Despite Turmoil, Turkey is a Rising Power

By Henry Srebrnik,  Saint John Telegraph-Journal

Turkey has seen its biggest protests since 2013 as hundreds of thousands of people across the country have been gathering to demonstrate against the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

Imamoglu, the mayor of Turkey’s largest city since 2019, is seen as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival. Erdogan, who has been president since 2014, would have to seek a constitutional amendment to run again in 2028.

Imamoglu was arrested on March 19, days before he was set to be voted in as the presidential nominee for the Republican People’s Party (CHP). Days later, he was charged with “establishing and managing a criminal organisation, taking bribes, extortion, unlawfully recording personal data and rigging a tender.” He described the corruption allegations as politically motivated; a conviction would prevent him from running in a presidential election. CHP leader Ozgur Ozel called the demonstrations “an act of defiance against fascism.”

One of Turkey’s most popular politicians, Imamoglu grew up in the province of Trabzon. By 2009, he had entered local politics and, in 2014, became mayor of Istanbul’s middle-class Beylikduzu district. When the CHP announced him as a candidate in the race for the mayoralty of all of Istanbul in 2019, it came as a surprise to many. But he beat the candidate of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).

All this has been particularly grating to Erdogan, who was himself mayor of the city between 1994 and 1998, and who has been trying to turn the country into a more conservative Islamic state as well as a major regional power in the Middle East and southeastern Europe. He accused the opposition CHP of provoking the protests. “Stop playing with the nation’s nerves,” he demanded.

Turkey claims to be a functioning democracy, but is it? There are elections and voting is largely fair, that’s true. But opposition politicians can be jailed, and critics intimidated and arrested. The media is largely government controlled. It’s far from a level playing field.

Two years ago, Erdogan unveiled a vision of his country’s future. The “Century of Turkey” would have the country playing a far more autonomous, assertive role. “The international community will see a Turkey that takes more initiative in solving global crises”, the president promised, as Ankara would push for the “establishment of peace and stability” in its region.

The concept built on Erdogan’s idea that Turkey was on track to become a “logistic superpower,” and would, he predicted, eventually become one of the world’s top nations. After all, with a new pro-Turkish government in Syria, and Iran’s regional influence greatly diminished since Hezbollah’s defeats in Lebanon, it is Turkey that looks ready to fill its place. And it is also possible it’s longstanding problem with its Kurish population may soon be settled.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s disengagement from Europe, Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO, seems suddenly more attractive. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has jested that the Europeans were now “rediscovering” Turkey’s existence. Turkey has become a major foreign policy actor in its neighborhood and beyond, whether that’s in Syria, the South Caucasus or Central Asia. So European Union members are treading carefully. After all, it serves as a strategically significant buffer to control migration flows to Europe.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy certainly understands this. He recently visited Erdogan in the wake of Trump’s dealings with Vladimir Putin. And Turkey, as a Black Sea power that has retained relations with both Russia and Ukraine, as well as China and the United States, now appears better positioned than many Western states to influence a potential peace agreement. Trump has apparently described Erdogan as “a very smart guy” and “very tough”; he also credited the Turkish president with the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Finally, Erdogan has been strengthened by the decision of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), which for decades has fought for Kurdish autonomy, to lay down its arms. Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the separatist party, has suggested that the issue may be settled by peaceful means.

The PKK was founded in 1978 with the goal of establishing an independent, socialist-orientated Kurdish state in the Middle East. Later, it softened this goal and instead called for the recognition of Kurdish identity, as well as political and cultural autonomy in areas predominantly settled by Kurds.

Ocalan established the first PKK headquarters in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley, then under Syrian control, and many activists joined him there. As a militant organization, the PKK launched an armed campaign against Turkey in 1984 from northern Iraq. It is estimated the armed conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state has killed over 40,000 individuals, many of them civilians.

In 1999, the Turkish secret service abducted Ocalan in Nairobi, Kenya. Extradited to Turkey, he was charged with treason and sentenced to death. His death sentence was later commuted, and he has been held in solitary confinement ever since.

