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Umar FarooqFor 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_
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>by Wayne White
The reverberations of the desperate war inside Syria have increasingly radiated outward. In addition to the massive Syrian refugee exodus, Lebanon and Iraq in particular have been impacted adversely by heightened instability and violence. Yet actions associated with both have only increased their vulnerability. By contrast, the Turks [...]]]>
by Wayne White
The reverberations of the desperate war inside Syria have increasingly radiated outward. In addition to the massive Syrian refugee exodus, Lebanon and Iraq in particular have been impacted adversely by heightened instability and violence. Yet actions associated with both have only increased their vulnerability. By contrast, the Turks and Iraq’s northern Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) have boldly ramped up their mutual cooperation, in part to form a common front to counter an unwelcome rival Kurdish alliance taking shape inside Syria.
Despite rising violence in Lebanon, so far Iraq has been the most heavily affected overall of Syria’s neighbors. In addition to the almost daily backdrop of horrific bombings and attacks by gunmen on Shi’a and government-related targets (like those of Dec. 16 killing 65), there has been a surge in execution-style killings and beheadings, with bodies dumped in various locales (characteristic of the dark days of the 2006-2008 sectarian violence). Recently, Iranian workers on a gas pipeline in north central Iraq were also the objects of a massacre. Al-Qaeda associated elements have been the prime culprits, but Shi’a militias have become more active as well.
With more than 8,000 Iraqis already dead this year from extremist violence, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari warned earlier this month of more danger from a jihadist “Islamic emirate” that could take hold in much of Syria. Yet, the Baghdad government’s own marginalization and persecution of Iraq’s Sunni Arab community under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been the leading cause for the powerful revival of Sunni Arab extremism in Iraq and its close linkage to the parallel phenomenon in Syria.
Meanwhile, hardline Grand Ayatollah Kazim al-Haeri (who has inspired Shi’a militias in Iraq for years) issued a fatwa on Dec. 15 pronouncing “fighting in Syria legitimate” and declaring those who die there “martyrs.” This fatwa probably will send many more Iraqi Shi’a into Syria to join over a thousand already believed to be fighting for the regime. But it also could intensify seething sectarian tensions within Iraq.
Other notable developments affecting Iraq, however, involve its northern Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). KRG President Masoud Barzani made his first visit to Turkey in any capacity since 1992 in mid-November. The obvious aim was to support Turkish President Erdogan’s peace efforts focused on the extremist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as well as to help Ergodan secure more Kurdish favor in Turkey’s March 2014 municipal elections.
Such high-profile assistance from Iraq’s Kurds would seem odd but for two other pressing matters. First, both Turkey and the KRG were alarmed by the declaration before Barzani’s visit by Kurdish militias in northeastern Syria of an interim administration for an autonomous Kurdish region there. Although repressed in the pre-civil war era, these militias are believed to have made their move with the approval of the Syrian government, and to have received aid from Assad’s allies, Iran and the Maliki government (relationships both Erdogan and Barzani oppose). Moreover, the Iraqi Kurds and the Turks fear the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), with links to the radical PKK, is behind the recent unity move.
For Damascus, any such agreement probably represents a cynical wartime concession of iffy standing simply to harness the bulk of Syria’s 2 million Kurds against anti-regime Sunni Arab rebels. Support from the regime probably also made possible the only UN airlift of winter relief supplies for any area outside government control into this predominantly Kurdish region. The only other airlifts to rebel areas associated with the Syrian regime have involved bombs.
Syrian Kurdish militias have been battling various rebels for over a year. On Dec. 13, cadres of the al-Qaeda linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) reportedly seized 120 Syrian Kurdish hostages near the Turkish border north of Aleppo, the latest of a number of such kidnappings. There has also been heavy skirmishing between the ISIL and extremist al-Nusra Front rebels and Syrian Kurdish militias along the edges of the Kurdish-controlled zone.
The second key driver in Barzani’s and Erdogan’s warming ties is oil. For years, Maliki’s government has been at odds with Barzani’s KRG over the KRG’s efforts to award its own contracts for large-scale oil and gas exports. KRG patience may have run out. In late November, Turkey and the KRG apparently came close to finalizing a comprehensive oil and gas deal — the latest move in Ankara’s cooperation with the KRG that has angered Baghdad.
Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz assured Iraqi officials on Dec. 1 that “any exports must be with the approval of the Iraqi government.” But with Iraq still balking over fears of greater KRG autonomy, the Turks and the KRG are keeping the pressure up; on Dec. 13, test flows of limited amounts of KRG crude were sent through a new pipeline already completed to carry Iraqi Kurdish exports Turkey sorely needs to diversify its energy dependence and secure oil and gas at a likely discount.
Lebanon has been paying ever more dearly for the ongoing sectarian violence just across its lengthy Syrian border and Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria. Indeed, given Lebanon’s own complex sectarian mosaic, overspill was inevitable, with an ongoing litany of clashes, killings, threats, and squaring off otherwise among Sunni, Alawite and Shi’a communities radiating out from the border.
Tensions and sectarian violence, however, also have been rising in core areas of Lebanon. In the northern city of Tripoli, with a majority Sunni Arab community, a Lebanese soldier died and 7 others were wounded in a Dec. 5 clash with extremists sympathetic to the Syrian rebels. More than 100 have died in Tripoli so far this year in gun battles and a bombing pitting Sunni militants against the army, the police, Tripoli’s minority Alawite community, or Lebanese Shi’a elements. As a result, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, recently turned security there over to the army for 6 months.
Probably most damaging for Lebanon has been Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria, sending thousands of seasoned fighters to reinforce those of the Assad regime. Hundreds of its combatants have been killed in action, and heavily Shi’a-populated areas of Beirut in particular (home to many Hezbollah fighters) have not simply remained a quiet “home front” away from Hezbollah’s war across the border.
Bombings like the one against the Iranian Embassy in Beirut and nearby buildings on Nov. 19, which killed two dozen, have hammered Shi’a neighborhoods. On Dec. 4, a Hezbollah commander back from the Syrian front, Hassan al-Liqqis, was gunned down in front of his residence. Hezbollah blamed the Israelis, but it is more likely he was another victim of rising home-grown violence. Today, Hezbollah claims it thwarted an attempted car bombing believed to have been aimed at one of its bases in the largely Hezbollah-controlled Bekaa Valley 20 miles east of Beirut.
Many assumed through the 1st year of the Syrian conflict that refugees would comprise the main burden faced by Syria’s neighbors, but the savagery and destruction wrought by the Syrian regime especially magnified even that challenge far beyond early worse-case scenarios. The virtual explosion of the rebel al-Qaeda factor, Hezbollah’s robust intervention, and the anti-rebel stance taken — or forced upon — most of Syria’s Kurds was not foreseen. All this further complicates ongoing efforts to find some path out of the Hellish Syrian maelstrom, be they Western efforts to oust Assad & Co. or the recently revived international efforts to bring the parties together for talks in Geneva. All things considered, the prospects for an effective way forward out of this crisis remain grim.
]]>Since the advent of the Syrian Revolution and tightening transatlantic sanctions against Iran in 2011, Tehran and Ankara have had a particularly tough time maintaining a facade of mutual amity and cooperation.
Last December, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hastily cancelled a cultural trip to Turkey, where he was scheduled to meet [...]]]>
Since the advent of the Syrian Revolution and tightening transatlantic sanctions against Iran in 2011, Tehran and Ankara have had a particularly tough time maintaining a facade of mutual amity and cooperation.
Last December, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hastily cancelled a cultural trip to Turkey, where he was scheduled to meet Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of a ceremony commemorating the 13th century Persian poet Jalal al-din Rumi. While Iran’s Mehr News Agency cited Ahmadinejad’s busy agenda as a pretext for the decision, it is widely believed that it came in response to the Iranian regime’s admonition of the Turkish agreement to install NATO Patriot Missiles on its Southern border with Syria.
Then, earlier this year, Turkish President Abdullah Gül, in an interview with Foreign Affairs, went as far as to say, “Turkey will not accept a neighboring country possessing weapons not possessed by Turkey herself…we are not underestimating this matter in any way.” What is striking about his statement is not so much the knee-jerk anti-proliferation diplomatic correctness echoed among NATO members’ officials, but rather the emphasis on the regional balance of power: Turkey will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon because that would mean Turkish vulnerability and Iranian superiority.
