AN ANALYSIS
The cauldron is being stirred to fully
embroil Turkey in conflict with Syria, a surefire way to pull NATO into the mix
even more fully than they are now.
When
are all sensible people on this planet going to band together
and
show these creatures that we are fed up to there
with
the way they are holding the rest of the world hostage
as
they play their genocidal war games?
By Paul Taylor
August 7, 2012
Turkey's worst
nightmares are beginning to come true in Syria ~ a protracted sectarian civil
war on its long southern border with the emergence of a de facto
Kurdish-controlled region friendly to its main domestic foe.
The Syrian
conflict is also poisoning Ankara's sensitive relations with Iran, Syria's
vital regional ally, and Iraq and complicating ties with Russia, undermining a
declared policy of "zero problems" with the neighbours.
"Syria has turned Turkey's neighbourhood policy on its head," said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Brussels. "Ankara's approach to the Syria conflict has been a radical departure from traditional Turkish caution."
Yet despite
bellicose statements, political support for the Syrian opposition and growing
covert aid to opposition fighters, there is little Turkey can do alone to shape
the outcome.
"We will
not allow a terrorist group to establish camps in northern Syria and threaten
Turkey," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference on July 26,
referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody armed
struggle since 1984 in southeastern Turkey.
"If there
is a step which needs to be taken against the terrorist group, we will
definitely take this step."
It was the
latest of a string of warnings that have so far had little traction on the
course of a conflict that has wrong-footed Turkish diplomatic ambitions in the
region.
Before the
crisis, Erdogan cultivated a friendship with President Bashar al-Assad, in
stark contrast to Turkey's tense relations with the Syrian leader's father,
veteran strongman Hafez al-Assad. The ruling couples even vacationed together.
.
In better times.
SLIGHTED
After a Syrian
uprising inspired by the "Arab Spring" pro-democracy movements in
Tunisia and Egypt erupted in March 2011, Erdogan tried to use those personal
ties to persuade Assad to embrace reform and open a dialogue with the
opposition.
He was rebuffed
and felt slighted. From November, he began calling for the removal of Assad and
Turkey helped the opposition Syrian National Council organize on its soil.
But the Syrian
leader is still there, albeit weakened. He is part of a Shi'ite Muslim axis
spanning Iran and Iraq and his own minority Alawite sect, uncomfortable for
mainly Sunni Turkey.
The
faction-ridden SNC, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, has yet to provide a
credible alternative, and international diplomacy is deadlocked and largely
irrelevant for now.
"They
haven't really thought this through," Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based
researcher on Turkish security policy, said of Turkey's leaders. "It's
been 'let's get rid of Assad' without enough thought as to what comes next.
"Now their
two nightmare scenarios are starting to materialize: the emergence of some form
of Kurdish entity in northern Syria that would clearly be an asset to the PKK
and embolden Turkish Kurds in terms of autonomy, and the Lebanon-ization of
Syria with a long-running ethnic and confessional civil war with different
groups controlling different regions," Jenkins said.
Some 45,000
Syrian refugees have poured into Turkey, straining resources and security in
some border areas. With fierce fighting raging in Syria's second city, Aleppo,
near the Turkish frontier, a bigger influx looms soon.
Military
defectors have set up bases of the Free Syrian Army in southern Turkey, and
some are trained and coordinated by Turkish, Qatari and Saudi officers
operating from a secret "nerve centre" near the city of Adana, Gulf
sources have told Reuters.
Foreign Islamist
militants are joining the Syrian fighters crossing the border from Turkey to
fight against Assad, with the apparent acquiescence of the Turkish authorities,
said Fadi Hakura, a Turkey analyst at London's Chatham House think-tank.
.
"They
(Turkish officials) want to accelerate the downfall of Assad and his
regime," Hakura said, when asked about Ankara's attitude to such fighters.
"The Turkish government feels it can control the aftermath of a post-Assad
Syria."
Turkey
officially denies arming the rebels, but several sources say they are receiving
Russian-made small arms on Turkish soil, although not the heavier weapons they
would need to change the balance of power with Assad's superior forces.
KURDS
"Looking
ahead, the most troubling scenario for Turkey may also be the most likely one:
protracted chaos and sectarian conflict, leaving a security vacuum across the
border, with an ongoing risk of spillovers affecting Turkish security,"
Ian Lesser, a former U.S. official and Turkey expert at the German Marshall
Fund wrote in mid-July.
THAT FUTURE IS ALREADY HERE.
Turkish analysts
suspect Assad let the main Syrian Kurdish movement, the Democratic Union Party
(PYD), take control of security outside the main cities in the northeast last
week to prevent them joining forces with the FSA while enabling him to redeploy
state security forces to the main battle zones.
Ankara came
close to war with Assad's father in 1998 over the presence of PKK leader
Abdullah Ocalan in Damascus and alleged Syrian support for PKK activities in
northeastern Syria.
If the PKK were
to take root and launch attacks from that area, Erdogan would face strong
nationalist pressure to launch military action.
"What could
happen is for Turkey to carry out the kind of surgical strikes that it did in
northern Iraq in past years if the government has intelligence that northern
Syria is being used by Kurdish terrorists," Ulgen said.
But Jenkins said
the border area was too flat to provide useful terrain for PKK fighters, who
preferred to operate out of mountainous northern Iraq despite Ankara's much
improved relations with the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan.
TURKISH TALK
Turkey talked
earlier this year of possibly setting up a safe haven inside Syria for people
displaced by the fighting, or establishing a military no-fly zone to protect
civilians, but no such operation seems likely any time soon.
The United
Nations Security Council is paralyzed over sanctions, with Russia and China
blocking any resolution under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter authorizing the
use of force.
Ulgen said
Turkey could not take such action alone without either U.N. backing or a strong
"coalition of the willing" made up of its main NATO allies, which
gave Ankara only lukewarm verbal support when a Turkish warplane was downed in
disputed circumstances off the Syrian coast in June.
A NATO source said there was no realistic prospect of the alliance operating in Syria unless Turkey were to come under attack from Syrian forces.
Another
constraint on Turkish action is domestic public opinion, which is strongly
opposed to military intervention.
Opinion polls
conducted by Ulgen's EDAM think-tank show public opinion is ill disposed to any
armed involvement in Syria and unconvinced by the government's tough rhetoric,
even after the warplane incident.
So despite
Erdogan's public warnings, Turkey may remain a prisoner of events beyond its
control across the border.
.
Syrian boys play soccer in an alley, in the old city of
Damascus|AP Photo|Muzaffar Salman|
"The truth
is that they are stuck," said Henri Barkey, another former U.S. official
and Turkey specialist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
"They
cannot and will not intervene militarily. All they can do is help on the edges,
i.e. allow insurgents free passage, train them, help them organize
politically," Barkey told Reuters. "Still this is more than what many
others are doing."
(Editing by
Ralph Boulton) (Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Ankara and William
Maclean in London; Writing by Paul Taylor)
I think the whole Arab Spring business is a CIA-NATO-Mossad plot, planned many years ago.
ReplyDeleteErgenekon was exposed, as a way of getting rid of Turkish generals who were previously loyal to the CIA, but who had become too nationalist.
Erdogan looks like a CIA puppet.
- Aangirfan
I agree with you 1000%. Add the fact that a leading al qaeda agent was incognito on board to point out the victims.....
ReplyDeleteThe whole Mavi Marmara incident was an elaborate false flag that should be used as a case study of infiltration of those with good intentions to bring about dark motives. Rather like that old canard thrown at the Palestinian fighters of hiding behind the innocent. That is exactly what the MM was.
Turkey has been Zionist run since the Young Turks.