Everything was going to be all right. When Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan decided to dump his close friend Bashar al Assad after months of a Syrian crackdown that went against Ankara's advice, he was probably thinking things would not spiral out of control.
But look at the situation today. The Turkish government has just woken up to the fact that there is a Kurdish minority in Northern Syria, which has now seized control of five Kurdish towns close to the Turkish border. There has been a rush of high level meetings in Ankara including Turkey's intelligence services, army officials and diplomats.
Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's inexhaustible foreign minister, has called in representatives from the opposition Syrian National Council and told them to keep Syria as one, united nation. In particular, he asked them to take down Kurdish flags in Northern Syria.
Prime Minister Erdogan is no less worried. "We will not allow a terrorist group to establish camps in northern Syria and threaten Turkey," he declared in a news conference. "If there is a step which needs to be taken against the terrorist group, we will definitely take this step," he said.
For the past 28 years Turkey has been fighting the separatist Kurdistan Worker`s Party (or PKK), which is also on the U.S. and EU terrorist lists. There are other like-minded groups throughout a region in which the Kurdish population is scattered between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.
The Syrian Kurdish group that seized control of the towns near the border, the Democratic Union Party (or PYD), denies any "organic" link with the PKK but admits ideological ties.
As a result, the latest developments in Northern Syria have agitated Turkey, which has discovered that its most important domestic security concern is now tangled up with the fallout from the Arab revolutions.
Mr. Davutoglu has long championed a delusional policy of a "zero problems with neighbors," but this has inevitably failed, leaving Turkey with no neighbors worth speaking of in the region.
Iran is hostile to us. Syria is falling apart, the dispute with Israel over the Mavi Marmara has become an honor issue, the government in Baghdad does not even want to hear our name.
Strangely enough, the only government in the region we seem to get along with is the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq. Turkey has been developing close commercial ties with Northern Iraq and KRG President Masoud Barzani has been keen to tell Ankara of his willingness to provide support in combatting the PKK.
In the new changing environment Barzani might end up being the best card Turkey can play. In recent weeks the main Syrian Kurdish groups signed an agreement in Erbil, the seat of the KRG government, to set up a Supreme Kurdish Council. Barzani may be emerging as a figure who can reconcile the different Syrian Kurdish groups.
The nightmare scenario for Turkey would be the emergence of a Kurdish Confederation including Northern Iraq and Northern Syria. This would jeopardize all the efforts to calm down PKK violence and find a meaningful solution to the Kurdish problem in Turkey. It could appear as an alluring alternative to the Kurdish population in Turkey, which is politically and socially dissatisfied.
On the one hand Turkish government wants the Assad regime to go, for ideological, humanitarian and security reasons. But on the other hand it does not want Syria to break into pieces and become a three-region state where one unit might become a safe haven for terrorist activities. Turkey is still pushing the SNC to be the central power in a future Syria. But this looks unlikely, because of the SNC's sharp internal divisions. The 2003 Iraq war left a bad taste for Turkey, leaving behind a fragile security zone. Syria might end up being worse.
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I am tired of folks second-guessing and judging from their couches. It would be ridiculous to expect Turkey to sit idly by as such tragedy unfolds along its longest border.
What is wrong with "zero" problems with neighbors? Is it not much better than a policy of maximum trouble with neighbors?
Your (otherwise excellent) analysis of the monumental joke which is the "zero problems with neighbors" policy misses only Cyprus (40% of which is under illegal Turkish military occupation) and the "old friends" Greece...
Turkey's finest hour was under Ataturk, when it transitioned from an oppressive empire into a progressive nation-state. What Turkey should do is to stop trying to deny the Kurdish nation its right to self-determination. Turkey has absolutely no right to meddle in Kurdish affairs in Syria and Iraq. AS for the Turkish Kurds, there should be a free & fair referendum on their secession from Turkey. If they vote in favor, Turkey should set them free. Even without Kurdistan, Turkey is a large country. It may lose some territory to a future Kurdish state. But if they behave in a democratic manner, they will at least win a good neighbor.
By hosting FSA, Turkey has alienated four of its neighbours, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia.
The Kurds are no friends of Turkey either. Barezani has said in his latest interview with Al-Jazeera that he will setup training camps for Syrian Kurds to establish an independent government in Syria in case Assad cannot provide security in north. That new Kurdish government will in its turn will provide support for PKK in Turkey.
The Turkish regime has been naive of thinking that with a population and ethnic composition very similar to Syria, they can support rebels across the borders but stay safe at the same time. Soon or later some of the weapons will end up in the hands of Kurds and other minorities in Turkey and the war will spread to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan.
I guess Turkey has sown the wind, and it might not take even a year before it harvests the tornado.
With one single act, Turkey has destroyed a long successful "zero problems with neighbors," policy that brought Turkey prosperity and peace.
Turkey has wanted possession of N. Iraq for a long time--maybe now N. Syria too. Erdogan reportedly told GW that Incirlik would only be available for use by the U.S. for an Iraqi invasion if the Americans ceded N. Iraq to Turkey. GW refused. Hence Erdogan did not push Turkey's parliament to allow the U.S. access.
Turkey has been prepared since 2007 for war on the border. The military amassed 100k soldiers on the N. Iraq border in Feb. 2007, despite the American's screams of protest, and have kept them there ever since as far as I can tell.
Buyukanit (former Chief of Armed Forces) long ago said "it's not a matter of if Iraq will fall apart, but when". To not have factored Syria into the equation would be amateurish. You can't overturn the minority Sunni led govt in neighboring Iraq and expect that the minority Shia govt in Syria will stand.
Regrettably, it is likely there will be a wider war in the region soon. Perhaps that will fix the mess the Entente powers made when they installed minority dictators in Iraq & Syria and drew national boundaries without respect to the people living in them in former Ottoman lands or with respect to national security concerns. Only those intent on ensuring constant conflict draw national boundaries through the middle of mountain ranges.
No matter what, a terrible mess is in the making in Syria.
Also, it sounds like you did not hear what Davutoglu had to say to the Turkmen in Kerkuk yesterday.
The footage shows several bloodied men stripped down to their underwear being forced to kneel by a wall amidst a throng of excited, machine gun-touting men.
Once their captors open fire, the camera jerks away as the crowd momentarily disperses, seemingly unprepared for the nearly 40 seconds of uninterrupted shooting that follows.As the gunfire dies down, shouts of“Allahu Akbar!” resound as the once skittish onlookers.
One of the victims has been identified as Ali Zeineddin al-Berri, who has been accused of leading a shabiha group which killed 15 FSA soldiers during a truce in Aleppo on Tuesday, BBC reports.
The video depicting the apparent massacre has not been verified, though the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said such vengeance was a crime as Islamic law does not authorize the execution of prisoners.
Clive Baldwin, a senior legal adviser for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told BBC News: "What it looks like is execution of detainees and if that is the case, that would be a war crime."
Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Gennady Gatilov condemned the shooting. "The brutal massacre of government supporters by the opposition in the city of Aleppo shows that human rights violations are being committed by both sides,” he wrote on Twitter.