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Turkish Dilemma
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/06/turkish_dilemma
Turkey's voluble prime minister has talked himself into a corner on
Syria. Will the spiraling unrest next door finally force him to back
up his words?
BY KAREN LEIGH | SEPTEMBER 6, 2012
ISTANBUL - On Sept. 4 in Ankara, in a meeting with members of his ruling
Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan loudly threw down a gauntlet for next-door neighbor President
Bashar al-Assad.
"The massacres in Syria that gain strength from the international
community's indifference are continuing to increase," he said
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/756f2852-f766-11e1-8c9d-00144feabdc0.html.
"The regime in Syria has now become a terrorist state. We do not have the
luxury to be indifferent to what is happening there."
It was the culmination of increasingly strong rhetoric from a highly
conservative yet completely overextended leader who seems to want both
political stability in Syria -- and the central hero's role in bringing
down the Assad regime.
Erdogan complains that he has received little support from Turkey's allies.
On Sept. 5, he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that the United States
"lacked initiative" in dealing with the crisis in Syria. "There are certain
things being expected from the United States. The United States had not yet
catered to those expectations," he said. "Maybe it's because of the
pre-election situation."
The latest rhetoric has sent nervous waves down the Bosphorus, where
Erdogan has faced growing criticism from liberal political elites.
"There's no push within the country for him to go into Syria," says Soli
Ozel, a political commentator and professor of international relations at
Istanbul's Kadir Has University.
Erdogan once touted a "no problems with neighbors" foreign policy that
emphasized removing longstanding points of tension with surrounding
countries, including Syria. But with the advent of the Arab Spring, he
strongly supported revolutionaries working to topple the established order.
Today, the Turkish premier is aiming to be "a central diplomatic figure
with good ties to both the West and the Middle East, who can eliminate
problems on his borders," according to Jon Alterman, Middle East program
director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And
certainly there are ways that Syria could work out that would allow him to
emerge as the victor in all of this ... But there's also certain ways it
could work out that creates a lot of messiness for him."
Since the Syrian crisis erupted last March, Erdogan has, more than any
other leader, walked a tightrope between intervention and isolationism.
In late June, after Syrian forces shot down a Turkish fighter jet, he
swore that any Syrian military unit approaching the border "will be
regarded as a threat and treated as a military target." However, he
also said Syrian helicopters had infiltrated Turkish airspace five times,
without any retaliation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/26/turkey-threatens-syria-retaliation
http://articles.boston.com/2012-06-26/news/32427099_1_syrian-attack-syrian-helicopters-turkey
It's no easy task: Erdogan must balance a desire to take a leadership role
in Syria while simultaneously appeasing disgruntled voters with no desire
to get involved in an escalating quagmire. He must also manage the influx
http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_21465477 of more than 80,000
Syrian refugees who continue to stream across the border into the
Turkish province of Hatay, straining a region where schools and
hospitals are overcrowded and Arabic is now as common on public buses
as Turkish.
"People in Turkey don't want a rushed intervention in Syria. Most Turks are
worried about getting mired," says Salman Shaikh, director at the Brookings
Institution's office in Doha. He added, however, that Assad might beat them
to intervention -- exporting security threats into Turkey to retaliate for
Ankara's support to Syrian opposition fighters.
Even as Erdogan works to enhance Turkey's influence in the Arab world, he
is also taking aggressive steps to transform its domestic politics. He has
pushed Turkey, which is 99 percent Muslim, in a more socially conservative
direction, sparking controversy in May by calling for restrictions on abortion,
equating it with murder. For years, he has faced liberal criticism
over his endorsement of headscarves, worn by his wife and daughters.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18297760
In Istanbul's trendier cafes, it has become a source of amusement. Socially
liberal Turks joke that the volume of the daily call to prayer has been
turned up to unconscionable levels in a misguided attempt to get
non-observant Muslims to pay attention.
Combined with his support for a predominantly Sunni uprising in Syria, the
effect has been to cast Erdogan as a figure bent on imposing his religious
views across not only his own country, but the entire Middle East.
All in all, the prime minister and his party "have been singularly failing
in convincing the country that the policies they're pursuing are correct,"
Ozel says. "And that includes the people who actually constitute his base."
But it might not be Erdogan's obvious desire to topple the Assad regime
that finally spurs Turkish involvement in Syria. Experts say it's likely
that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Kurdish liberation movement that
is listed as an official terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and
the European Union, is working with Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.
"In the north, [the Assad regime] has allotted five provinces to the
Kurds, to the terrorist organization," Erdogan told a Turkish television
station in July. Would he attack fleeing rebels if they attacked the
Turkish side? "That's not even a matter of discussion, it is a given,"
he replied.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/07/26/228476.html
"Looking at foreign intervention in Syria, the whole Kurdish issue might be
the entree point, especially for Turkey," says Shaikh.
