The Brazen Turks
This is an article I had written in 2019. Originally, it was supposed to be published in one of the many newspapers and political magazines in Germany, as an Op-Ed by someone who had just graduated in Political Science. To no one’s surprise, my opinion piece was not accepted. Perhaps due to its topic. Maybe because its author was quite brazen in his assumptions. But nearly three years later, I see myself indeed confirmed in my analysis about the topic of the article: the Turkish Intervention in Syria. I think now is the right time to publish the article by myself for everyone to read. Enjoy.
And the Turks do it again
"This video here shows the Turkish military shelling Kurdish civilians in a Syrian border town," Tom Llamas let slip on camera. The anchor of ABC's U.S. newsmagazine "World News Tonight" – ABC Is a division of the Walt Disney Corporation – read those words in October, as huge explosions shattered the peaceful night's rest in the supposed border town, accompanied by quite a few off-camera gunshots. Mr. Llamas was probably not even aware at that moment that this video was neither shot in Syria nor did it show the shelling of any people. After several comments in social media debunking the video as "fake", even the New York Times took up the issue. In fact, the footage shown had been recorded two years ago during an event in the US state of Kentucky. The explosions were just as real as the gunshots, but what went up in the air were not cars or tanks but some oil drums mounted for demonstration purposes in the distance, away from enthusiastic American spectators. The fact that this spectacle looked deceptively real on the original like a scene from the war and that it teaches us a lot about the gun culture in America, however, is not the explosive thing about the entire ordeal. It was simply a "mishap," as representatives of ABC called the incident. US President Trump also jumped on the bandwagon and used the opportunity to once again point the finger at the mendacity of the "fake news" media. His supporters, of course, are doing the same. (1)
However, there is another group of people who are upset about this fake news, and they are based in Turkey. For weeks, thousands of Turks have been complaining online on social media, as well as in forums like reddit, about the "bias" of the Western media regarding coverage of the Turkish offensive in northern Syria. In view of the unison in which German news portals from the left-wing .taz to the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also report on this military operation, the suspicion that the other side, the Turkish side, is no longer even being recognized is not conjured out of a hat. The same Turks who have complained for years about the media incompetence of "journalists" in Turkey who are close to the government and bought by the ruling party AKP (Justice and Development Party) are now also losing confidence in European and American media. This is also true of otherwise pro-Western Turks who feel close to opposition parties. Such a rapid evolution in thinking is never good for citizens' understanding of democracy, regardless of their background or political views.
Discussions about the loss of trust in journalism are all too familiar in Germany. They have also been going on in the U.S. and in Turkey for some time now – even pro-government journalists publicly criticize other, far more loyal pro-government journalists about their blatant fake news. Such debates, however, usually go in circles in the public eye. Therefore, instead of opening Pandora's box now, it is more worthwhile to revisit the issue in Syria. Q&A articles on the Turkish operation against the /SDF/YPG abound, but most of the time, important domestic issues are either completely ignored by the authors or mentioned only very briefly. And in order to counter any media criticism and polemics, regardless of which side they come from, it is useful to simply lay the facts on the table.
Of reasons and stipulations
US President Donald Trump announced to Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan on 07 October that the US would withdraw its troops from northeastern Syria. The Turkish government then relayed the order to Defense Minister Akar to begin Operation Peace Spring. The goal of this military offensive was to establish a 20-30 kilometer deep security zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, under Turkish supervision. The Kurdish Arab "Syrian Democratic Forces," which had set the tone there for the past several years, issued orders to its military arm, the YPG, to resist. That is why there has been and continues to be fighting between the Turkish army and the YPG. So far, so simple. But judging by the media coverage and European politicians, what Turkey is doing is not appropriate at all and a blatant violation of International Law. Jokes on them, there is no International Law for certain powerful countries like the United States. Only for the weaker nations whose military capacities and national economy are not very strong and resilient. Turkey is somewhere in the middle, and at least as aspiring as its neighbor Iran and the distant Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia. One must not forget Israel, either. These four countries have meddled in Near Eastern politics since the beginning of the “Arab Spring” in 2011, with decent success. Therefore, the Turks see things differently then European media, and Trump is trying to zigzag between threatening Turkey on the one hand and showing understanding on the other. But appreciation for what, actually?
