Erdogan's calculated Syrian
affront By M K Bhadrakumar
The Turkish leadership has chosen to be
extremely assertive about developments in Syria in
a calculated move to ride international concern.
But Damascus has brusquely snubbed Ankara. The two
sides match each other in assertiveness. For
Turkey, pressing ahead means intervention in
Syria. Backing off involves loss of face.
On the other hand, saving face requires
that Syria backs off, which it is in no mood to do
- least of all, after the Standard & Poor's
downgrading of the United States' credit rating on
Friday. History will have to judge whether Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was
irrationally assertive following an
iftar
(breaking of the fast during
the Muslim holy month of Ramadan) dinner last
Friday in Istanbul.
He announced that he
was deputing Foreign Minister Mehmet Davutoglu to
proceed to Damascus on Tuesday. Erdogan then
asserted:
We have been very patient until now,
waiting to see whether we can fix this [Syrian
situation], whether they [President Bashar
al-Assad] will listen to what we have been
saying. But our patience is running out now ...
He [Davutoglu] will have the necessary talks and
convey our messages in a decisive manner.
The ensuing process will be shaped by
the response we get [from Damascus] ... We don't
have the latitude to remain a bystander to what
happens in Syria. We are hearing voices coming
from Syria and we definitely must respond by
doing whatever we are required
to.
Activists say at least 1,700
civilians have been killed and tens of thousands
arrested since an uprising against the government
began in mid-March.
Erdogan made a
startling claim that what happens in Syria is an
"internal affair" for Turkey and not a foreign
policy issue, given the 850-kilometer border
between the two countries and their deep cultural
and historical links. This is the first time
Erdogan has hinted Turkey might intervene in
Syria. It wasn't one of those intemperate
outbursts for which he is well-known. Erdogan
intended it as a calculated affront to the Syrian
regime and he had the Sunni Muslim Arab audience
in mind.
Two-way assertiveness
The context becomes important. Damascus
has succeeded in blunting Turkey's attempt to
incite violence in Syria. The Syrian army took
hundreds of casualties but Turkish interference
has been thwarted. Turkish intelligence now faces
the unenviable task of starting all over again. To
Turkey's discomfiture, there has been no uprising
in Damascus, or in Aleppo.
A setback in
Syria embarrasses Turkey in front of Saudi Arabia
and even tiny Qatar. Ankara's pretensions that
"Turkey's model is rising" in the Arab world - to
quote Umit Boyner, head of the Turkish Industry
and Business Association, are getting nowhere in
Syria.
On the contrary, as Boyner put it,
"Although the change is defined as spring, a dead
winter could come to the region as well." Turkey's
efforts to persuade the international community to
be proactive have not met with enthusiasm in
European capitals, which suspect Ankara's
territorial ambitions toward its former colony and
in any case are distracted over Libya and
Afghanistan. Meanwhile, time isn't on Turkey's
side. Assad has announced reforms toward a
multi-party system and plans to hold "free and
fair elections" within the year. Unfortunately for
Turkey, Syrian "refugees" have also begun
returning home. The Turkish government admits that
out of the 16,251 Syrians who crossed over as
refugees, 8,836 have already gone back home and as
of last Friday, only 7,415 Syrians were in the
camps in Hatay province. They hardly provide
reason for "humanitarian intervention".
Again, as a perceptive Turkish scholar
Bahadir Dincer wrote in Hurriyet newspaper:
A stronger Turkish position [apropos
Syria] seems to be blocked internationally ...
As each day passes, the risks of taking action
are increasing immensely. Now, our attempts to
sympathize with the Syrian victims may be
interpreted as a preference for a certain sect
[Salafi]. This increases our possibility of
being isolated from the international community
on the Syrian issue ... [the] United States
anticipated this while it remained uninvolved by
saying, "There is nothing to do, we don't know
what to do," which also puzzled Turkey.
Davutoglu's visit to Damascus is
carefully timed - just ahead of a report United
Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon will present
to the Security Council on Syria on Thursday. Ban
spoke to Assad on Saturday. He expressed "strong
concern" at the "mounting violence and death toll"
and urged Assad to "stop the use of military force
against civilians immediately". Ban underscored
that for Assad's reform program to "gain
credibility, the use of force and mass arrests
must stop immediately".
