emphasis on the short-term is one of the defining features of Netanyahu’s term in office, particularly in his dealings with the Palestinians, but also in Israel’s broader security posture, and it may well cause greater problems for Israel in the long-term.

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by Henry Johnson

The group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS), beyond its doctrinaire propaganda and lurid beheadings, is beginning to uproot the foundations of order in the Middle East, and the United States has decided to not sit idly by. In conjunction with an airstrike campaign of uncertain value in Syria, President Obama has gained congressional authority for the equally dubious plan of arming and training moderate Syrian rebels in order to wage counteroffensives specifically against IS (aka ISIL or ISIS). For every recruit this moderate force picks up, IS will surely double that number as long as Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad stays in power. The incineration of civilians by his barrel bombs, the rape of Syrian women by pro-Assad militants, and America’s seeming unwillingness to do anything has produced despairing conditions in which segments of the Syrian population welcome or at least tolerate the rule of a group like IS. Assad has also so far refused to resign or share power, thereby sabotaging past attempts to solve the crisis politically. His uncompromising position and aptitude for merciless civilian targeting has at once derailed diplomatic efforts and radicalized Syrians. To stabilize the country, the US must convince Iran to end its support for the regime, support which, under close examination, is less than assured. Indeed, Iran has structured its outsized involvement in Syria by decentralizing power away from Assad while nonetheless strengthening his regime. This strategy has given Tehran the option of eventually discarding Assad without forfeiting instruments of power.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has mobilized a network of Shia militias to intervene in Syria. Calling upon Hezbollah, as well as smaller yet no less deadly militias from Iraq, Iran bolstered Assad’s military in time for IS and other extremist rebels to fracture the opposition and retard its momentum. This militant network answers to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and, under his jurisprudence and the patronage of the IRGC, fights for a Shia cause quite distinct from Assad. This strategy has safeguarded Iran’s power in the country without tying it to the Assad government, resulting in significant space for diplomatic maneuvering. Iran spent years refining this strategy in Iraq, where it built small, highly loyal militias to drive Iranian interests in the country without committing it to any one particular Iraqi party. This enabled Iran to engineer the election of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, finesse his resignation, indirectly attack US forces, and unofficially support US airstrikes this August. Iran will abandon Assad if the US can guarantee its interests better than the Syrian leader.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani intimated as much in a speech at the recent United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). President Rouhani proposed as leaders of a coalition against extremism certain “moderate politicians” in the region, who “are neither anti-Western nor pro-Western…They do not absolve the West from its misdeeds, but are also aware of their own failings.” He added, “The right solution to this quandary comes from within the region…with international support.” His conciliatory tone transcended the conventionally rancorous discourse vis-à-vis the West of post-revolution political elites in Iran. Significantly, he did not so much as mention the Syrian government, let alone present it as integral to a successful anti-IS campaign. This omission demonstrated Iran’s growing detachment from the Assad regime. By contrast, in his bristling UNGA speech, Russia’s foreign minister spared no sentence in censuring US policies and insisted, “the struggle against terrorists in the territory of Syria should be structured in cooperation with the Syrian government.”

However important an anti-IS campaign is to its security, Iran’s conflicted political establishment might rebuff an invitation to join the US-led fight. In a blustery interview with state-run television, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei divulged that US State Department officials had privately asked Iran to join the coalition—a claim denied by the US—and proudly iterated the government’s negative reply. His statements may form part of a negotiating strategy to link Iranian assistance in regional security to more favorable terms on Iran’s nuclear program. Or they may reflect Khamenei’s fear that the US will ultimately turn its rebel allies in the Free Syrian Army against Assad without consulting the Islamic Republic. Although defending Assad is Iran’s default position, even the IRGC commanders advising him must question the utility of his hollowed state apparatus and tattered military; they cannot endlessly compensate for his losses. At this point, Iran presumably pursues two strategic goals in Syria—arresting the growth of extremist Sunni ideologies (i.e. IS) and preserving convenient access to Hezbollah through partial territorial control of the country. Under the rising political and financial costs of propping up a regime increasingly unable to achieve either goal, Iran will look more favorably in the coming year upon cooperating with the US and reaching a settlement with the moderate opposition. If tacitly allowing Iran to preserve strategic options in Syria sounds unpalatable, one might consider the likelihood that Iran would rather burn the country to the ground than lose its foothold.