The February 2016 bombing in Ankara, carried out by a PKK-splinter group, killed 30 civilians.
The reasons for the current operation are closely linked to domestic political developments in Turkey and go back almost four decades. Turkey has been officially in a struggle with the PKK since 1984, which the German media likes to refer to as the so-called "Kurdistan Workers' Party" – which is also its original name, but this belies the fact that the PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU. The PKK began as a Marxist-Leninist student movement that sympathized with the Kurds in the southeast of the country. After the bloody 1980 coup, more and more Kurdish Turks in Turkey felt discrimination towards their cultural roots. The PKK, after many Turks were expelled from the organization by its new leader Abdullah Öcalan, wanted Kurdish independence from the Republic of Turkey. The PKK's methods included abduction, forced recruitment of youth, rape as a means of exerting pressure on the civilian population, drug trafficking, money laundering, and more. However, the bloody 1990s in Turkey provided two important developments: First, Öcalan was captured and imprisoned after the Syrian government of Hafiz al-Assad caved in to Turkish pressure – Turkey had literally threatened war should Assad not hand over the terrorist leader. Keep in mind that in the 1990s, the Turkish Armed Forces didn’t fool around. They were the best trained and most able army in the entire region. From then on, Syria also classified the PKK as a terrorist organization, even though the country had previously offered sanctuary to PKK officials. Second, calls for peace negotiations within Turkey understandably grew louder. Moreover, the PKK looked away from independence. Its political arm, now known as the HDP, which is represented in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, is now calling for partial autonomy for the southeast instead of separatism vis-à-vis the Republic of Turkey.
Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP came to power shortly after the turbulent 1990s and led these peace talks between high-ranking Turkish officials and PKK affiliates in Oslo, but they fell apart in 2015. The fighting started again, but this time the PKK cannot hope in the least for backing from the Kurds. For since 1984, the Kurds have had their own language classes in schools, their own TV stations, radio stations and newspapers in Kurdish, and moreover, more Kurds live in Istanbul and Ankara than in the whole of southeastern Turkey, which in Europe is often referred to as "Kurdish territory." So things have quite improved for the Kurds, and they themselves sometimes vote for Atatürk's Republican People's Party (CHP), as they did recently in the local elections in Istanbul, which would have been unthinkable in the past. Obviously, the political preferences of both Turks and Kurds have changed massively since 1984. The Republicans, traditionally center-right and Kemalist, attend Kurdish mayors of the HDP in the east, who were deposed by the government by presidential decree, to show their solidarity, and Kurdish citizens give their votes to the Kemalists in the west because they are attracted by their policies in the big cities. Well, if one can call the CHP “Kemalist” these days. This does not infer that Turkish Kurds are satisfied with the policy – on the contrary, they have turned away from Tayyip Erdogan after initial euphoria. However, they are no longer as culturally disadvantaged as they were in the 20th century. Some things have improved, although not everything. But the PKK continued with its actions.
Government and Opposition in Unity?
