Has Turkey lost the plot?

S P SETH

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is losing the plot when confronting the crisis his state finds itself in. The recent massive blasts at a peace rally in the Turkish capital, Ankara, believed to be the work of two suicide bombers, killed about 100 people and injured nearly 250. It happened at a mainly Kurdish peace rally held to protest against the government’s incessant bombing of Kurds in northern Iraq and inside Turkey. The Turkish government blames the militant Turkish movement, PKK, for terrorist acts inside the country in pursuit of autonomy/independence for the Kurds. For a period, there was some hope of peace and reconciliation between Turkey and its Kurdish population. But the parliamentary elections in June in which the predominantly Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) won more than 10 per cent votes (the minimum constitutional threshold) with 80 parliamentary seats, undercut the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) parliamentary majority requiring new elections now scheduled next month.

President Erdogan had put much hope on the June election, anticipating a comfortable parliamentary majority for the ruling AKP to change the constitution to become the country’s executive president. With new elections, held under his party’s interim prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, that might still not happen. Therefore, to ensure desired parliamentary victory, the moderate and predominantly Kurdish party, HDP, would need to be tarred with the same brush as the militant PKK. To this end, the government has repeatedly accused the HDP of links to the PKK. In other words, the entire Kurdish community is under suspicion of actual or potential subversion of the Turkish state and society; making the Erdogan government the country’s ultimate savior. It is hoped that this will rally much of the country behind them.

Against this backdrop, the rise of IS has created opportunities as well as pitfalls for the government. The opportunities lie in an increasingly bloody confrontation between the IS and Kurds, spread across Turkey, Iraq and Syria, that might weaken the Kurds. But as the Kurds are taking the fight on the ground against IS, they have won the admiration and support of the US that is helping them with weapons and aerial support. This hasn’t found favour with Turkey, as it might help to strengthen the Kurdish position to eventually carve out a homeland for themselves. Turkey’s first response to the US-led military coalition against IS was not only to keep out of it but also to deny them the use of Turkish bases for bombing raids. The US, a long time Turkish ally, was unhappy with it. Later, Turkey changed its position by joining the US-led coalition, as well as allowing the use of its bases for bombing raids on IS. But, simultaneously, it turned on the Kurds by attacking and bombing PKK targets in northern Iraq and in southeast Turkey.

While it was trying to curry favour with the US-led coalition by coalescing with it on IS, it was making it clear that the Kurds wouldn’t be allowed to use their frontline role against IS to advance their Kurdish autonomy/separation agenda. And, at home, the electoral respectability of the predominantly Kurdish HDP party was a worry as reflected in the June election. There is, therefore, a concerted attempt to tar the moderate HDP with the militant PKK brush.  The bombing raids and round up of Kurds inside Turkey look like an attempt to create a security threat scenario for the Turkish state from inside and outside the country. Even though it is generally accepted that the blasts at the Ankara peace rally were the work of IS, President Erdogan seemed more inclined to blame all violence on PKK. He reportedly said after the blasts in Ankara, “The terrorist attack targeting civilian citizens today at the Ankara station is no different at all from the previous attacks in various locations against our soldiers, our police, our village guards, public servants and innocent citizens.” There is thus an attempt to blame the Kurds and the militant PKK for all the killings and security problems in Turkey to create a siege mentality, with the ruling AKP party seen as the only alternative to crush Kurdish violence. If this narrative were to take hold, AKP has hope of winning the parliamentary elections. There is thus a concerted campaign to somehow mix up HDP and PKK as one and the same.

This sort of confusion and resultant security operations against the Kurds must be music to IS ears, as much of the Turkish government’s energies are directed against a perceived Kurdish threat. This is bound to affect the effectiveness of Kurdish operations against IS, as they now have to face two fronts, leading one to wonder if the Turkish government is at all serious about fighting IS. The initial satisfaction in the US-led coalition over Turkey’s decision to join their ranks has almost disappeared because, on balance, it is probably weakened the coalition by weakening the Kurdish contribution on the ground that was considered quite effective.

