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| Former Turkish Prime Minister and newly elected Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Picture from Faz.net. |
As a secular Muslim majority state straddling the
continents of Europe and Asia，Turkey would seem to be a natural adversary to
the fundamentalist Islamic State or ISIS.
“ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, but rather consists
of militants who are drug addicts” were remarks made by Turkish President Tayyip
Erdogan in reference to the Islamic State, a week after he lambasted Western
nations at the United Nations for not doing enough to stop the surge of foreign
recruits from swelling the Islamic State’s ranks. A bit of irony considering,
as Syria’s foreign minister noted, that the vast majority of Islamic State (IS)
recruits enter Syria via the land border his state shares with Turkey.
Turkish intransigence is not just limited to its passé
reaction towards foreign fighters crossing its borders to join the Islamic State. When the Islamic State expanded its Syrian
insurgency to neighboring Iraq an American- led coalition of Western and Arab
states responded by launching air strikes against ISIS targets in the region.
Noticeably absent from the coalition was Turkey. Even after IS brought its holy
war to the Turkish-Syrian border, Turkey refused to engage the encroaching
militants. Instead, the Turkish military targeted Kurdish forces: the one
reliable Western- backed group which has continuously engaged Islamic State
fighters on the ground. Furthermore, Turkey blocked Kurdish fighters from joining their brethren in defending the Syrian-Turkish border town of Kobane from IS and refused to allow the United States and other NATO allies access and use of key Turkish airbases, including the strategically important one in Incirlik, as bases of operation for the coalition to launch airstrikes against ISIS.
So why would Turkey, a secular Muslim nation and member
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), not only balk at joining the
coalition against IS but also attack the Western backed forces fighting them?
Only two actors are actively engaging the Islamic State
directly, the Syrian Government under Bashar al- Assad and Kurdish paramilitary
forces known as the Peshmerga. A third actor, the free Syrian army, have
engaged IS. However, they have done so on a limited basis and are focused more on
engaging the Syrian army in a few urban areas. While coalition forces
have engaged ISIS targets through aerial bombardment, the Syrian military and Peshmerga have been actively waging a ground campaign to physically dislodge IS from its positions in Syria and Iraq.
Even though the Syrian Government and Peshmerga are the only forces actively fighting and resisting IS, they represent the two actors which the present government in Ankara view as the greatest threats to Turkey and Turkish interests.
Syria and Turkey have been historic adversaries since the partition of the Ottoman Empire following the conclusion of World War One. As a founding member of NATO, an ally of the United States, and the secular Muslim nation, Turkey has been viewed skeptically by its Arab neighbors who were more closely aligned with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Furthering the skepticism was Turkey's recognition and relatively good relations with the Jewish state which Syria had opposed militarily during the Israeli War of Independence, Six-Day War, and Yom Kippur War.
Syrian-Turkish relations have further been soured by Turkish development projects on the upper regions of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The building of new hydroelectric dams limited the volume of water which flows from Turkey into Syria along both rivers, resulting in a decreased water supply in the normally arid eastern portion of the state.
Although relations between Syria and Turkey had warmed somewhat recently, the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War precipitated a re-cooling of relations with Turkey's former Prime Minister and recently elected President, Tayyip Erdogan, declaring that an absolute abdication of power by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was the only acceptable outcome to the current conflict.
While the United States and its allies oppose the Assad regime in Syria, it has refused to militarily engage the Syrian government due to Russian opposition. Furthermore, the West has been slow to support and supply the Syrian Free Army, another opposing force in the Syrian Civil War, due to the group's lack of cohesiveness and the continuing possibility that those supplies may wind up in the hands of radical Islamic groups. Western reluctance to support non-ISIS anti-Assad forces have left ISIS as the only actor willing and able to take on the Syrian government's forces.
Turkish opposition to the Kurds runs much deeper as the Turks view Kurdish nationalism as a threat to the territorial integrity of their country. A majority minority group in the southeastern section of Turkey, the Kurds have been fighting for their own state independent of Ankara and inclusive of areas with a significant population of Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Syria, for close to thirty years. The Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) has been at the forefront of the fight, waging a protracted unconventional war against Ankara until a ceasefire agreement in 2013. For its part Turkey has been adamant in both its opposition to the PKK, classifying it as a terrorist organization, and Kurdish independence.
