One of the big questions hanging in the air after Turkey’s recent indecisive elections is what it all means for Tayyip Erdoğan’s Syrian intervention. Obviously that depends on how the election results resolve themselves (a coalition government, and if so what coalition, or early elections), but given that there’s only a small number of possible outcomes it’s reasonable to do a little speculating. I interviewed Dr. Gönül Tol, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies, about the roots of Turkey’s involvement in Syria and how she sees things progressing from here. She described Erdoğan’s escalation in Syria as the product of national security concerns (rooted, of course, in the Kurdish situation) and a couple of errors on Ankara’s part:
According to Tol, in 2011 Erdogan saw the rising conflict in Syria as a test of his grand vision for Turkey as a regional power as well as a threat to Turkey’s economic access to markets in Syria and throughout the region. Erdogan believed that he “had leverage over Assad,” as improving relations between the two countries had increased Turkish investment in Syria. Whatever leverage Ankara believed that it had over Damascus was obviously not enough to moderate Assad’s response to the Arab Spring protests, and Turkey became one of the first countries to formally condemn that response.
In doing so, Tol believes that Turkey relied on then-Foreign Minister Davutoglu’s estimate that Assad’s position in Syria was so weak that he would be forced from power in “less than six months.” That estimate was obviously mistaken.
However, national security considerations, specifically with respect to its large Kurdish minority, have really been the biggest driver of Turkey’s Syria intervention. Tol says that “things really changed for Turkey” in 2012, when Assad, unable to control the area himself due to pressure from rebel forces, effectively handed control over much of northern Syria to Kurdish forces under the Democratic Union Party (PYD). The PYD is affiliated with Turkey’s Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which has been waging a violent separatist campaign against the Turkish government since 1984. Ankara blames an uptick in PKK-related violence in 2012 (not without justification) on Assad’s decision to give the PYD/PKK their own safe haven along the Turkey-Syria border. At this point, according to Tol, “Syria became a domestic and national security issue” for Erdogan’s government, and ousting Assad became Turkey’s biggest foreign policy priority.
Things have spun out from there over the past four years, with Ankara doing everything it can to help groups opposed to Assad and the Kurds, up to and including ISIS and Nusra, even though that policy puts it at direct odds with the US. The recent Kurdish success at Tel Abyad (the latest news suggests they may be advancing on Raqqa) has put Ankara in the awkward position of publicly being angry about a major ISIS defeat.
And, look, I’m obviously not a big Tayyip Erdoğan guy, but he’s not totally out of bounds here. The PKK is not unlike the IRA, in that both groups had/have legitimate grievances about the treatment of a minority population (the Kurds in Turkey, Catholics in Northern Ireland) but have gone about redressing those grievances in ways that are unjustifiable and ultimately probably self-defeating (which you could also say about Erdoğan’s decision to back Syrian extremists, to be fair). When Assad turned northeastern Syria over to the PKK’s buds, the PYD, there was an undeniable uptick in PKK violence in Turkey. Ankara isn’t just testing a line when they say that the situation in Syria is a national security matter for them. They’re just addressing it in a way that seems blind to reality and is highly likely to bring them more trouble down the road.
Dr. Tol isn’t optimistic about the election being resolved in a way that will moderate Ankara’s policy toward Syria and bring it more into line with the anti-ISIS focus of the US and the rest of Turkey’s NATO allies. The longer things go without a coalition being formed, the more likely that early elections are the outcome, and in that case Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party have a pretty good chance of winning back a slim majority for themselves. That would eliminate the need to do anything different in Syria.
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 