The Erdogan government has been unhappy with the US for its handling of the Syrian crisis almost from the time when the rebellion to overthrow the Assad regime started in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. And Erdogan is politically inflexible when he has taken a position on any issue.  His government seems to believe that the present mess in Syria, with IS emerging as a determining force in Syria and Iraq, is due to the US failure to act against the Assad regime. And this mess has also raised the profile of the Kurds across Turkey, Iraq and Syria, thus creating problems for Turkey. And this might need to be dealt with directly through security operations by the Turkish state and, indirectly, by IS. This pincer movement will most likely weaken Kurds over a period of time. In the meantime, this might win the ANP the parliamentary elections, thus entrenching its political dominance in place since 2002. Such calculations do not seem to factor in the threat from IS, not only for Turkey but the entire Middle Eastern region. And this is where the Erdogan government has lost the plot.

  

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@ yahoo.com

Russia’s bold Syrian adventure

S P SETH

An important recent development in the increasingly complex Middle East imbroglio is Russia’s open military intervention in the Syrian theatre. Moscow has been known to support the Bashar al-Assad regime in all sorts of ways but had refrained from jumping into the fray militarily. It is now conducting aerial bombing of rebel positions, storing and deploying heavy armaments at its naval base in Syria and is even said to have some ground troops for limited operations. Moscow’s justification for this is multi-fold. First, it is doing this at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government of President Assad. Second, it is doing it to fight terrorism, which the Assad regime has been doing on its own. Third, its timing would appear to be dictated by the seemingly imminent danger to the Assad regime from multiple jihadi and rebel forces converging on it.

For Moscow, even though IS is the main target, it is pointless to be splitting hair to determine who is who is who among the jihadis because, in the end, they are all terrorists wanting to create an even bigger blood bath of their presumed enemies. And they are also a threat to Russia and its interests as some among them are former Chechen rebels and commanders now fighting for IS and other jihadi groups. Russia would hate them and IS to score even more gains, with the prospect of some of the Chechen rebels and their new compatriots returning to settle old scores with the Russian state. Therefore, it is not simply bravado on Russia’s part to help Assad regime, it is also in its self-interest to deal with them as far away from the country as is possible.

There is also an important geopolitical reason. President Putin has never forgotten and forgiven the collapse of the Soviet state as a global power. He called it the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20^th century. Its shrunken version, the Russian state, he has been presiding over for much of the new century, has been facing further pressures to constrict and constrain its role, including a perceived threat from an expanded NATO that now also include some eastern European and Baltic countries that were either once under the protective Soviet umbrella or its integral part. Which led Moscow to push back when Ukraine was sought to be included in the European Union, with the prospect of its subsequent inclusion in NATO. The crisis in Ukraine is still unresolved for which Russia is facing a slew of economic sanctions from the US and its European allies.

Though there is no direct connection between Ukrainian and Syrian crises, Syria happens to be the only Middle Eastern country where Russia still has a naval base that allows it to maintain and project a countervailing and/or bridging role, and has economic interests. And it is not just Assad’s Syria that is welcoming of Russia’s interventionist role against IS and other jihadist outfits, Iran and Iraq are also part of this new coalition with Russia apparently in the lead role. Moscow reportedly will coordinate intelligence with Baghdad and likely with Tehran in the midst of reports that Iranian forces are already on the ground helping the Syrian regime.

In the situation as it is developing, both Moscow and Washington are keen to push back and destroy IS. But the important difference is that while Moscow would like this to be done through the agency of the Assad regime as the only functional entity committed to it, the US and its coalition allies would rather see Assad step aside in favour of a broad coalition of preferably secular US-supported elements. At the most, they might tolerate a role for Bashar al-Assad during the “transitional” phase when a new replacement arrangement is worked out. Moscow is not wedded to Assad per se but doesn’t see any workable “transitional” arrangement emerging out of the medley of jihadi groups and the occasional secular elements that are, in any case, being subverted or over-whelmed by IS.