Erdogan is
proceeding on the expectation that Western powers
will succeed in getting the UN Security Council to
adopt a resolution on Syria. He is positioning
Turkey accordingly. Media reports have repeatedly
suggested that Turkey is pressing the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization to back its
intervention in Syria and that Ankara has drawn up
operational plans, but Europe is unwilling to be
drawn into a sectarian war and suspects Turkey's
intentions toward Syria.
Damascus has
estimated that Turkey is a trouble-maker. The day
after Erdogan assertively announced Davutoglu's
mission to Damascus, Assad's foreign policy
adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said in a report flashed
by the Syrian official news agency, SANA: "If ...
Davutoglu is coming to Syria to deliver a decisive
message, then he will hear even more decisive
words in relation to Turkey's position."
She added in a thinly veiled reference to
interference by Turkish intelligence, "Turkey
still has not condemned the savage murders of
civilians and military men by armed terrorist
groups."
A demoralized army Is
Erdogan overreaching? His self-confidence today
may be at an all-time high following his assertion
of civilian supremacy over the pashas in
the military, but Turkey's capacity to project
power beyond its borders may have suffered. An
uneasy calm prevails today after Erdogan's victory
over the Turkish top brass (See Turkey
says farewell to the generals, Asia Times
Online, Aug 4, 2011).
He needs to
consolidate his victory by ensuring that civilian
supremacy becomes truly irreversible and to that
end he needs to initiate far-reaching structural
and legislative reforms.
First and
foremost, the military needs to be brought down to
the level of any other state organ and,
specifically, it must be made subordinate to the
defense minister. The military's budget needs to
be brought within the ambit of civilian auditing.
Again, it is only through an overhaul of the
military academies that the "mindset" of the
officer corps can be molded to imbibe democratic
culture and to respect civilian supremacy.
What infinitely complicates matters is
that this "mindset" of the military man - that he
is the Praetorian Guard of the Turkish republic -
also happens to be a cultural heritage bequeathed
to him by founding father Kemal Ataturk.
These measures will take time and for now,
the military will remain a problem area for the
Erdogan government. The pro-government media are
crowing that at the annual meeting of the Supreme
Military Council last week, Erdogan sat alone at
the head of the conference table in a marked
departure from the previous practice of sitting
beside the chief of the Turkish general staff. But
things are not as simple as that.
According to a report by Hurriyet
newspaper, the new appointed military chief,
General Necdet Ozel (whom Erdogan promoted) has
his hands full with a "demoralized army and
possible operational shortcomings". Ozel needs to
establish himself first by correcting any
perception within the military ranks that he
betrayed them and cozied up to an Islamist leader.
The establishment daily quoted a former
army officer: "They [Turkish military] are no
longer an orderly organization but just a crowd.
The result of hesitations and uncertainty is
inaction." The officer told Hurriyet that
Erdogan's crackdown had had the effect of
"crippling the military's operational capability
as officers grew less confident in
decision-making, anxious about ending up in
prison, where scores of fellow officers, among
them some 40 generals, are already incarcerated".
Everything boils down to a matter of
leadership. Demoralized armies have been motivated
by great leadership from the time of Alexander.
Napoleon did it and Josef Stalin, too. Indeed,
Ataturk himself did it in the Gallipoli campaign
against very heavy odds.
Erdogan is a born
fighter and will face a great temptation. He might
weigh in the political advantages of involving the
military in a real war in order to remold its
moral fiber as the army of a nation of observant
Sunni Muslims. Politicians are known to make
obscure calculations.
Such enterprises are
highly risky, but then Erdogan has a passion for
risk-taking and he knows the Saudis and Qataris
will be willing to finance his venture to defend
"Sunni empowerment" in Syria. (Saudi Arabia's King
Abdullah demanded an end to the bloodshed in Syria
on Monday and recalled his ambassador to
Damascus.)
All this makes Erdogan's
outburst at the Iftar party on Friday and
Davutoglu's mission to Damascus rather engrossing.
The former professor will be facing his toughest
challenge as a diplomat when he arrives in
Damascus, as his pet dogma of "zero-problems" in
Turkey's relations with its neighbors lies in
complete ruins.
Two contradictory traits
of the Turkish personality will be vying for
supremacy on Tuesday - admiration for
assertiveness and the famous trait of saving face.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His
assignments included the Soviet Union, South
Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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