- Andreas Umland

NEWS & ANALYSIS TURKEY

Nonagon of Toxic Conflict: Notes on the Turkish Quagmire
by Richard Falk

October 8, 2015 No Comments

The Middle East has become a puzzle so daunting that only fools are clear about
what should be done.
The lethal complexity of politics in the Middle East has become overwhelming.
The main political actors producing a continuous stream of swerves and turns
that randomly juggle alignments and almost casually switch the identity of
friends and enemies.
In practical terms, what this means is that there are indecipherably opaque
conflicts, a multitude of state and non-state actors with distinct agendas, a
bewildering array of seemingly contradictory and shifting conflict patterns, and
controversial media manipulations orchestrated from various sources of
governmental and insurgent authority situated both within and without the
region.

Richard Falk
This geometry of conflict can be best approximated as a nonagon connecting the
US, Turkey, the Kurds, ISIS, Iran, Syria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Israel; and
even this is a crude simplification that leaves out many important actors. It is
little wonder the Middle East has become a puzzle so daunting that only fools
are clear about what should be done. The best we can do is to pick up a piece at
a time, and hope it makes some sense a few weeks later.
Amid all these complexities there are some crucial developments bearing on
Turkeys relations to the overlapping realities of civil, national, regional, and
extra-regional warfare. Turkey had deftly managed to avoid toxic engagement
with the troubles of the region until 2009 when it began to cross swords with
Israel, followed by jumping imprudently and overtly onto the anti-Assad side
after the 2011 uprising in Syria.

These prior problematic issues were temporarily eclipsed recently after Turkey
crossed several additional treacherous thresholds of turmoil: the renewal of the
deadly clash with Kurdish aspirations in Turkey and Syria; a formal joint
undertaking with the United States to combat ISIS presence while still
proclaiming solidarity with moderate anti-Assad forces; and the recognition
that the scale of the unmanageable flow of Syrian refugees across the Turkish
border and outside of the camps is becoming unmanageable and a threat to
domestic order.
As if this is not enough to worry about, polarized domestic politics in Turkey
were unable to produce either a governing majority for the AKP (Justice and
Development Party) in the June elections or in the aftermath an agreed
coalition. As a result, Turkey has an embattled interim government until a new
election on November 1. The country is also beset by a divisive controversy that
targets Recep Tayyip Erdoan as primarily responsible for all the above alleged
wrongs, accusing him both of harboring the unabashed ambition to run the
country as its executive president and of needlessly arousing Kurdish hostility
and fears by adopting an ultra-nationalist posture during the electoral campaign
that ended in June.
The Turkish opposition seems to forget the uncomfortable reality that
without Erdoan the landscape of formidable problems facing the country would
still be present. And perhaps, even more uncomfortably, awake to the realization
that the AKP since 2002, despite some notable errors and deficiencies, has been
responsible for a remarkable series of positive economic, social, and political
developments, as well as the upgrading of the country as an importantly
independent regional and global political actor.
After 30 years of struggle between the Turkish state and it large Kurdish
minority (14-18 million), causing up to 40,000 battle deaths, there were finally
hopes of peace raised in 2013 when a reconciliation process was started and a
ceasefire established by the AKP led government. Now these hopes have
disappeared and been replaced by daily violence as well as dire fears of what is
to come, which includes the possibility of a full-scale civil war.
In reaction to these developments, Erdoan emphatically declared the end of
the peace process, although somewhat later ambiguously renewing a call for
national unity, a new ceasefire, and a revived search for reconciliation. As might
be expected, conditions were attached by Erdoan to such a proposal:

abandonment of armed struggle by the Kurdish movement, the PKK (or Turkish
Workers Party), which has been operating out of its main base area in Iraqs
Qandil mountains.
The recently proclaimed military collaboration of Turkey and the United States
with the agreed goal of jointly battling ISIS adds to the confusion. It is Kurdish
armed groups, including the PKK, and especially its Syrian offshoot, the
Democratic Union Party (PYD), along with the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga militia
that have proved to be the most effective forces combatting ISIS and the
Assad government in recent months, and an indispensable complement to
America air strikes.
In effect, the anti-ISIS campaign is at cross-purposes with the renewed
Turkish preoccupation with the fight against the PKK and the Assad regime.
Fighting against the Kurds weakens the fight against ISIS and Assad, and vice
versa.
From Ankaras perspective, there is logic to the seeming irrationality of stepping
up the fight against the strongest enemy of its main Syrian enemy. Ever since
the Iraqi Kurds established their state within a state in northern Iraq and the
Syrian Kurds seemed within reach of their goal of establishing Rojava (or Syrian
Kurdistan), the more radical parts of the Turkish Kurdish national movement,
evidently had second thoughts about negotiating with the Turkish government a
peaceful end to their struggle in exchange for rights and some measure of
limited autonomy.
After so many years of struggle, why should Turkish Kurds settle for far less
than what their Kurdish comrades in Iraq and Syria achieved?
It should be appreciated in raising such a question that the Kurdish minority in
Turkey is about three times the size of the Iraqi Kurdish population, estimated
to be between 15 and 20 million, which happens to be more than eight times the
size of the Syrian Kurdish minority.
It would seem that what the reconciliation process would offer Turkish Kurds
fell below reasonable expectations, and it could be argued that the success of
the Kurdish political party (HDP or Peoples Democratic Party) in the June
elections associated with electing 80 members of Parliament as a result of
crossing the 10% marker for the first time accentuated rather than alleviated
Kurdish anxieties.