President Obama says that President Putin is entering a “quagmire” with his air strikes in Syria and by hitching his wagon to the Assad regime. At another level, the US and its allies are highly critical of the reportedly Russian targeting of non-IS jihadi groups, including some of its favoured and supposedly secular elements like the Free Syrian Army. Though Moscow says it is primarily targeting IS, its foreign minister Sergey Lavrov was unapologetic for hitting other terrorist groups like al-Nusra and the likes. Asked to define other terrorist groups while he was in New York, he said, “If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it is a terrorist, right?” In other words, Russia’s definition of a terrorist group is quite wide to include almost all the rebels fighting the Syrian regime. Which invites sharp criticism from the US and some of its allies. But, in some cases, the comment is more nuanced.

For instance, Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop is more pragmatic. She reportedly has said that, “President Putin maintains that Assad is not their man and they are talking about the stability of the regime, rather than the survival of Assad per se.” As if she were standing up for Russia, Bishop went on, “Their [Moscow] concern is that if Assad is removed there will be created a vacuum and there is no one they can identify who could step up and run that part of Syria.” She believes that “there is a common view that Daesh [IS] is a devastatingly successful terrorist organization, that cannot be allowed to prevail.” And within that wider parameter Russia’s larger role, even envisaging a place for a reconstituted Syrian regime (without Bashar al-Assad, perhaps), would need to be recognized. And that goes for Iran too as a participant at an international conference, though one can see how Saudi Arabia, Qatar, other Gulf kingdoms and Turkey will be horrified at such a prospect.

The US, even if it were to heed Julie Bishop’s sensible interpretation of Russia’s important role (as it is of Iran), is likely to find itself vetoed by its Arab allies. Obama might be right that Russia would likely find herself in a “quagmire” with military intervention as has the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and now against IS, but such an outcome would be disastrous with IS eventually emerging as the dominant force not only in the Middle East but also in the Muslim world. And with its own freakish interpretation of Islam, it would need to be confronted and defeated. And that is only possible with a united international front where the US, Russia and other stakeholders recognize that the real enemy is IS and not the Syrian regime which, undoubtedly, is brutal in its own context. And that would be confronted when the larger IS threat is contained and/or beaten.

But don’t hold your breath about a united international front to confront IS. Russia’s intervention in Syria seems to be reviving elements of the old cold war, with NATO expressing deep concern about recent Russian incursions into Turkish air space for their Syrian bombing raids “despite Turkish authorities’ clear, timely and repeated warnings.”

Note: This article as first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

Saudi Arabia, US and the Middle East

S P SETH

The backdrop to the Saudi King Salman’s recent US visit was largely a pervasive fear of Iranian regional ambitions, augmented due to the US nuclear deal with Iran. Which meant, as far as Riyadh was concerned, that the US was wavering in its absolute commitment to contain, prevent and stop Tehran from destabilizing the region to establish its own regional primacy. Until the nuclear deal, which envisages withdrawal of international economic sanctions against Iran in return for serious curbs on its nuclear ambitions, Iran was increasingly becoming an economic basket case with not much capacity to play a serious regional role, though it still managed to scare some of its Arab neighbours. And that is how Saudi Arabia, its Gulf allies and Israel, for its own reasons, wanted things to continue, hoping that, over time, this will seriously weaken Iran’s clerical regime and/or bring it down, thus ensuring the stability of the Saudi-led and overseen conservative political order in the Middle East. Having failed to prevent the US-Iran nuclear deal, Riyadh sought to show its displeasure in all sorts of ways, including an earlier absence by King Salman at an Obama-hosted Gulf summit in the US designed to assure its Middle Eastern allies that its regional strategy remained essentially unchanged despite the nuclear deal with Iran. Which is that they will have virtual US defence umbrella, including all sorts of advanced weaponry the US would continue to sell to refurbish their defence.

What sort of threat(s) Iran poses is generally left vague apart from a general sense that Iran is somehow a malevolent regional force out to destabilize/destroy its Sunni Arab neighbours. And its evil designs are seen in Syria, its support and arming of Hezbollah and in Yemen where Saudi and its allied forces are bombing the Houthis, said to be establishing their control over the country with Iranian support. And, of course, Iran is also supposed to exercise influence and control over Iraq’s Shia regime. In all these places, though, the so-called Iranian proxies are in a precarious situation, with the US largely working against them.