The new mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, recently shared his solidarity with Turkish soldiers on the front lines in Syria. The pro-Western IYI party leader Meral Aksener recently countered Trump's threat to "annihilate" with the words:
"We in the opposition will continue to confront the government as hard as necessary. However, contrary to all threats [from Trump], we have one party in Turkey today that is respected by everyone, and that is the party of our red flag! [...] Let no one misunderstand us, Turkey has not been in this neighborhood since only yesterday, Turkey did not have to go to Havard to learn how a state should function." (2)
Now, the U.S. has been extremely unpopular in Turkey for decades, anyway. Its popularity ratings are nowhere lower than here, where only 18 percent had a positive image of the U.S. in 2018. (3) However, the fact that pro-Western and thoroughly pro-American politicians such as Aksener so openly contra the Americans contradicts the opposition's previous campaign tactics, which always sought dialogue with the West. Rather, the attitude of the CHP and IYI parties, which now govern over 60 percent of the population at the municipal level, is a good indicator of the shift in priorities in Turkish foreign policy. As U.S. observers, among others, have correctly noted, since 2016 the Turkish government has been increasingly aligning itself with Russia and its allies in the region and, it seems, gradually turning its back on its Western allies. (4) The Turkish opposition also views the United States under Donald Trump as a threat to Turkish security interests and has long felt abandoned by Washington in the fight against terror. A tiny splinter group of the opposition, which is believed to have played an important role in reversing the 2016 coup attempt by Gülenist officers, is also increasingly setting the tone in President Erdogan's palace. While these extremely pro-Russian and pro-Chinese Eurasians have little domestic influence on Erdogan, their alliance with the government is de facto an open secret in Turkey, and their influence on the country's foreign policy is clearly evident, according to a Middle East Institute research report. The Eurasian party’s chairman even recently opined that his party, rather than Erdogan, controlled the country's destiny. (5) The 180-degree turn of the AKP government, which had always been pro-American since coming to power in 2002, can thus be logically explained by internal pressure emanating from the Eurasianists. (6)
One crystal-clear fact must ultimately be: when it comes to national issues, Turks stick together. This was not always the case in the past – most recently under Atatürk, truth be told – but for some years now the Turkish populace has realized that on some issues the many subgroups should put aside their differences and tackle the problem together. That may be easier in foreign policy than on internal issues. But for a society as polarized as Turkey's, this is a remarkable development.
Mansur Yavas, mayor of Ankara since 2019, also showed his support for the intervention in Syria. He is seen as the most promising candidate against Erdogan in the upcoming elections.
Conflict of Interest
Now back to the situation in Syria. The YPG in Syria is a direct offshoot of the PKK, which, unlike the PKK, is still striving for a Marxist-Leninist revolution, but on Syrian territory. (7) They publicly revere the former PKK leader Öcalan and make no secret of it, but had also contributed to the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. "Why is Turkey fighting this organization if it defeated IS?" some readers may now ask. Because the YPG maintains contacts with the PKK, and has been able to pass on to the PKK the weapons that the YPG has received from the U.S. and other countries, the Turks' response is. (8) The claim of leading American politicians about the "democratic" intentions of the YPG can be countered immediately by the fact that it was U.S. General Raymond Thomas who, according to his own statements, suggested that the PKK change its name to "Syrian Democratic Forces". Because that would “sell better”. (9) Thus, the U.S. is also fully aware of the connection between the YPG/SDF and the PKK.
The Turkish-Syrian border cannot be equally guarded everywhere, despite all the efforts of the border guards, and the YPG took advantage of this. So the YPG is helping the PKK which has caused much suffering in Turkey. And its success, which it owes largely to the Americans, could lead it to break away from Damascus and declare its own Kurdish-dominated state. The next step could be to encourage the PKK, and with it the HDP, to insist on separatism again and for the Kurds in Turkey to merge with the administration in northern Syria. This would mean land loss for Turkey. To put an end to such mind games, Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring. For years, Turkey complained that it felt threatened by the YPG, but it fell on deaf ears in NATO. Now that Turkey has made good on its threat and taken matters into its own hands, NATO partners are showing shock and horror. Incidentally, the West did not want to use ground troops against IS, while Turkey took the risk in the form of two military operations in 2016 and 2018. The cleansing of northwestern Syria from IS – Turkish troops eliminated thousands of Islamist fighters – by the NATO ally on the Bosporus seems to have been quickly and happily forgotten. (10)
And there is another reason, which is both security and domestic: refugees. After several polls showed sometimes 75 percent, sometimes 90 percent of Turks (and Kurds) demanding that Syrian refugees leave Turkey after years of hospitality, the government had to react and is now killing two birds with one stone. The population is furious because, on the one hand, they have to bear the consequences of a year-long recession, and on the other hand, Syrian refugees can maintain businesses in the big cities without registration and without tax obstacles. As a result, entire neighborhoods in Istanbul are home to restaurants, snack bars and cafes with Arabic inscriptions, and no Turkish or Kurdish is spoken. This goes too far for both Turks and Kurds. The government is responding to this resentment in the truest sense of the word, because originally the AKP wanted the refugees to stay and receive Turkish citizenship. Curiously, the Syrian and other refugees from Afghanistan or Pakistan might be – surprise! – rather conservative-leaning and religious in character. Of course they would then vote for the AKP. But it won’t come that far.