The Iranian government, steeped in a revolutionary legacy of anti-imperialism and enmity to the US, will never submit to a US-dominated framework addressing the volcanic problems of the Middle East. At best, the two powers can strike a détente, depending upon the outcome of nuclear negotiations. The timing for a minimal reconciliation between the US and Iran is, nevertheless, opportune. Mounting pressure in the US to pass off responsibility for regional order suggests so, demonstrated by public aversion to, first, humanitarian intervention in Syria and, second, to a US combat mission against IS. In order to successfully manage this trend, the US must include Iran in its plans for the future of Middle East security. To not do so risks engulfing the region in greater chaos. Barring Iran from any attempts to combat IS or depose Assad will only lead the country to operate independently and in opposition to those efforts. Such exclusion will exalt Assad’s value to the Iranians, prolonging his longevity and further embittering a Sunni population already preyed upon by IS and its lesser variants. As remote of a possibility as stability in Syria is, it will come at a price no lower than US-Iranian cooperation.

Henry Johnson is a writer and analyst of Middle East affairs with a focus on Iranian foreign policy and politics.

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by Derek Davison

Turkey, nominally a member of America’s new anti-ISIS coalition (well, maybe), has for some time now been refusing to allow Kurdish reinforcements and weapons to cross its Syrian border into the besieged city of Kobani. Due to its resistance to even allowing assistance to cross into Kobani, Turkey has faced large Kurdish protests in several cities, to which it has responded in occasionally brutal fashion. Yesterday, Turkey escalated this Kurdish crisis by shelling positions connected to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern part of the country, supposedly in response to a PKK attack on an army outpost in Hakkari. The PKK is affiliated with the Syrian People’s Protection Units (YPG), the group currently trying to defend Kobani from Daesh (ISIS or ISIL). For a country that seemed on the verge of joining an anti-ISIS coalition just a few days ago, the decision to bomb Kurds, rather than Daesh, is naturally raising some eyebrows.

The PKK shelling comes only about a day after Turkey publicly denied that it has given the US permission to use its Incirlik air base to launch sorties against Daesh and al-Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nusra targets in Syria, which directly contradicts earlier US reports. Talks are ongoing with respect to the use of Incirlik, with new President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government still insisting, more or less, that it won’t seriously get involved in Syria unless the coalition turns its real focus to getting rid of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey is its own nation with its own national priorities, and it has never been shy about the fact that its number one priority is making sure its Kurdish population doesn’t get any funny ideas about independence.

Turkey’s real rooting interest in Syria is against the YPG and other Syrian Kurds. The fact that Iraqi Kurds have achieved significant autonomy from Baghdad is worrying enough to Ankara; if Syria’s Kurds achieve a similar level of autonomy, the Turks believe that their Kurdish population will try to follow suit. Assad is thus their main target, not Sunni extremists like Daesh, because Assad has been allied with Syria’s Kurds throughout the country’s more than three-year-long civil war, and has been ceding increased autonomy to them. For added measure, the Turks argue that, while they’re as opposed to Daesh and similar groups as anybody, those groups can’t be removed from Syria until Assad is ousted, since the Syrian dictator has been propping up extremists all this time as a counterweight to more moderate opposition groups. The Turks have a point here, or would have had one if this were 2012 or 2013, but now it seems that Daesh is standing up pretty well on its own and is an immediate enough threat to Iraq that diverting coalition resources to unseating Assad could actually be counterproductive to the goal of degrading Daesh.

So the question of the day for America’s foreign policy establishment, particularly the neoconservative elements within it (who already oppose Erdogan’s government over its alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood and its tense relations with Israel), seems to be: “what can America do about Turkey?” It’s never considered sufficient to say, “well, that other country’s national interests just don’t coincide with America’s, and I guess we’ll have to adjust for that.” No, any failure on the part of another supposedly sovereign nation to recognize that America Is Exceptional And The Indispensable Nation is An Insult and Must Be Dealt With Harshly.

Turkey is a “non-ally” and America should move its regional military bases into Kurdish Iraq, says the Wall Street Journal, presumably because the Turks are refusing to commit their army to fighting a war on America’s behalf. US officials are reportedly angry because Turkey “want[s] the U.S. to come in and take care of the problem,” except, you know, the US is the one for whom “it” (Daesh) is apparently a problem, not the Turks. From the serious reactionaries we’re even hearing calls to “kick Turkey out of NATO,” a course of action for which NATO seems to have no precedent or procedure, and that, like most reactionary policy ideas, would create maximum disruption while accomplishing nothing constructive. Say NATO does kick Turkey out—what then? Do the Turks suddenly see the error of their ways and make amends? Why would they do that? What if NATO divides on the question of expelling Turkey? Is there any possible outcome of pursuing Turkey’s expulsion from NATO that would have a positive impact on the fight against ISIS?