The one possible area of strategic convergence between Iran and the US is the expanding IS control in parts of Iraq and Syria. The US regards IS as a greater danger ideologically, politically and strategically than other scattered jihadi elements in the region. Its appeal to many disaffected Muslim youth, particularly in the west, is quite fetching as seen in their recruitment to the cause at home and on the ground in the region. And so far, despite massive US aerial targeting of IS assets in Iraq and Syria and the engagement of the US-trained and equipped Iraqi army against the enemy, IS seems to be doing pretty well. The US objective to degrade, destroy and ultimately annihilate IS doesn’t appear to have made much headway, if at all. In the midst of it, Iranian trained and equipped Shia militias seem to be the only effective counterforce with real potential to push back IS. And the US is quite supportive, if not encouraging, of Iranian role. Which makes the Saudis jittery about the future strategic evolution of the region where Iran might come to have an influence on US regional policy.

Even though the Saudis recognize at some level that IS also has Saudi monarchy as its target, as seen in a series of recent explosions in the kingdom, they tend to gloss over it by regarding Iran as a bigger threat. During his recent US visit, King Salman seems to have been reassured, to the extent possible; that the United States doesn’t have any short or medium term plans to make Iran into a strategic friend/ally. And it is showing this by selling huge amounts of weaponry to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies. In 2014 alone, Saudi Arabia, now the world’s biggest arms buyer, reportedly spent $80 billion on arms purchases, much of it from the United States. And the UAE spent $23 billion on arms purchases. The Gulf States are awash with sophisticated foreign arms, most of them from the United States with trainers, consultants and any number of experts and handlers hired to do the job if and when necessary.

With almost no real strategic road map to bring about stability and security to the region, such seemingly ad hoc deployment of military resources is a further invitation to disaster in a region that is already on the brink in more than one way. And Riyadh still feels threatened and worried about some perceived change in the US Middle East policy. Bruce Riedel, a US strategic analyst at the Brookings Institution, has this to say of Saudi bombing of Yemen, where they fear the Houthis are engaged in a proxy war for Iran: “What the Saudis really want from Obama is unquestioning and complete political support for their war and its enormous carnage. [And] They have it—and the Yemeni people are paying for the Iran nuclear deal.” The US needs to go out of its way to assure the Saudis that its overall Middle Eastern strategy of supporting their friends and allies remains uncompromised by the US-Iran nuclear deal.

And this in a way might encourage Saudi Arabia to further push the limits of its regional primacy. As Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi reportedly told reporters in Washington in April 2015, “The dangerous thing is, we don’t know what the Saudis want to do [after Yemen]. Is Iraq within their radar? That’s very, very dangerous—the idea that you intervene in another state, unprovoked, just for regional ambition is wrong.” He added, “Saddam did it before—see what it has done to the country.”

In other words, the Middle Eastern situation is becoming messier and messier with not much thought, if any, being paid to exploring political solutions. And an important reason for this is the proliferation and easy access to weapons all around for state actors from the United States and other external powers, and to Jihadis of all sorts from their regional benefactors and promoters. And IS helps itself to these weapons and treasures by raiding and capturing such a vast array of weapons all around. No wonder that there is no prospect anywhere in sight of any sort of political solution. And here we haven’t even dealt with the increasingly dangerous situation in Syria, and Turkey’s no-holds barred offensive against the Kurds.  

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au 

       

Turkey’s political calculus

S P SETH

Turkey’s President Recep Tayip Endogan with his Ottoman complex, which requires him to play a determining role in the old domains of the Ottoman Empire, has not quite found the role that suits his temperament. He is still testing the waters as his recent attacking role simultaneously against IS and the Kurds testifies. His earlier attempts to shape Middle Eastern politics following the Arab Spring didn’t make much headway. In Syria, for instance, he wanted Bashar al-Assad’s regime to make way for the rebels, which the Syrian leader simply ignored. He then wanted the US to get rid of the dictator when he ignored Obama’s ‘red line’ by using chemical weapons.