For Erdogan and his party Western support for the Peshmerga and the Kurds as a whole could have the unintended consequence of solidifying Kurdish military power and autonomy while strengthening the Kurdish independence movement. Were the Kurds to prove successful in their campaign against IS in either Syria or Iraq, the result may be the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state from the territory within one or both of the aforementioned states. Considering that approximately half of the entire Kurdish population worldwide lives in Turkey, an independent Kurdistan that emerges from the ashes of Iraq and/or Syria will undoubtedly press for Turkish territorial concessions in the heavily Kurdish populated southeastern portion of the country.
With its military rise in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, areas where the Kurdish populations of those countries are mostly located, the Islamic State has come into direct confrontation with autonomous Kurdish forces. Since Turkey entered into a peace agreement with the PKK in 2012, ISIS is the only actor who engaging Kurdish groups in an active military campaign.
In fact, instead of targeting ISIS fighters or the Islamic State's infrastructure, Turkey has instead turned its weapons on the Kurds. Turkish fighters bombarded PKK positions in southeast Turkey, in violation of the peace agreement, and until recently prevented the Kurds in Turkey from crossing the border to assist the Kurdish forces battling ISIS forces in the Syrian border town of Kobane.
Erdogan's relatively soft position on ISIS is a continuing saga where under his leadership Turkish interests have diverged considerably from that of its traditional Western allies.
Of considerable note is the increasingly sour relationship between Turkey and Israel. Upon Israel's declaration of independence and statehood, Turkey was one of the first states to recognize the Jewish states, in addition to being one of only two Muslim majority states to do so (the other state being Iran which rescinded its recognition following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, subsequently the Muslim majority states of Egypt and Jordan have recognized Israel per separate peace agreements with the Jewish state in 1978 and 1994 respectively). Turkish-Israeli relations have plummeted to never before seen lows since the botched Israeli commando raid on a Turkish-led flotilla, trying to bring aid supplies to the Gaza Strip by beaching the Israeli blockade, left ten Turkish citizens dead. Since then, Erdogan has openly criticized the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even as he maintains what the Kurds perceive to be a Turkish occupation of Kurdistan. He has also accused Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people, an allegation which has been unequivocally refuted based on facts viewed in the most favorable light for the Palestinians by this blog, while continuing to deny Turkey's commission of the Armenian Genocide in 1915.
On the domestic front, Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has infused Islamist values and adopted Islamist influenced policies within a staunchly secular Turkish society. While France has moved to ban the niqab (a cloth or veil worn to cover the face of Muslim women) in a bid to create a more secular society, the AKP has lifted a ban on hijabs (Muslim headscarf) in institutions of higher education.
This perceived attack on Turkish secularism, which had been a strict hallmark of the nation since its foundation at the end of World War 1, launched the massive pro-secular Republic Protests in 2007 and became a focal point of the recent 2013-2014 Protests.
In the end Turkey is not the same secular Muslim nation which the United States and West had relied on during the Cold War. Under Erdogan and the AKP, internally, Turkey is moving towards a society which looks less like Europe and more like the Middle East. All this continues to beg the question is the friend of our enemy still our friend?
Even though the Syrian Government and Peshmerga are the only forces actively fighting and resisting IS, they represent the two actors which the present government in Ankara view as the greatest threats to Turkey and Turkish interests.
Syria and Turkey have been historic adversaries since the partition of the Ottoman Empire following the conclusion of World War One. As a founding member of NATO, an ally of the United States, and the secular Muslim nation, Turkey has been viewed skeptically by its Arab neighbors who were more closely aligned with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Furthering the skepticism was Turkey's recognition and relatively good relations with the Jewish state which Syria had opposed militarily during the Israeli War of Independence, Six-Day War, and Yom Kippur War.
Syrian-Turkish relations have further been soured by Turkish development projects on the upper regions of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The building of new hydroelectric dams limited the volume of water which flows from Turkey into Syria along both rivers, resulting in a decreased water supply in the normally arid eastern portion of the state.
Although relations between Syria and Turkey had warmed somewhat recently, the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War precipitated a re-cooling of relations with Turkey's former Prime Minister and recently elected President, Tayyip Erdogan, declaring that an absolute abdication of power by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was the only acceptable outcome to the current conflict.