The fact that Turkey would apparently rather let Daesh slaughter and enslave the Kurdish defenders of Kobani than do anything that might benefit long-term Kurdish political aims may be immoral, unconscionable, even indefensible on a humanitarian level, and it’s fine to condemn Turkey on those grounds, but as a pure calculation of national interest, what Turkey is doing shouldn’t surprise anybody. It’s not as though America hasn’t greatly wronged the Kurds in the past, when it was in US interests to do so. It’s also worth noting that the UK and Germany have also opted out of direct military involvement in Syria, but nobody seems to be talking about expelling them from NATO or moving American military hardware to other countries in Europe.

It may be that Turkey will still come around to America’s position on Daesh, or at least closer to it; recent Kurdish protests aside, Ankara’s Syria policy has been consistently unpopular within Turkey, and PKK threats to break-off peace talks with the government over its inaction in Kobani may yet force Erdogan’s hand. But if Erdogan is swayed, it will be because of domestic politics, not American pressure or threats.

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by Emile Nakhleh

The international media is currently mesmerized by the advance of Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) on the Syrian city of Kobani near the Turkish border, but Arab states and the US need to look beyond Kobani’s fate and Daesh’s territorial successes and defeats. The crumbling Levant poses a greater danger than Daesh and must be addressed—first and foremost by the states of the region.

The British colonial term, Levant, encompasses modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, with a total population of over 70 million people. The population—mostly young, unemployed or underemployed, poor, and inadequately educated—has lost trust in its leaders and the governing elites.

The Levant has become a bloody playground for other states in the greater Middle East, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Iran, and Turkey. While dislocations in the Levant could be contained, the regional states’ involvement has transformed the area into an international nightmare. The resulting instability will impact the region for years to come regardless of Daesh’s short-term fortunes.

The Levantine state has become marginalized and ineffectual in charting a hopeful future for its people, who are drifting away from nationalist ideologies toward more divisive, localized, and often violent manifestations of identity politics. National political identity, with which citizens in the Levant have identified for decades, has devolved mostly into tribal, ethnic, geographic, and sectarian identities.

The crumbling state structure and authority gave rise to these identities, thereby fueling the current conflicts, which in turn are undermining the very existence of the Levantine state.

The three key non-state actors—Daesh, Hezbollah, and Hamas—have been the beneficiaries of the crumbling states, which were drawn up by colonial cartographer-politicians a century ago.

Although the so-called deep security state has been able to maintain a semblance of order around the national capital, the state’s control of territories beyond the capital is fading and is rapidly being contested by non-state actors.

This phenomenon is readily apparent in Baghdad, Damascus, Ramallah, and Gaza, partially so in Beirut, and less so in Amman. Salafi groups, however, are lurking in the background in Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine ready to challenge state authority whenever they sense a power vacuum.

Political systems in the Levant are often propped up by domestic ruling elites, regional states, and foreign powers for a variety of parochial and transnational interests. More and more, these ruling structures appear to be relics of the past. A key analytic question thus presents itself: How long would they survive if outside economic, military and political support dries up?

Levant regimes comprise a monarchy in Jordan; a perennially dysfunctional parliamentary/presidential system in Lebanon; a brutal, teetering dictatorship in Syria; an autocratic presidency in Palestine; and an erratic partisan democracy in Iraq. They have subsisted on so-called rentier or “rent” economies—oil in Iraq, with the rest dependent on foreign aid. Providers of such aid have included Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Iran, Turkey, the United States, the EU, Russia, and others.

Corruption is rampant across most state institutions in the Levant, including the military and the key financial and banking systems. For example, billions of dollars in US aid to Iraq following the 2003 invasion have not been accounted for.  According to the New York Times, American investigators in the past decade have traced huge sums of this money to a bunker in Lebanon.

The collapse of the Levant states in the next decade is not unthinkable. Their borders are already becoming more blurred and porous. The decaying environment is allowing violent groups to operate more freely within states and across state boundaries. Daesh is causing havoc in Iraq and Syria and potentially could destabilize Jordan and Lebanon precisely because the Levantine state is on the verge of collapse.

