#WTH Turkey and Syria are a threat

Things are bad, and likely to get worse

Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the House, not a creature was stirring… well, some creatures. Just wanted to get that little ditty out of my ear and into yours. We’re really here to talk some more about Syria.

By way of throat clearing, a historical note: Few think about Operation Desert Storm any longer, and when they do, they hardly think about Iran. As time passes, however, I am more and more persuaded of its centrality to Iran’s thinking about its strategic position in the world. Up against an America that could oust Saddam Hussein, barely breaking a sweat, Iran needed not simply a non-conventional arsenal of weapons, but an arsenal of proxies throughout the region. They realized that aim beautifully, until this year. Now, thanks to Hamas, their lovely plans are in tatters.

Unfortunately, watching Syria, our enemy of my enemy celebration must be cut short. I fear we will soon look back on the fall of Assad as an inflection point like Desert Storm — in this case, bad for Iran, still bad for us. Yes, Assad is gone, but in his place are some worrisome folk. And behind them is an even more worrisome character — Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Let’s call our NATO ally by his more accurate moniker — he is the strongman of Turkey, a wannabe Sultan of a revived Ottoman Empire, a proud godfather to the Muslim Brotherhood and its regional offspring.

No one knows the man or the place — including northern Syria — better than my colleague Michael Rubin, who, when he isn’t a senior fellow at the redoubtable American Enterprise Institute, is the editor of the Middle East Forum Observer. As usual, he doesn’t mince words.

What is Turkey’s role in Syria?

Turkey seeks to be a dominant power inside Syria. It invested heavily in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and now wants to profit from its investment. Simply put, HTS is to Turkey what Hezbollah is to Iran. In Washington, we’re going to have the same analytical debate we had with Hezbollah. Then, whether out of wishful thinking or an inability to see the forest through the trees, many diplomats and intelligence analysts swore Hezbollah had evolved, separated from its patron, and become a Lebanese nationalist organization. The Syrian civil war showed that to be false: Why would Lebanese nationalists go and fight for a regime in Syria that had victimized Lebanon? So too is it now with HTS. Throughout the Syrian civil war, HTS enjoyed Turkish support, Turkish cash, and Turkish weaponry. Are we really to believe Turkey is so altruistic that it will now grant HTS complete freedom of action?

Put another way, where else has Turkey granted a proxy complete freedom of action? North Cyprus? Azerbaijan? Iraq’s Turkmen Front or political parties like the Kurdistan Democratic Party? In each case, their leadership operates between guiderails established by Turkey’s intelligence service.

Why is Turkey supporting groups affiliated with al Qaeda and ISIS or closely aligned?

To twist James Carville’s quip, “It’s the ideology, stupid.” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan grew up in a religious family and rose to become mayor of Istanbul at the helm of an openly Islamist party. It was too much too soon, and the army pressured his mentor Necmettin Erbakan out. Erdogan himself found himself in prison for religious incitement after reciting a poem comparing minarets to bayonets.

As Erdogan undertook his second act, the lesson he embraced was that he needed to appear secular and act secular; not that he must make a genuine conversion in his outlook. He never shed his religious conservatism or his quest for power; he just learned to hide it better. Here, he simply followed the path that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did in Iran immediately before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. While in exile in France, Khomeini granted interviews to foreign journalists and professed repeatedly he had no interest in personal power nor did he seek an explicitly religious state. It was what Western officials wanted to hear and so they did not stand in his way. By the time he consolidated power and his true agenda became apparent, it was too late. So it has been with Erdogan. When he became prime minister in 2003, he promised he learned from the mistakes of his past. Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute almost 20 years ago, Daniel Fried, then the assistant secretary of State for European affairs, dismissed concerns about Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), calling it little different from a European Christian Democrat party. It was very different, however. My time interacting with AKP personnel in the slums of Istanbul or poor towns in central Anatolia made that clear; there, then AKP promoted a far different vision than I heard from Turkish diplomats or saw in the neighborhoods popular with Western diplomats and tourists.

There is another factor besides ideology. Many countries: including Saudi Arabia in the past, Pakistan, Syria in the past, and Qatar and Turkey today are happy to promote Islamist extremism abroad, even if they will not tolerate it to the same extent at home. Turkey’s support for HTS, Al Qaeda groups, and even the Islamic State fits into this pattern. Erdogan, however, was never a good student. He would have been lucky to place in the top 50 percent of the summer school class at a village school. He never realized that there is inevitably a backlash to such a strategy. Start a wildfire, and eventually, the winds shift and it can consume the arsonist’s own home.

So, to the question more directly: Erdogan supports Al Qaeda and Islamic State-linked groups because he believes in them. There is no avoiding that conclusion. The evidence diplomats cite to discount such a conclusion are more often tactics rather than signs of a true change of heart on Erdogan’s behalf.

Does Turkey want to see the ISIS prisoners currently held by Kurdish forces released?

It might be controversial to say, but I think Turkey does want to see the Islamic State prisoners at the Kurdish-secured al-Hol prison in northeastern Syria released. There are two reasons. First, what many in the West see as extremism or terrorist actions, Turkey does not. This is one of the main problems with the lack of any consensus definition of terrorism. Second, Turkey may believe it can channel and profit from the release of Islamic State prisoners, especially if they can use the former Islamic State prisoners like they did Syrian refugees: As a source of blackmail to European officials afraid that Turkey would greenlight refugee flows into Europe’s heartland.

What are Turkey’s plans for Syria?

Turkey wants a puppet. This has always been the problem with Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman approach. Turks have a much fonder remembrance of the Ottoman Empire than do its subject peoples.

Erdogan also wants to pursue his religious agenda while maintaining his own plausible deniability. Again, think of how well that worked for Iran with Hezbollah. How many times did diplomats or intelligence analysts quibble over whether Iran really had direct control over Hezbollah? Hundreds of Americans died because of this dynamic, and successive administrations in Washington never fully held Tehran to account.

Then there is the money. Syria is a poor country, but think of all the reconstruction contracts that loom. My own theory about why [HTS honcho] Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani is so desperate to depict himself as a moderate is he wants quick recognition so that the billions of dollars in UN-assisted reconstruction contracts flow through him. Erdogan wants a cut. As Erdogan consolidated power in Turkey, he rewarded his supporters with lucrative construction contracts. It will be the same play in Syria.

Why is Turkey so bent on destroying Kurdish anti-Islamist forces?

Just as Kemalists in Turkey were willing to tolerate the Kurds so long as they prioritized Turkish culture and identity, so too are Islamists like Erdogan willing to tolerate Kurds only so long as they prioritize religious identity above their own Kurdish culture. The Kurds in Syria, however, are largely liberal, tolerant, and progressive. Erdogan may argue they are directly linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but 40 years of evolution and the realities of governance have changed them entirely. Our good friends in Washington who repeat the Rojava [as the Kurds call their region in Syria] equals the PKK trope would feel differently if they actually decided to see matters for themselves and visit the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria. There is a reason why U.S. forces working in the region swear by the Kurds and so greatly distrust the Turks.

So there’s ideology. There’s ethnicity. But there’s a greater truism at play. Dictators hate dissent, and the Syrian Kurds with their liberalism, tolerance, and more moderate religious beliefs directly challenge Erdogan’s worldview.

Turkey and Russia appear to be at daggers drawn over Syria. How will that play out?

Oh, both countries have had their daggers drawn before, for example in Azerbaijan, but behind-the-scenes, Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin understand their red lines. I think the biggest dispute between the two dictators is that Erdogan sees himself as Putin’s equal, but Putin sees Erdogan as a subordinate. There may be some shifting and testing here and there to figure out a new modus vivendi, but the conflict will be limited and more for a show as the two leaders will find a way to kiss and make up, even if it means sacrificing some of their own underlings in the process.

Is Erdogan at all concerned about US views on this issue?

Oh, please. First, Erdogan believed Biden was weak, and he believes he can compromise Trump by whispering sweet nothings into his ear. Frankly, Erdogan’s not wrong. There’s also the phenomenon that leads so many dictators to believe they need not take the United States seriously: Countries like Turkey, Azerbaijan, Qatar; entities like the Palestinian Authority; or companies like TikTok or Huawei believe that so long as they spend money on lobbyists, they can sway American policy. That may be true around some margins, but ultimately content matters. A lobbyist can put lipstick on a pig, but they can’t do anything as Erdogan’s porcine nature shines through.

Is Hamas going to settle in Turkey/Syria after leaving Qatar? Does that mean Turkey should be considered a state sponsor of terrorism?

Great question. I think yes. Turkey is one of Hamas’ chief proponents ideologically, and a cheerleader for the group tactically. The AKP and Hamas both share the same Muslim Brotherhood roots. By locating Hamas in Syria, Turkey can win the benefits (from its perspective) of supporting the group while maintaining the plausible deniability necessary to avoid accountability for its terror support.

Frankly, though, an objective assessment of Turkey’s actions would have mandated that it be designated a terror sponsor more than a decade ago. That it has not been is the result of a combination in Washington of wishful thinking that the problem is just Erdogan and not Turkey itself, a tendency in Washington to calibrate policy to the way countries were in the past rather than how they are now, and a general weakness of our own diplomatic culture. What the State Department doesn’t understand is that by giving Turkey a mulligan, it is degrading the impact of all U.S. terror designations.

What are Israeli attitudes on Erdogan?

I don’t get the Israelis. They are a lot like us when it comes to wishful thinking. I think many have woken up to the real Erdogan, but they still don’t understand that he represents the same threat that Iran does. The Israelis also have a logical inconsistency in which they rebuff Erdogan but they embrace Azerbaijan which is essentially a Turkish puppet. Why should Erdogan take Israel seriously when he can incite all the terror he wants against the Jewish state but then make all the money he cares to and acquire Israeli military goods simply by working through Azeri cutouts?

Should Washington Support the Kurds?

The Syrian Kurds, yes. They have put their lives on the line for American national security. Their self-governance creates both an oasis of tolerance in the region and also physically blocks the Iran land bridge to the eastern Mediterranean. Alliances must mean something, and the U.S. brand should be supporting, not betraying our partners.

Is Ataturk’s Turkey dead? Are there any prospects for a secular resurgence in Turkey?

It’s dead for decades to come. More than 30 million Turks have gone through Turkey’s education system since Erdogan came to power. Erdogan consolidated control over Turkey’s media landscape to incite a generation. That can’t be erased. Nor is the opposition an alternative, as they too often seek to out-Erdogan Erdogan in their antisemitism and toxic attitudes toward the West.

Should we seek to oust Turkey from NATO?

If it were possible, yes. But there’s no mechanism in NATO to expel a country. The question then becomes how to quarantine it or compel it to leave on its own. I outlined some of these here. Agree or disagree, but this is a conversation that needs to be had.

What role does Turkey seek to play overall in the Middle East, particularly in light of Iran’s setbacks?

We have become conditioned in the West to see Iran’s Shiite extremism and its revolutionary export as bad, and assume that Turkey must therefore be better. The problem is Turkey simply represents a different flavor of extremism. Our goal should be to see all extremisms as equally adverse for the region. Turkey will be a spoiler and will seek, just as much as Iran, to export its own revolution. Mark my words. Iran’s fall may have relieved pressure on Lebanon, but Syria’s fall now makes Jordan’s future precarious as King Abdullah II presides over a Palestinian majority, and increasingly Sunni Islamist population, and espouses a moderate worldview diametrically opposed to that of Erodgan. And like Mikhail Gorbachev, the last premier of the Soviet Union, Abdullah II is much more popular outside his country than among his own citizens.

Looking forward to a post-Erdogan era, are there hopes a new leader could play a more constructive role?

I fear for the future because even if Erdogan falls tomorrow, the model of cheap, religious populism and administrative dirty tricks has written a new playbook for his successors. It’s going to be hard to wash Erdoganism out of the region. The stain is deep.