Turkey and ISIS: What's Next?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian 
 
The Turkish parliament on Oct. 2 passed a motion authorising its forces to be deployed in Iraq and Syria in the case of a threat to national security.

The bill, submitted by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, also allows for foreign troops to transit through Turkey and calls for the establishment of a so-called security zone of up to 32 kilometres inside neighbouring Syria.

A number of Arab countries have joined the American-led bombing campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the fundamentalist Sunni group which has quickly gained control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states of Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have all taken part in airstrikes against ISIS. Yet Turkey, which has the largest military in the region, and which borders both Iraq and Syria, had until now been somewhat reticent about joining the coalition.

Washington found this strange. After all, White House spokesman Josh Earnest remarked recently, it is certainly not in Turkey’s interest “for all that instability and violence to be occurring so close to their border.”

Turkey may have been constrained by the fact that its population is Sunni Muslim and that Turks generally sympathize with Sunni Arabs as victims. And ISIS is battling the Shi’ite governments of both Iraq and Syria. 

Behlul Ozkan, an assistant political science professor at Istanbul’s Marmara University, contends that Davutoglu’s strategy aims to export Turkey’s brand of political Islam and promote Sunni solidarity to extend Turkish influence.

In any case, Ankara is especially concerned that the international campaign against ISIS may bolster the regime in Damascus of Bashar al-Assad, whose resignation it has demanded. 

Turkish officials have long expressed frustration over the international community’s failure to heed their warnings that Assad’s continued grip on power were risking regional stability and sowing the seeds of Sunni radicalisation.

The ongoing civil war in Syria has placed a tremendous burden on Turkey. It would like to set up a buffer area inside Syria, protected by a no-fly zone, in part to halt the flow of refugees. Some 1.5 million Syrians are now in Turkey, including 160,000 Syrian Kurds who fled the recent fighting with ISIS.

There is also some historical symbolism involved in Turkey’s decision. There are reports that ISIS fighters have surrounded the 700 year old tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire.

It is considered a Turkish enclave, despite its location inside Syria. The tomb was made Turkish territory under a treaty signed with France in 1921, when France ruled Syria. Turkey was allowed to keep the tomb, place guards at it and raise a Turkish flag over it.

Turkey hardened its stance against the extremist Sunni militants after the Sept. 20 release of 46 of its citizens who had been seized in June by ISIS in Mosul, Iraq. In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan indicated that Turkey would no longer be a bystander in the campaign against ISIS.

Perhaps Erdogan has also decided to get involved in the fight against ISIS in order to prevent Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, who have links to Turkish Kurd separatists, from further strengthening their position as key western allies. Turkey has tried to prevent Turkish Kurds from crossing the border to help Syrian Kurds.

In any case, events have forced Erdogan’s hand. ISIS fighters armed with tanks and heavy weapons have advanced on the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani, right on the Syrian-Turkish border, which stretches for 933 kilometres.

The situation in Kobani is “very difficult,” said Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). The PYD is an offshoot of the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, the separatist Kurdish group inside Turkey with which Erdogan’s government has been in peace talks for more than a year. 

But the Kurds are not pleased with the idea of a buffer zone occupied by Turkish troops, in areas now under Syrian Kurdish control. 

Cemil Bayik, co-chair of the Union of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), the political umbrella group dominated by the PKK, told the Turkish daily Radikal that it would spell the end of the peace efforts, “because a buffer zone is directed against us.”

Some Syrian Kurds have even accused Turkey of offering covert aid to the Islamic State in its efforts to eject Kurds from border areas in Syria.

And the PKK has become so infuriated by Erdogan’s approach that its leaders are threatening to resume their 30-year guerrilla war inside Turkey. That’s not something Erdogan wants to hear.

Henry Srebrnik i