Turkey shows double duplicity on
Syria Kaveh L Afrasiabi
With the blessing of the US and its other
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
partners, as well as its own national legislature
if not the entire Turkish population, some of whom
have been holding mass rallies in opposition to
Ankara's war policy vis-a-vis Syria, the Turkish
government has resorted to a double hypocrisy.
On the one hand, it has exploited the
mortar attack on a Turkish border town, which may
have well originated from the well-armed
opposition groups trying to weaken Damascus by
instigating Turkish-Syrian skirmishes, without
even a pause to inquire whether the Syrian army
had anything to do with that attack. Even The Wall
Street Journal admitted: "While Turkey blamed
Wednesday's attack on the Syrian regime, it
remained unclear whether it was a deliberate
attack or an errant bombing. Most
analysts in Turkey
concluded that President [Bashar al-] Assad had
little to gain from targeting Turkish civilians."
Instead of a measured, level-headed
response, the government of Recip Erdogan has
rushed lawmakers into giving him carte blanche for
Turkish incursions inside Syria, most likely as
part and parcel of a concerted effort to secure a
"safe haven" for Syrian rebels along the border,
where the (French-led) efforts to set up a Syrian
provisional government would gain a foothold on
Syrian territory.
On the other hand, this
"hard power" strategy has been combined, and
partly camouflaged, by the "soft power" tactic of
stepping back from the year-long calls for a
wholesale regime change in Damascus, by pretending
that Ankara is now lowering its expectations and
would be happy to see the embattled Assad
relinquish power and be replaced by his
vice-president, Farouq al-Shara, described by
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as "a man
of reason and conscience" who "has not taken part
in the massacres in Syria ... the Syrian
opposition is inclined to accept Shara" as the
future leader of the Syrian administration.
But this shows that Davutoglu himself is
not a man of either reason or conscience, as he
and his government are clearly sold on the
"neo-Ottoman" dream of acting as kingmakers in
neighboring countries, by giving lip service to
the United Nations' current efforts to stop the
deadly violence in Syria, as well as the efforts
of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, to establish
dialogue between the warring parties in Syria
through a "quartet" consisting of Egypt, Turkey,
Iran and Saudi Arabia.
But the Saudis, who
failed to show up at the quartet's last meeting in
Cairo, have apparently decided to pull out because
of their misgivings regarding the role of Iran,
which they see as part of the problem rather than
the solution, per reports in the Persian Gulf
media. This is as if the Saudis are the blessed
peacemakers and incapable of an earnest
self-critique, given their prominent role in
providing arms and finance to the Syrian
opposition - which by all indications will not
rest until the entire Ba'athist regime is
overthrown.
Still, irrespective of the
self-evident goals and objectives of the Syrian
opposition that belie Davutoglu's claim that they
would be content with a mere change of musical
chairs in Damascus, Ankara continues with its
dual-track approach that, as stated above, reeks
of hypocrisy. In fact, despite appearances to the
contrary, this shows no real change of Turkish
policy toward Syria, only a temporary adjustment
that underscores Ankara's determination to support
the armed opposition by opening a new front
against Damascus, sowing division in the Syrian
political hierarchy by giving the impression that
it has given up on the goal of regime change in
Syria, while in reality even that pretension at
this juncture is yet another cloaking maneuver to
bring about regime change in Damascus.
The
trouble with the present Turkish approach toward
Syria is, however, twofold. First, the Turkish
military salvos, entering a second week, run the
risk of military escalation and may well serve as
a unifying factor for Damascus, thus strengthening
Assad instead of weakening him as patriotic
Syrians rally behind the anti-Turkish cause.
Second, there is a saying "sever the head
and the body falls". Given the nature of Syria's
political hierarchy and tradition of strong
autocratic rulers, it is a safe bet that a
"Yemen-style" scenario has little chance of
success in Syria's multi-ethnic and
multi-religious, sect-driven system and,
consequently, the Turkish proposal for Assad's
deputy is an invitation to a transition to system
collapse, not system preservation.
Davutoglu wants us to believe that this is
not the case and that a post-Assad transition
without much tampering with the present Ba'ath-led
order is indeed feasible. But Davutoglu and other
Turkish leaders are probably hiding their
anticipation of a rather quick unraveling of the
post-Assad scenario presented by them, by the
combined pressures to (a) dismantle the dreaded
security infrastructure, (b) put on trial the
perpetrators of crimes against Syrian population,
(c) write a new constitution by a new
democratically elected parliament, one that would
do away with the Ba'ath Party's monopoly of power
and dominance of Syrian political space, and (d)
merge the armed groups with a new, and much
sanitized, Syrian national army.
This is,
of course, assuming that the post-Assad scene will
not be dominated by revenge killings, chaos,
confessional retributions, sectarian divisions,
the de facto breakup of national unity,
uncontrolled irredentism, and so on.
Indeed, the list of challenges inherent in
the new Turkish proposal is a formidable one and
raises serious question about its applicability
and chance of success, unless of course the
Turkish narrative is a mere put-on, that is, to
mollify the image of Turkish aggressors violating
Syrian sovereignty in the name of legitimate
response to unprovoked attacks on their territory.
Still, in light of the Syrian quagmire and
the rising toll of civilian casualties and mass
refugees - the latest reports indicate tens of
thousands have fled to Egypt as well - Ankara must
have realized that its old regime-change strategy
is in trouble and new nuances must be introduced,
on both the military and political fronts. Thus,
via the suspicious mortar attack cited above, it
has inserted itself more forcefully in the Syrian
military equation while simultaneously appearing
more dovish by making it look as if it can live
with a Syrian Alawite-led Ba'athist regime without
Assad.
It has thus widened the gulf
between its rhetoric and its intentions, at the
same time triggering the unintended consequence of
having to come to grips with the fact that the
rebels are simply incapable of dislodging the
regime in Damascus in the foreseeable future, at
least not without foreign assistance.
Bottom line: the chips have fallen on the
military side, not the political side, of the
equation, with Turkey the NATO member intent on
extending NATO's foothold inside Syria slowly but
surely, irrespective of certain misgivings by some
Western politicians, including in Washington, who
are wary of jihadis in the Syrian civil war.
The sad part of the unfolding tragedy in
Syria consists of the fact that ambitious and
self-aggrandizing politicians in Turkey are
allowed to play a disproportionate role as
architects of the Western approach toward Syria,
even though Europe has neither the finances nor
the desire to be the Libyan-style stakeholder of a
future Syria.
A wake-up call to the
European Union to put a rein on Turkey's war
chariot in Syria is therefore urgently called for,
simply because Turkey's new offensive against
Syria is a recipe for disaster, for Syria, Turkey,
and indeed the whole region.
What needs to
be done instead of such militaristic tactics
covered with the language of compromise is a new
peace offensive, real and genuine support for UN
efforts and other related peace initiatives. The
path chosen by Ankara will only lead to more and
not less conflict, at least for the foreseeable
future.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi PhD is
the author of After Khomeini: New Directions
in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press). For
his Wikipedia entry, click here .
He is author of Reading in Iran Foreign
Policy after September 11 (BookSurge
Publishing, October 23, 2008) and Looking for
Rights at Harvard. His latest book is UN
Management Reform: Selected Articles and
Interviews on United Nations (CreateSpace,
November 12, 2011).
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