It appears that Kurdish organizations in Syria and northern Iraq have agreed with Ocalan’s decision to dissolve the PKK, so prospects for a resolution seem more promising than ever. Were peace to come to Turkey’s southeast, where most Turkish Kurds live, this would strengthen Erdogan’s standing immeasurably, despite the current massive disorders.

 

Syria’s Civil War Has Been Hard for Minorities

 

By Henry Srebrnik, Charlottetown Guardian

The Islamist Sunni group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), along with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), have now taken control of Syria.

Minority groups suffered disproportionately from the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011. Most of the current Syrian population are Arabs, primarily Sunni Muslims; but there are also significant minority groups, including Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Kurds. These groups today represent approximately 25-30 per cent of the population, with Kurds comprising the largest group at around 10-15 per cent.

While still significant, these percentages nevertheless reflect the dramatic decline of some of the communities, the Christian community, in particular: their 10 per cent of the population in 2011 now stands at two per cent. The minorities are dispersed geographically.

Kurds live in the north and northeast, and Alawites in the coastal regions such as Latakia and Tartus; Christians, who are comprised of Greek Catholics, Maronites, Armenians, and Assyrians, live in cities like Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs, as well as in rural areas.

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has been the most minority-friendly region of Syria. It operated since 2012 with a decentralized governance model, implementing policies favoring pluralism and self-administration. It expanded its areas of control during the war against the Islamic State in particular. It is governed by local councils representing all of the ethnic groups in the region.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the military arm of the AANES, has likewise been a coalition composed of various ethnic and religious groups. Although the core of the SDF comes from the People’s Defense Units (YPG), a Kurdish unit, other groups are also represented.  

In the early 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood conducted the first great uprisings against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, especially in Homs and Hama. While the government brutally and successfully suppressed them, many Syrian Sunni Arabs looked at the uprisings favorably, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood clandestinely thereafter.

 During the same period, Sunni Arabs also consolidated their ties with their Iraqi brethren across the border. They established smuggling routes supporting their Iraqi neighbors. By the 1990s, it had led to good connections between Sunni Arabs in Syria and the Iraqi state apparatus.

In this context, it is unsurprising that the Kurdish movement in Syria quickly declared their own “third path” in the opposition to Assad, separate from the Arab supremacists and jihadis filling the ranks of the opposition in 2012. The efforts of the SDF, with Kurdish YPG fighters playing a central role alongside Assyrian militias like the Syriac Military Council and Sunni Arab units, defeated ISIS.

But now the new Syrian regime has reached an agreement with the SDF to integrate the latter with state institutions. Syria made the announcement on March 10 and released images of a signing ceremony featuring the Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and the head of the SDF, Mazloum Abdi.

The deal will integrate SDF institutions into the new government, handing over control of border checkpoints as well as the region's oil and gas fields to the central government. As well, Damascus has granted the Druze militias autonomy and permission to keep their weapons.

For Christians and Alawites, the situation is more worrisome. Unlike the Kurds and Druze, many of them face Sunni Arab violence; they are seen as collaborators of the late regime. For years, most Syrians have suffered humiliation and degradation at the hands of an Alawite ruling minority, whose dominance under Assad has left an indelible mark of resentment. Gruesome videos of executions of Alawites have begun to emerge, alongside reports of attacks on Christian neighborhoods.

In addition, HTS is continuing Assad’s divide-and-rule strategy with the Christian minorities, who are more internally divided, both culturally and politically, than the Kurds. The Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, and Melkite Greek Catholic communities have expressed concern over the recent violence.

The heads of the Christian churches supported the Assad regime, which represented itself as the protector of the country’s minorities. “Many Syrian Christians in the country and in exile are deeply disappointed and angry at the attitude of their church leaders,” asserted Najib George Awad, a Syrian academic who researches theology at the University of Bonn. “Church leaders allowed themselves to be used as a PR tool by the Assad regime.”

Syria’s new interim constitution makes no mention of specific ethno-sectarian groups or divisions, because the new government claims they didn’t want a quota system. This leads to problems, with different groups competing for privileges. Religious or sectarian priorities then become part of politics, as in neighbouring Lebanon. Syria wishes to avoid that.