As these states weaken, regional powers—especially Saudi Arabia plus some of its GCC junior partners, Iran, and Egypt—will find it convenient to engage in proxy sectarian and ethnic wars through jihadist and other vigilante mercenaries.

Equally disturbing is that US policy toward a post-Daesh Levant seems rudderless without a strategic compass to guide it. It’s as if US policymakers have no stomach to focus on the “morning after” despite the fact that the airstrikes are proving ineffective in halting Daesh’s territorial advances.

Kobani aside, what should the Arab states and the United States do about the future of the Levant?

1)  Iraq.  If the Sunnis and Kurds are to be represented across all state institutions in Iraq, regional states with Washington’s help should urge Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to complete the formation of his new government on the basis of equity and fairness. Government and semi-public institutions and agencies must be made accountable and transparent and subject to scrutiny by domestic and international regulatory bodies. Otherwise, Iraq would remain a breeding ground for terrorists and jihadists.

2)  Syria.  If Washington remains committed to President Bashar al-Assad’s removal, it should end its Russian roulette charade toward the Syrian dictator.  Ankara’s view that Assad is more dangerous in the long run than Daesh is convincing and should be accepted and acted upon.

If removing Assad remains a serious policy objective, is the US-led coalition contemplating the implementation of a no-fly zone and a security zone on Syria’s northern border any time soon to facilitate Assad’s downfall?

3)  Lebanon.  If Hezbollah and other political parties do not play a constructive role in re-establishing political dialogue and stability in Lebanon, it won’t be long before the Daesh wars enter the country. Are there regional and international pressures being put on Hezbollah to end its support of Assad and disengage from fighting in Syria?

The upcoming presidential election would be a useful barometer to assess the key Lebanese stakeholders’ commitment to long-term stability. If no candidate wins a majority, does Washington, in conjunction with its Arab allies, have a clear plan to get the Lebanese parliament to vote for a president?

Unless Lebanon gets its political house in order, religious sectarianism could yet again rear its ugly head in that fragile state and tear the country apart.

4)  Palestine.  If the Obama administration urges Israel to facilitate a working environment for the Palestinian national unity government, to end its siege of Gaza, and dismantle its 47-year occupation, Palestine would no longer be an incubator of radical ideologies.

An occupied population living in poverty, unemployment, alienation, repression, daily humiliation and hopelessness, and ruled by a corrupt regime is rarely prone to moderation and peaceful dialogue. On the contrary, such a population offers fertile recruiting ground for extremism.

5)  Iran and Saudi Arabia.  It is in the United States’ interest to engage Iran and Saudi Arabia—the two countries that seem to meddle most in the Levant—in order to stop their proxy wars in the region. These sectarian wars could easily lead to an all-out military confrontation, which would surely suck in the US and other Western powers. Israel would not be able to escape such a conflict either.

The Saudi government claims that it opposes Daesh. Yet one would ask: Why hasn’t the Saudi clerical establishment denounced—forcefully and publicly—Daesh’s ideology and rejected the so-called Islamic State Caliphate? Why is it that thousands of Daesh-jihadists are from Saudi Arabia and neighboring Gulf countries?

6)  Development.  Since Levant countries face high unemployment, it’s imperative to pursue serious job creation initiatives. Arab states, with Washington’s support, should begin massive technical and vocational education programs and entrepreneurial initiatives in the Levant countries. Young men and women should be trained in vocational institutes, much like the two-year college concept in the United States.

Vocational fields that suffer from shortages in Levant countries include plumbing, carpentry, home construction, electricity, welding, mechanics, automotive services, truck driving, computers and electronics, health services, hotels and tourism, technology management, and TV and computer repairs. Services in these fields are badly needed. But thousands of young men and women have yet to be trained to fulfill these needs.

In addition to vocational training, wealthy Arab countries should help the Levant establish funds for entrepreneurial, job-creation initiatives, and start-ups. A partnership between government and the private sector, with support from the US and other developed countries, could be the engine that drives a new era of job creation and economic growth in the region where the Daesh cancer is metastasizing.

Let’s be clear, the United States has significant leverage to help implement these policies should American leaders decide to do so. Yet one could ask why the US should make such a commitment. If Daesh is primarily a threat to Levantine countries, why can’t they deal with it? These are fair questions but, as we have discovered with Ebola, what happens in Liberia doesn’t stay in Liberia. A crumbling Levant will have ramifications not just for the region but for the United States and the rest of the world as well.

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