For centuries, Kurds have been pariahs in highly nationalist Turkey. The
possibility of the PKK reestablishing its ties with the Assad regime, which
had been severed in the late 1990s, and continuing its decades-long
insurgency against the Turkish state from northern Syria is seen as a grave
threat by Turkish leaders.
Erdogan "still doesn't have the backing and support for an intervention,"
Shaikh says. "But this issue rubs up against vital national security
interest."
As the Turkish premier ponders his next move, fighting between the PKK
and Turkish army has also spiked. On Sept. 6, Reuters reported that more
than 2,000 Turkish soldiers, accompanied by fighter jets and
helicopters, attacked PKK positions in southeast Turkey and northern
Iraq. On Sept. 2, 20 PKK militants and 10 soldiers were killed in a
coordinated PKK attack in southeast Sirnak province.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19461580
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/09/06/uk-turkey-kurds-clashes-idUKBRE8850CQ20120906
In Ankara, officials have decried the rise in violence as a mirror of
the escalating conflict next door. In July, Erdogan accused the regime
of allowing PKK militants to cross the border and operate alongside the
Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliated group, in embattled northern
Syria.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443571904577631570887903192.html
"There's more tension developing here, which points to there being a PKK
offshoot, the PYD, which is trying to dominate everything the Kurds are
doing inside Syria," Alterman says.
Of the estimated 2 million Kurds in Syria, Alterman says, most "want to be
a part of the opposition and the revolution and the Syria of the future.
But this is becoming difficult after the efforts of the PKK offshoot to
dominate the regime."
The Syrian president has been known to stir trouble with the Kurds as a way
of getting Turkey's attention. Assad has a long history of using the
Kurdish question -- arguably the most convoluted, long-running of Turkey's
foreign policy issues -- to bait Erdogan.
Assad's strategy "to provoke problems and get paid off for no longer
provoking problems," Alterman says. "What we've seen in the last year is
more PKK activity [allowed in Syria] intended to punish Turkey. The Kurdish
issue is a friction point in all of this, a tool that people use to get
back at each other."
Assad has worked to create friction between Arabs and Kurds by distributing
weapons to Arabs, Alterman notes, and telling them the Kurds are going to
try and dominate them. Alterman warns that an Arab-Kurd conflagration in
Syria "might not be far away."
As these issues come to a head, Erdogan will be faced with a tough
decision: Intervene and risk the wrath of his electorate, or stand by and
watch as Syria explodes in his face. In the meantime, Erdogan's tightrope
will grow thinner and wobblier.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/06/turkish_dilemma
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/06/turkish_dilemma
Turkey's voluble prime minister has talked himself into a corner on
Syria. Will the spiraling unrest next door finally force him to back
up his words?
BY KAREN LEIGH | SEPTEMBER 6, 2012
ISTANBUL - On Sept. 4 in Ankara, in a meeting with members of his ruling
Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan loudly threw down a gauntlet for next-door neighbor President
Bashar al-Assad.
"The massacres in Syria that gain strength from the international
community's indifference are continuing to increase," he said
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/756f2852-f766-11e1-8c9d-00144feabdc0.html.
"The regime in Syria has now become a terrorist state. We do not have the
luxury to be indifferent to what is happening there."
It was the culmination of increasingly strong rhetoric from a highly
conservative yet completely overextended leader who seems to want both
political stability in Syria -- and the central hero's role in bringing
down the Assad regime.
Erdogan complains that he has received little support from Turkey's allies.
On Sept. 5, he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that the United States
"lacked initiative" in dealing with the crisis in Syria. "There are certain
things being expected from the United States. The United States had not yet
catered to those expectations," he said. "Maybe it's because of the
pre-election situation."
The latest rhetoric has sent nervous waves down the Bosphorus, where
Erdogan has faced growing criticism from liberal political elites.
"There's no push within the country for him to go into Syria," says Soli
Ozel, a political commentator and professor of international relations at
Istanbul's Kadir Has University.
Erdogan once touted a "no problems with neighbors" foreign policy that
emphasized removing longstanding points of tension with surrounding
countries, including Syria. But with the advent of the Arab Spring, he
strongly supported revolutionaries working to topple the established order.
Today, the Turkish premier is aiming to be "a central diplomatic figure
with good ties to both the West and the Middle East, who can eliminate
problems on his borders," according to Jon Alterman, Middle East program
director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And
certainly there are ways that Syria could work out that would allow him to
emerge as the victor in all of this ... But there's also certain ways it
could work out that creates a lot of messiness for him."
Since the Syrian crisis erupted last March, Erdogan has, more than any
other leader, walked a tightrope between intervention and isolationism.