These tit-for-tat expressions of disenchantment underline the degree to which Turkish-Iranian relations have entered a renewed period of estrangement, after years of progressive rapprochement between Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Iran’s clerical establishment, which saw Ankara emerge as Tehran’s key energy partner as well as interlocutor with Washington.
Although the recent discord is neither a novelty (the Safavid and Ottoman empires competed for regional hegemony for centuries) nor a big surprise, what is most astonishing is how the very same issues that served as the linchpin of Iran-Turkish partnership in recent years — namely Syria and the Iranian nuclear conundrum — are now pitting the two neighbors against each other.
Yet one thing that continues to bind the two countries is the simple, old-fashioned issue of hydro carbon riches. This is precisely why both sides continue to exercise caution with their mutual engagements, including Syria’s future, despite occasional rhetorical flare-ups. Indeed, Turkey has heavily resisted Washington’s recent calls for reduction of energy imports from Iran (and the suspension of precious metals trade as payment), underscoring the importance of bilateral energy relations.
However, with the Iranian nuclear saga entering a crucial stage of high-stakes negotiations this year, and the Syrian revolution turning into an all-out civil war, both sides are headed for a decisive moment in their bilateral ties.
As early as 2010, Iran and Turkey projected an image of solid partnership, anchored on a straightforward bargain: Turkey needed Iran for energy security and international influence while Tehran needed its neighbor to resist sanctions and reach out to the West. The partnership, albeit transient and conditional, was multifaceted, covering a variety of issues ranging from trade, finance and energy to cultural exchanges and politico-security cooperation.
While Turkish and Iranian security forces are said to have jointly engaged Kurdish separatist groups on multiple occasions, Ankara has also played a prominent role in facilitating Iran-West nuclear talks, culminating in the 2010 Brazil-Turkey-sponsored nuclear swap deal, followed by the Istanbul I (2011) and Istanbul II (2012) high-level nuclear talks between Iran and the 6-world powers P5+1 group.
However, at the heart of their relationship lies a key economic issue: (i) Turkey’s high energy import-dependence, 93 percent in oil and 95 percent in natural gas (2008 figures) and (ii) its over-reliance, in that regard, on Russia, from which it imported 66 percent of its gas in 2005. While Iran’s vast hydrocarbon reserves are important to Turkey’s energy security, the two sides have also laid their gaze on a broader trans-regional pipeline network, which could transform both sides into global energy brokers. In 2011, bilateral trade stood at more than $16 billion, projected to expand up to $30 billion in 2015.
But by mid-2011, a promising partnership appeared to be heading for the rocks. Turkey agreed to station a NATO missile defense shield on its Eastern borders, despite Iran’s vehement opposition, prompting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s (IRGC) aerospace chief, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, to warn, “Should we be threatened, we will target NATO’s missile defense shield in Turkey and then hit the next targets.” This was followed by another incident wherein Iranian security-intelligence personnel temporarily detained and interrogated three Turkish academics on charges of espionage. Then, under US pressure, Ankara reduced its Iranian oil imports by as much as 20 percent, followed by prevarications on its willingness to act as a financial intermediary — through the state-owned Halk bank — to process Iran’s multi-billion oil trade deals with countries such as India — in effect, contributing to the economic siege on Iran.
As the Syrian revolution turned more violent and Turkey transformed into the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) main foreign patron, bilateral ties suffered further, with the Iranian Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Seyed Hassan Firouzabadi ominously warning Turkey, “it will be its turn [if it continues to] to help advance the warmongering policies of the United States in Syria.” To up the ante, Iran suspended visa-free arrangements with Turkey and hinted at potentially downgrading security cooperation with Ankara, perhaps on the Kurdish issue.
Turkish officials struck back, accusing Iran of hosting PKK rebels and contributing to the oppression of the Syrian people. Then came Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç’s warning that his country would do “whatever is required” to counter the Iranian threat, ignoring incessant efforts by Iran’s foreign ministry to downplay statements from the security branches. To cool bilateral tensions, Ahmadinejad extended a letter of invitation to his Turkish counterpart to attend the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Tehran, to no avail. A few months later, when Turkey responded to Syrian artillery attacks by agreeing to host Patriot missile-defense systems, Iran — along with Russia — criticized the decision vehemently, fearing Ankara (or NATO) could also use it against Tehran in the future.