The Turkish-administered security zone in northern Syria is now expected to house up to 1 million of these refugees, and Turkey says it is helping financially by rebuilding towns, building schools, hospitals, places of worship, and general infrastructure. Among these refugees, by the way, are 300.000 Kurdish-Syrian people who also received protection in Turkey for years. Whether it all works out that way in the end remains to be seen. But the pressure from citizens on the government to send the refugees back to Syria is too great for Erdogan to have stood idly by. After all, there are already rumors again about a possible new election, and the exasperation with the country's economic situation is still being felt. The high unemployment and inflation rates of recent months no longer allow for financial support for the refugees. Perhaps, Erdogan can endure this pressure two or three years. But sooner or later, even his own voters might turn on him in the long run.
The reasons for the Turkish military operation are thus both domestic and foreign.
Only Tayyip goes to Moscow
Since the Europeans could not contribute so that the misery in Syria was finally ended, and the USA under Trump would have withdrawn their troops sooner or later anyway, the Turks took the scepter into their own hands. Hence the sole process of the last few weeks. On the one hand, EU politicians condemn the Turks for their actions, on the other hand, countries like the Netherlands until recently supplied machine guns to extremist Islamist groups in Syria, which are not much different from "IS". Accordingly, there is great anger on the Turkish side about the West's "hypocrisy," both among Erdogan supporters and Erdogan opponents. The insinuations that Turkey wants to commit "genocide" in Syria, when so many Kurds are active in the Turkish army and politics alone – 30 to 40 percent of Erdogan's followers, by the way, used to be of Kurdish descent – must also be rejected as absurd. Many politicians, managers, doctors, skilled workers, and housewives in Turkey are of Turkish, Armenian, Greek, Laz, Circassian and Kurdish descent, some are atheists, some devout Muslims, and others, though often secretly, of Jewish faith. Turkey is not ethnically or denominationally homogeneous, it should be noted. The claim that Turkey consists of 99 percent Muslims can be justified by the fact that until a few years ago, every Turkish citizen - especially at birth - had the denomination "Islam" entered in the "Religion" tab of the Turkish identity card. Anyone who wanted to take action against this had to go to court. And that cost a lot of money, so few protested against it. But by now, the identity cards do not feature a “Religion” tab anymore.
So why do the Americans rail against the Turks so much? Because the U.S. is neither concerned with the YPG nor with the Kurds in general. The U.S. are afraid that Turkey will gain more influence in Syria and thus increase the sphere of influence of Turkey's new allies, Russia and Iran. That is why Saudi Arabia and Israel have also condemned the action, saying it would strengthen their common rival Iran. And since the YPG is now negotiating with the Assad government, once the Turkish operation is completed, it is most likely that Assad, the Kurds and the other rebel factions will decide on a ceasefire, and probably not return to the status quo ante but at least leave the territorial integrity of the state of Syria untouched. Thus, the plans for a large Kurdish state would be gone and the influence of the supporters of the YPG would finally fade away. The Russians would have the upper hand in Syria, Turkey eliminated the leverage used against it and relieved the refugee situation at home, and al-Assad would then once again consolidate his power over Syria. This is the narrative in Turkey, Russia, and Iran. From this perspective, only the West is losing influence. U.S.-Turkish relations have been damaged since 2016 anyway. After the coup attempt, the Turks felt abandoned by the Obama administration, and after they received the S-400 surface-to-air defense systems from Moscow, the bland aftertaste remains that the U.S. wants to punish Turkey with the upcoming sanctions because of the Russian deal. How else to explain that Trump nearly bankrupted the Turkish economy in the summer of 2018 because of an evangelical pastor? Behind this may be the long-term assessment in influential neo-conservative military circles that Turkey must be kept in NATO "by force." Despite all threats, Turkey's geostrategic importance is far too high for the West to drop Turkey as Iraq once was and then fight it seriously. Access from the Black to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus and the geographic bridging position between Europe, Asia and the Middle East is in the end also a trump card for Turkey against the wildest neo-conservative considerations. Perhaps, one should not forget that Turkey used to be a bulwark against Soviet Imperialism for nearly half a century.