In late June, after Syrian forces shot down a Turkish fighter jet, he
swore that any Syrian military unit approaching the border "will be
regarded as a threat and treated as a military target." However, he
also said Syrian helicopters had infiltrated Turkish airspace five times,
without any retaliation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/26/turkey-threatens-syria-retaliation
http://articles.boston.com/2012-06-26/news/32427099_1_syrian-attack-syrian-helicopters-turkey
It's no easy task: Erdogan must balance a desire to take a leadership role
in Syria while simultaneously appeasing disgruntled voters with no desire
to get involved in an escalating quagmire. He must also manage the influx
http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_21465477 of more than 80,000
Syrian refugees who continue to stream across the border into the
Turkish province of Hatay, straining a region where schools and
hospitals are overcrowded and Arabic is now as common on public buses
as Turkish.
"People in Turkey don't want a rushed intervention in Syria. Most Turks are
worried about getting mired," says Salman Shaikh, director at the Brookings
Institution's office in Doha. He added, however, that Assad might beat them
to intervention -- exporting security threats into Turkey to retaliate for
Ankara's support to Syrian opposition fighters.
Even as Erdogan works to enhance Turkey's influence in the Arab world, he
is also taking aggressive steps to transform its domestic politics. He has
pushed Turkey, which is 99 percent Muslim, in a more socially conservative
direction, sparking controversy in May by calling for restrictions on abortion,
equating it with murder. For years, he has faced liberal criticism
over his endorsement of headscarves, worn by his wife and daughters.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18297760
In Istanbul's trendier cafes, it has become a source of amusement. Socially
liberal Turks joke that the volume of the daily call to prayer has been
turned up to unconscionable levels in a misguided attempt to get
non-observant Muslims to pay attention.
Combined with his support for a predominantly Sunni uprising in Syria, the
effect has been to cast Erdogan as a figure bent on imposing his religious
views across not only his own country, but the entire Middle East.
All in all, the prime minister and his party "have been singularly failing
in convincing the country that the policies they're pursuing are correct,"
Ozel says. "And that includes the people who actually constitute his base."
But it might not be Erdogan's obvious desire to topple the Assad regime
that finally spurs Turkish involvement in Syria. Experts say it's likely
that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Kurdish liberation movement that
is listed as an official terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and
the European Union, is working with Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.
"In the north, [the Assad regime] has allotted five provinces to the
Kurds, to the terrorist organization," Erdogan told a Turkish television
station in July. Would he attack fleeing rebels if they attacked the
Turkish side? "That's not even a matter of discussion, it is a given,"
he replied.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/07/26/228476.html
"Looking at foreign intervention in Syria, the whole Kurdish issue might be
the entree point, especially for Turkey," says Shaikh.
For centuries, Kurds have been pariahs in highly nationalist Turkey. The
possibility of the PKK reestablishing its ties with the Assad regime, which
had been severed in the late 1990s, and continuing its decades-long
insurgency against the Turkish state from northern Syria is seen as a grave
threat by Turkish leaders.
Erdogan "still doesn't have the backing and support for an intervention,"
Shaikh says. "But this issue rubs up against vital national security
interest."
As the Turkish premier ponders his next move, fighting between the PKK
and Turkish army has also spiked. On Sept. 6, Reuters reported that more
than 2,000 Turkish soldiers, accompanied by fighter jets and
helicopters, attacked PKK positions in southeast Turkey and northern
Iraq. On Sept. 2, 20 PKK militants and 10 soldiers were killed in a
coordinated PKK attack in southeast Sirnak province.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19461580
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/09/06/uk-turkey-kurds-clashes-idUKBRE8850CQ20120906
In Ankara, officials have decried the rise in violence as a mirror of
the escalating conflict next door. In July, Erdogan accused the regime
of allowing PKK militants to cross the border and operate alongside the
Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliated group, in embattled northern
Syria.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443571904577631570887903192.html
"There's more tension developing here, which points to there being a PKK
offshoot, the PYD, which is trying to dominate everything the Kurds are
doing inside Syria," Alterman says.
Of the estimated 2 million Kurds in Syria, Alterman says, most "want to be
a part of the opposition and the revolution and the Syria of the future.
But this is becoming difficult after the efforts of the PKK offshoot to
dominate the regime."
The Syrian president has been known to stir trouble with the Kurds as a way
of getting Turkey's attention. Assad has a long history of using the
Kurdish question -- arguably the most convoluted, long-running of Turkey's
foreign policy issues -- to bait Erdogan.
Assad's strategy "to provoke problems and get paid off for no longer
provoking problems," Alterman says. "What we've seen in the last year is
more PKK activity [allowed in Syria] intended to punish Turkey. The Kurdish
issue is a friction point in all of this, a tool that people use to get
back at each other."
Assad has worked to create friction between Arabs and Kurds by distributing
weapons to Arabs, Alterman notes, and telling them the Kurds are going to
try and dominate them. Alterman warns that an Arab-Kurd conflagration in
Syria "might not be far away."
As these issues come to a head, Erdogan will be faced with a tough
decision: Intervene and risk the wrath of his electorate, or stand by and
watch as Syria explodes in his face. In the meantime, Erdogan's tightrope
will grow thinner and wobblier.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/06/turkish_dilemma
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress