In its efforts to exert more influence in the Middle East, Turkey has repeatedly failed to show surefootedness. Middle East expert Walter Posch sees this political failure as a disaster with far-reaching consequences.
For many years, Turkey systematically sealed itself off from the Arab-Islamic world with Kemalism. However, the subsequent opening turned into a quasi-“neo-Ottoman” foreign policy in the region, the limits of which were soon to become apparent. Although Ankara’s investments in the Arab world were just as welcome as the high-quality Turkish products, the numerous references to the Ottoman Empire, which always seemed gauche in context, caused irritation, especially as propagated by the current Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Ankara also showed little diplomatic and political understanding by unilaterally supporting the various branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, which incidentally also includes the Palestinian Hamas. Some experts close to the AKP government saw Ankara as the quasi protective and leading power of the Muslim Brotherhood, which also took the political helm in Egypt under Morsi. This must have made the Saudis and some of the Gulf states prick up their ears. While Turkey openly dreamed of extending its own influence to Egypt via Syria (first with, then against Assad), the Wahhabi kingdom reacted and supported the secular military against the Islamist government. Ankara subsequently proved time and again that it is no more sure-footed in the sands of the Arabian deserts than the Europeans – perhaps even less so when you consider the small number of Arabic-speaking Turkish diplomats. Just think back to the back and forth over support for the attack on Libya or the turnaround in relations with Syria, and finally the Iraq policy, which showed how difficult it was for Ankara to deal with the Iraqi Shiites. Nevertheless, Iraq is one of the few examples where Ankara has constructively tackled long-standing problems. Namely, in a political minefield that no previous government has dared to solve: the Kurdish question. It is certainly no coincidence that the normalization of relations with the Iraqi Kurds only succeeded and could only be diplomatically underpinned when the “Northern Iraq” dossier was transferred back from the General Staff to the Foreign Ministry in the course of the power struggle between Erdoğan and the military in 2007. At the same time, important aspects of the decades-long policy of denial towards the Kurds were revised. From the Iraqi Kurdish perspective, Ankara is interesting in many respects. As a counterweight to the Iranians, who are omnipresent in the Iraqi Kurdish regions – and not only there -, as a gateway to the West and not least as an economic partner. Above all, however, Turkey plays an important role in exporting Kurdish oil and gas to the world market. This is because the Kurdish regional government is unspokenly pursuing economic and political separation from Baghdad. Considering what has been achieved so far, it is only understandable that Regional President Masud Barzani wants to put the future Kurdish state on a secure economic footing with a fair-weather policy towards Ankara, which is only possible via Turkey’s pipeline network. This in turn rules out a policy hostile to Turkey on the part of Erbil (capital of the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan) from the outset.
At the same time, Erbil’s concessions have limits and are not possible without a substantial improvement in the cultural and political rights of the Kurds in Turkey. This includes first of all an end to state violence in the affected region and the laying down of weapons by the PKK guerrillas. There have been setbacks in both cases. For example, the necessary Ergenekon trial, in the context of which the systematic human rights violations in the south-east of the country could have been clarified, was misused by the government to silence all unpopular voices and intimidate the army leadership. And on the PKK side, there has been no talk of laying down arms for some time now. On the contrary, the impressive transformation from an organization defeated in Turkey to an expansive and newly structured transnational Kurdish liberation movement points in the opposite direction. The organizational and military strengthening of the PKK was clearly demonstrated by its offshoot PYD in Syria. In summer 2013, it declared the three Kurdish cantons autonomous and has since maintained a kind of equidistance from the Baath regime in Damascus and the majority of the opposition, while fighting the radical Islamists. At the same time, they neutralized Barzani’s supporters in Syria, who then had the border between Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan closed. Around the same time, the PKK-affiliated press said that the Syrian experience should also be implemented in Turkey, which was met with great concern in Ankara. In the summer of 2014, several political strands became entangled: on the one hand, Turkish diplomats were arrested by the Islamic State in Mosul and handed back to Ankara under unclear conditions. Since then, even friends of Turkey have suspected Ankara of double-dealing. At the same time, Barzani’s fighters captured the city of Kirkuk, which had been fought over for generations. Which in turn explains why the front was neglected in the West and collapsed with the first onslaught of IS. The PKK then went on the offensive and covered up the mass exodus of the local Yazidis, an esoteric minority considered apostate by Muslims. Since then, guerrillas (PKK) and peshmerga (Barzani) have been working together to push IS back from Sinjar.
In Syria, on the other hand, the IS got stuck in the small town of Kobane. The media coverage of the fighting was partly due to the PKK, but to a greater extent it was due to the American interest in distracting attention from the fighting around Baghdad airport. The high proportion of international jihadists entering Syria via Turkey fueled suspicions that Ankara was directly supporting IS. This seems unlikely, as Ankara primarily supports al-Nusra in the Islamist camp, while at the same time participating with the USA in training the moderate opposition. Rather, the many waves of purges are likely to have weakened the capabilities of the Turkish intelligence services and special police units. This makes it difficult to counter the threat posed by experienced jihad fighters. Furthermore, not only the Turks, but also other states, have turned a blind eye for too long when radical Islamists have traveled to the crisis region in Syria via Istanbul. After all, they were not prepared to provide their own troops for the actual goal of toppling Assad. What began as an ambitious foreign policy ended in political disaster for Ankara in the Arabian desert. Assad is still in power, the international jihadists are almost impossible to control and IS is an unpredictable neighbor. Added to this is the intertwining of internal and external security: the fighting in Kobane pitted jihadist (IS) and Marxist (PKK) Kurds against Turks from Turkey. So it will probably not be long before the multi-front war in Syria spills over into Turkey.