Depending on how the Syrian conflict unfolds, as well as the dynamics of the Iranian nuclear program, we may be entering a renewed phase of confrontation between the two powers in which either side can inflict considerable damage on the other. Serious recognition of that fact by leaders in both countries may yet work to stabilize an increasingly volatile relationship.
Photo: Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim (L), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (C), Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2nd L), Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (2nd R) and Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu hold their hands as sign of unity during the 32nd Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of G-15 in Tehran May 17, 2010. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl (IRAN – Tags: POLITICS ENERGY)
]]>Turkish-Iranian relations have been rocky since the deepening of the Syrian imbroglio. But the latest row suggests a new low. In no uncertain terms both the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, expressed displeasure with recent harsh statements coming out of Tehran regarding Turkish culpability in [...]]]>
Turkish-Iranian relations have been rocky since the deepening of the Syrian imbroglio. But the latest row suggests a new low. In no uncertain terms both the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, expressed displeasure with recent harsh statements coming out of Tehran regarding Turkish culpability in the quagmire Syria has become. The Turkish leadership was particularly upset with the recent remark by Iran’s chief of general staff who has said that “it will be its turn” if Turkey continues to “help advance the warmongering policies of the United States in Syria.”
Seeking Turkey’s help for the release of some 48 Iranians kidnapped by the insurgents in Syria, Iran’s foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi tried hard to soften the angry language that is coming out of Iran’s hawkish foreign policy wing. Davutoglu nevertheless warned him “in a frank and friendly manner” against blaming Ankara for violence in Syria.
On the ground, the reality in Syria is taking its toll on the relationship. Along with the exchange of unprecedented accusations, Iran has reportedly decided to suspend a visa-free travel arrangement with Turkey. This arrangement, in force since 1964, was suspended last week under the pretext of concerns for the run-up to the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which will commence at the end of August in Tehran. It will be reinstated after the NAM meeting in September, but the reasoning has been treated with suspicion by the Turkish press. Meanwhile, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç slammed Iran, implying that the recent surge of terror attacks in Turkey’s Southeast has Tehran’s backing. “We have received information that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK] terrorists infiltrated from the Iranian side of the border and that they were stationed in the Şehidan camp [in Iran] and crossed into Turkey from the region of Harkuk in northern Iraq,” he said.
What explains Iran’s most recent vocal offensive against Turkey and the Erdogan government’s testy response? Tehran has obviously been unhappy with Ankara’s role in supporting the insurgency in Syria. But assessing that Erdogan’s Syria policy is not that popular at home – at least among some key stakeholders – Iran seems to have made the decision to highlight the dangers of what it considers to be a Turkish policy of reckless involvement in the Syrian crisis for Turkey itself and eventually for the political standing of the Justice and Development Party.
It should be noted that Tehran is not that off the mark regarding the unpopularity of Erdogan’s policy and as such, there is a method in the madness of offending a government that in Erdogan’s words “stood by Iran when no one was at its side.” Tehran is banking on the fact that with the spilling of the Syrian crisis into Turkey, Erdogan’s Islamist government will be facing increasing criticism from secular forces for jumping on the Assad bandwagon without thinking carefully about the implications of Syria’s disintegration as a country. Tehran is also banking on the belief that in a contested political environment like Turkey’s, public opinion matters.
Tehran’s logic in assessing Erdogan’s domestic vulnerability on his Syrian policy is simple. Bashar al-Assad’s fall may make Iran a loser in the proxy fight over Syria, but Turkey will be an even bigger loser if the motley crew of forces that have come together to dislodge Assad end up destabilizing the borders that were imposed by external forces in the first half of the twentieth century. (The Turkish border with Iraq was negotiated with the British government in 1926 and was established with Syria in 1938 when, after the expiration of the French mandate, the people of the border province of Hatay voted to be a part of Turkey rather than Syria).
Tehran thinks that insecurity resulting from ethnic and religious disputes in Syria and countries like Iraq will deal the greatest and most drastic blow to Turkey among all the regional countries. While Iran may eventually lose a key ally in Assad and find its position weakened in the region, it is Turkey that has to deal with its own angry Arab Alevis residing near the Syrian border (and potentially the much larger Turkish and Kurdish Alevi population frightened by aggressive Sunni acts), opportunistic Kurdish nationalism, and the mayhem that refugees invariably bring into border areas. Tehran feels that such potential costs – some of which are already in evidence – will be the source of political divisions within Turkey and that highlighting them may increase domestic pressure on Erdogan to change course.
Erdogan’s fierce response can also be understood with this domestic dynamic in mind. In fact, Erdogan has already issued other angry responses against the domestic critics of his Syrian policy, at times even calling them traitors for questioning his efforts. He took a dig at the Iranian leadership’s own domestic problems when he said last week that “250,000 Syrians have left the country [Syria]. Is this not the responsibility of Iran? Yet, before Iran takes responsibility for the situation in Syria, it must first hold itself accountable [for its own]. We always take responsibility for our actions.”
But Iran holding itself responsible will not solve Erdogan’s Syria angst at home. As Morton Abramowitz points out, Syria is a major domestic issue and there is significant complaining about Erdogan’s handling of the Syria crisis. There is nothing pretty for Turkey in the potential materialization of some form of a Kurdish entity in northern Syria and the emergence of a Syria mired in an ethnic and confessional civil war with different groups controlling different regions.
The activism of Iran in the past week (i.e. Saeed Jalili going to Syria, Salehi going to Turkey, and then the holding of an ambassadorial meeting on Syria in Tehran) must hence be understood as having the following objectives:
- 1. To make a public (and visually unsettling) case that Assad’s fall is not imminent as portrayed by his opponents. The intended message is that Assad may be in trouble, but pushing him out of power requires more than the current militarized approach. Jalili’s very public display of solidarity is reflective of the fact that the hawks in Iran really believe that the fight in Syria is as much a public relations war as a physical war. Jalili’s visit was in many ways a direct response to the US government’s public statement that the flight of the Syrian prime minister suggests Assad’s imminent fall.
2. To highlight Tehran’s position that continued support for the removal of Assad through foreign-backed armed insurgency is a wrong policy that is being pursued by other regional players as well as the US. The policy has so far failed to remove the regime but even if it does succeed, it will underwrite the country’s disintegration with no one having control over the regional implications. Hillary Clinton may be dreaming about keeping the Syrian state intact while getting rid of the regime, but the Iranians are making the case that this is a highly unlikely scenario unless the Assad-must-go-contingency – with Erdogan at its heart – reevaluates its policy.
3. To make the case that the resolution of the Syria problem will be not be possible without Iran’s involvement. Again, note that this is premised on the belief that the current imbroglio and escalation in Syria is much more of a problem for Syria’s immediate neighbors (Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and even Israel) than Iran, which doesn’t have a border with Syria and more significantly, whose borders are not the result of the post-World War I imperial arrangement that is now in danger of being undermined.
Also note that Iran’s assessment of Turkey’s predicament is not that different from many US assessments regarding the threat that the lengthening of the conflict poses for neighboring countries. As Stephen Walt points out, it is difficult not to notice the slew of published opinions from the past couple of weeks – ranging from the always hawkish Washington Post editorial board to liberal interventionists (oops, sorry, I meant liberal internationalists) such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, to even the usually conflict-weary Nicholas Kristof – calling for increased US involvement in order to presumably prevent the post-Assad Syria from spinning out of control. In Walt’s words, for the US, the impulse for more action eventually wins even if in this case “we will almost certainly be fueling a sectarian war whose longer-term regional implications are deeply worrisome; we simply cannot resist the pressure to get involved.”
Unlike the United States, Iran does not have the resources to become directly involved in the expanding Syrian conflict. But it is trying to capitalize publicly on the costly but so far unsuccessful attempt to dislodge Assad. And for now, it is Turkish public opinion that is being conceived as a battleground.
Given the powerful allies that are prodding Turkey to remain committed to the “number-one goal…to hasten the end of the bloodshed and the Assad regime”, Iran’s play is a pretty weak one. But Erdogan’s Syria policy is also turning out to be a gamble that will only be redeemed if Syria does not disintegrate as a country.
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