True, the US too wanted to get rid of the Syrian dictator but didn’t find any reliable and effective alternative among the rebels to replace the Assad regime. The situation got murky with multiplicity of rebel groups of varied hues of jihadi credentials, often at war with each other.  The US found it difficult to distinguish between the secular nationalists and downright extremists. Not surprisingly, Washington started wavering, not sure if betting on these heterogeneous groups was a good idea. Therefore, its enthusiasm regarding immediate removal of the Assad regime slackened, though he was and still is the odious dictator. Such wavering on the US’s part enraged Turkey, and Ankara reckons it led to the rise of IS to become the menace it is today.

The rise of IS and its territorial expansion across the border between Iraq and Syria has created some difficult problems for Turkey. As a US and NATO ally, it was expected to be an integral and active part of the coalition against IS. But Turkey had reservations about playing an active military role, including providing bases for US aerial attacks on IS positions in Syria, which didn’t endear it to its western allies. From Turkey’s viewpoint, the collaboration between the Kurds and the US against IS had created a virtual alliance between the two.  And this was seen to be strengthening Kurdish nationalism straddling Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

Earlier, in 2013, Turkey and Kurdistan Workers Party---commonly known by its acronym, PKK---the militant Kurdish movement for an autonomous/independent Kurdish region within Turkey--- had entered into a ceasefire, which had largely held. But when IS operatives attacked a cultural centre in a Turkish border town killing 32 people, most of them young Kurd activists keen on helping their compatriots in their reconstruction work across the Syrian border, that seemed to have settled the argument for Turkey to go after both IS and the Kurds. The reported killing of a couple of Turkish soldiers around the time was blamed on the Kurds. And Turkey unleashed a barrage of aerial strikes against PKK mountain hideouts in northern Iraq, where they had fled and established military camps across the Turkish border. At the same time, Turkey also expanded its operations against Kurds in southeastern Turkey. In other words, it was a virtual declaration of war against the Kurds, inside and outside Turkey. At the same time Turkey was also attacking IS positions, even as it allowed the US to use its bases for aerial attacks and more intensive surveillance.  

This has put the US and NATO in a tight spot. The use of Turkish bases has certainly made operations against IS more effective, and Ankara’s offensive against IS a valuable addition to the US-led coalition. The downside, though, is that by declaring a war on the Kurds, it tends to undercut an important US ally on the ground in the war against IS. In other words, while the US gains Turkey as an active ally, the Kurds will be fighting war on two fronts against Turkey as well as IS. And they happen to be the one really effective force standing up to IS on the ground. And by going after Kurds, Turkey appears to be helping IS. If so, Turkey is using this situation to finish off and/or weaken the Kurdish autonomy/independence movement by abandoning any pretense of political reconciliation with its Kurdish community for which there had been some forward movement in the last few years.

Concerned with perceived Kurdish empowerment from a virtual alliance with the US against IS, Erdogan’s Turkey was also shaken by the recent parliamentary elections in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority. The sizeable vote of over 13 per cent for the predominantly Kurdish party gave them a number of seats in the parliament, making it difficult for the AKP to form a government. Losing parliamentary majority has upset Erdogan’s plans to use parliament to change the constitution to become Turkey’s executive president. And by raising the spectre of a security threat to the country both at home and abroad from Kurds and IS, he is seeking to create a national emergency to subvert the political process in the country. For instance, there is talk of stripping Kurdish members of the Turkish parliament of their parliamentary immunity, ostensibly for security reasons. Or else, hold new parliamentary elections against the backdrop of a national security threat to rally people around the ruling party. We will soon know which way Erdogan will sway— stripping the Kurdish parliamentary members of their immunity or hold new elections. Probably, he will do both successively. 

At the same time, the US and NATO would find it difficult to criticize the Erdogan government for going after the Kurds on charges of terrorism. PKK is branded a terrorist organization in many countries. Already the US is saying that Turkey has a right to defend itself, more or less absolving it of extreme measures. It is extraordinary that up to now IS was considered the biggest threat. Turkey has now changed the calculus to its advantage by putting the focus also on the Kurds, at least when it comes to its security. Turkish’s induction as an active US partner against IS might even prove a liability by completely muddying an already murky picture.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au