Vladimir Putin and Tayyip Erdogan may not see eye to eye anymore. But their relationship has been pragmatic from the very beginning – unbeknownst, it seems, to European journalists.
But it already seems too late. The media in the Western world have become obsessed with the idea that Turkey's actions constitute "ethnic cleansing”. Any references by Turkey to the YPG's links to the PKK are completely ignored. Even the Arab League, which has long paid homage to Erdogan as a "great Muslim leader," condemned the operation and is calling for Syria to return to the organization – the same organization that expelled its member Syria on its own initiative in 2012. Indeed, Turks make distressed couples band together again. The EU imposed an arms embargo on Turkey, but does not know itself how to establish peace in Syria and solve Turkey's refugee dilemma. But perhaps, Turkish observers think, the Europeans don't want that to happen either. Perhaps, European leaders want to be known in public as human rescuers of drowning refugees, but on no account want to take in any more Syrians from Turkey. And the Americans, meanwhile, are considering whether it wasn't Obama's fault for giving the dictator al-Assad to announce "red lines" and yet do nothing after crossing that line, causing the United States to lose influence in Syria. (11)
What did the Russian newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta say about Turkey's position in the world recently? Real friends are recognized only when war has broken out. There are only a few countries that have pledged support to Turkey, such as Pakistan, Qatar and the Turkic states of Central Asia. This is partly a consequence of the failed foreign policy under former AKP politician Ahmet Davutoglu. The long-time foreign minister turned a foreign policy of "zero problems with no neighbors" into "only problems with all neighbors," admittedly under Erdogan's promise. But the unity of Turkish society now and the increasing threat perception toward other countries allows only one conclusion: in the future, we must reckon with a Turkey that will not be dissuaded from its policy and will do what it thinks is right. These "cheeky Turks," as they like to call themselves, are showing more national sentiment right now than they have since the time of the republic's founder, Atatürk. Perhaps that is what scares some in Europe. We don't have to endorse it here or even salute it, but it would do the reporters in New York, Paris and Berlin good to take this development seriously. The last thing that society in Turkey needs now is a "community of values" consisting of the EU and the U.S. that suddenly no longer accepts the Turks as being part of the modern Northatlantic world. In this way, the West would not only lose influence in the Middle East, but also an entire nation to Asia that has been a reliable partner since 1952.
Sources
(1) THE NEW YORK TIMES: ABC Apologizes for Showing Video From U.S. Gun Range in Report on Syria, by Heather Murphy, Oct. 14, 2019. URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/business/media/turkey-syria-kentucky-gun-range.html.
(2) HÜRRIYET: Meral Akşener'den Trump'ın açıklamalarına sert tepki, Oct. 08, 2019. URL: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/meral-aksenerden-trumpin-aciklamalarina-sert-tepki-41346106.
(3) PEW RESEARCH CENTER: Global Indicators Database 2019, Turkey. URL: https://www. pewresearch.org/global/database/indicator/1/country/tr/.
(4) FOREIGN POLICY: Who lost Turkey?, by Keith Johnson and Robbie Gramer, July 19, 2019. URL: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/19/who-lost-turkey-middle-east-s-400-missile-deal- russia-syria-iraq-kurdish-united-states-nato-alliance-partners-allies-adversaries/.
(5) odaTV: Doğu Perinçek'ten çok konuşulacak sözler: "2014'ten bu yana Tayyip Erdoğan Türkiye'yi yönetmiyor," 23 Sep. 2019. URL: https://odatv.com/dogu-perincekten-cok- konusulacak-sozler-2014ten-bu-yana-tayyip-Erdoğan-turkiyeyi-yonetmiyor-23091908.html.
(6) For a detailed analysis on these "ultra-nationalists" who like to call themselves Kemalists, see MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE: The Rise of Eurasianism in Turkish Foreign Policy: Can Turkey Change its pro-Western Orientation?, by Selcuk Colakoglu, Apr. 16, 2019. URL: https://www.mei.edu/publications/rise-eurasianism-turkish- foreign-policy-can-turkey-change-its-pro-Western-orientation.
(7) THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: America's Marxist Allies Against ISIS, by Matt Bradley and Joe Parkinson, 7/24/2015.