While the United States and its allies oppose the Assad regime in Syria, it has refused to militarily engage the Syrian government due to Russian opposition. Furthermore, the West has been slow to support and supply the Syrian Free Army, another opposing force in the Syrian Civil War, due to the group's lack of cohesiveness and the continuing possibility that those supplies may wind up in the hands of radical Islamic groups. Western reluctance to support non-ISIS anti-Assad forces have left ISIS as the only actor willing and able to take on the Syrian government's forces.
Turkish opposition to the Kurds runs much deeper as the Turks view Kurdish nationalism as a threat to the territorial integrity of their country. A majority minority group in the southeastern section of Turkey, the Kurds have been fighting for their own state independent of Ankara and inclusive of areas with a significant population of Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Syria, for close to thirty years. The Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) has been at the forefront of the fight, waging a protracted unconventional war against Ankara until a ceasefire agreement in 2013. For its part Turkey has been adamant in both its opposition to the PKK, classifying it as a terrorist organization, and Kurdish independence.
For Erdogan and his party Western support for the Peshmerga and the Kurds as a whole could have the unintended consequence of solidifying Kurdish military power and autonomy while strengthening the Kurdish independence movement. Were the Kurds to prove successful in their campaign against IS in either Syria or Iraq, the result may be the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state from the territory within one or both of the aforementioned states. Considering that approximately half of the entire Kurdish population worldwide lives in Turkey, an independent Kurdistan that emerges from the ashes of Iraq and/or Syria will undoubtedly press for Turkish territorial concessions in the heavily Kurdish populated southeastern portion of the country.
With its military rise in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, areas where the Kurdish populations of those countries are mostly located, the Islamic State has come into direct confrontation with autonomous Kurdish forces. Since Turkey entered into a peace agreement with the PKK in 2012, ISIS is the only actor who engaging Kurdish groups in an active military campaign.
In fact, instead of targeting ISIS fighters or the Islamic State's infrastructure, Turkey has instead turned its weapons on the Kurds. Turkish fighters bombarded PKK positions in southeast Turkey, in violation of the peace agreement, and until recently prevented the Kurds in Turkey from crossing the border to assist the Kurdish forces battling ISIS forces in the Syrian border town of Kobane.
Erdogan's relatively soft position on ISIS is a continuing saga where under his leadership Turkish interests have diverged considerably from that of its traditional Western allies.
Of considerable note is the increasingly sour relationship between Turkey and Israel. Upon Israel's declaration of independence and statehood, Turkey was one of the first states to recognize the Jewish states, in addition to being one of only two Muslim majority states to do so (the other state being Iran which rescinded its recognition following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, subsequently the Muslim majority states of Egypt and Jordan have recognized Israel per separate peace agreements with the Jewish state in 1978 and 1994 respectively). Turkish-Israeli relations have plummeted to never before seen lows since the botched Israeli commando raid on a Turkish-led flotilla, trying to bring aid supplies to the Gaza Strip by beaching the Israeli blockade, left ten Turkish citizens dead. Since then, Erdogan has openly criticized the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even as he maintains what the Kurds perceive to be a Turkish occupation of Kurdistan. He has also accused Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people, an allegation which has been unequivocally refuted based on facts viewed in the most favorable light for the Palestinians by this blog, while continuing to deny Turkey's commission of the Armenian Genocide in 1915.
On the domestic front, Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has infused Islamist values and adopted Islamist influenced policies within a staunchly secular Turkish society. While France has moved to ban the niqab (a cloth or veil worn to cover the face of Muslim women) in a bid to create a more secular society, the AKP has lifted a ban on hijabs (Muslim headscarf) in institutions of higher education.
This perceived attack on Turkish secularism, which had been a strict hallmark of the nation since its foundation at the end of World War 1, launched the massive pro-secular Republic Protests in 2007 and became a focal point of the recent 2013-2014 Protests.
In the end Turkey is not the same secular Muslim nation which the United States and West had relied on during the Cold War. Under Erdogan and the AKP, internally, Turkey is moving towards a society which looks less like Europe and more like the Middle East. All this continues to beg the question is the friend of our enemy still our friend?
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