There is no direct evidence at this point, but circumstantially it seems as if the

HDPs success was not welcome news to the PKK as it seemed to augur
a premature accommodation with the Turkish state, and thus a betrayal of more
ambitious goals for the Kurdish national movement. How else can we explain the
PKK repudiation of the ceasefire with Turkey on June 11 th only four days after
the historic HDP electoral success in June?
Then the ISIS suicide attack on July 20, 2015 in the Turkish border town of
Suru killing 32 young Turkish civilian activists made clear that Ankara could no
longer ignore the threat posed by ISIS, despite the disturbing contradiction of
battling against an opponent of both the Kurds and Assad.
Hence, the agreement with the United States with respect to ISIS, and the
accusations that Turkey was nevertheless using most of its military capabilities
to fight against the Kurds and Assad.
In this atmosphere of growing political violence, the Turkish government faced a
mounting internal security threat. Between the June 7 Turkish national elections
and late July, there were over 281 violent attacks carried out in Turkey by PKK
operatives, including a series of lethal assaults on police and military personnel.
In retaliation, unsurprisingly, the Turkish armed forces launched air attacks
against PKK positions in the Kandil area of northern Iraq. To blame this upsurge
of violence on Erdoan is not only simplistic but deeply misleading.
Two other factors can better explain what happened. First, the Kurdish militant
leadership in the Kandil base areas came to the conclusion that the political
success of Kurdish armed struggle in Iraq and Syria could be duplicated in
Turkey; secondly, a concern that the rewards of the reconciliation process
started by the Turkish state if allowed to continue would reward Kurdish
politicians and business people who took few risks to advance the national
movement in Turkey, while the PKK fighters enduring decades of hardship, loss,
and danger would end up being invited back to Turkey with an inadequate
acknowledgement of their long struggle.
Of course, in between the Turkish state and the AKP there were many Kurds
and Turks to yearned for peace and political compromise, and opposed any
behavior on either side that would resume a zero-sum bloody struggle in which
one side or the other would be a winner and the other a loser.

The prolonged Syrian civil strife burdens Turkey further. It is relevant to recall
that in the years immediately before 2011, and the Arab Spring, when Turkish
regional diplomacy was capturing the imagination by its call for zero problems
with neighbors, it was then Assads Syria that served as the poster child of the
policy reaching an unprecedented level of cordiality as between the two
governments and their respective leaders.
Earlier tensions were dissolved and forgotten, friendship and trade flourished in
relations between the two countries, and overnight the governments of Syria
and Turkey seemed to reconcile their differences, opened their borders,
increased economic and cultural interaction, creating an impression that durable
harmony will persist long into the future.
Then came the Arab Spring in early 2011, which spread to Syria in March shortly
after the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The Damascus government
responded with torture and crimes against humanity in its reactions to peaceful
demonstrators who were initially suppressed in Daraa, and later in many parts of
Syria.
Turkey, along with the UN, tried for several months to coax the Assad
leadership into meeting the political demands of the Syrian people by instituting
democratic reforms. Assad seemed to agree, but no power-sharing steps were
taken. Instead there was a spread of insurgent activity, and an intensification of
indiscriminate violence and frequent atrocities by the government, including
heavy bombing of rebel held Syrian cities and towns, and eventually recourse to
chemical weapons and barrel bombs.
Syrian casualties rose, mass atrocities were documented, and hundred of
thousands of refugees streamed across the Turkish border, creating a major
humanitarian challenge that continues to grow, reaching the astounding figure of
over 2 million.
Against this background, Turkey increasingly and overtly sided with the rebel
forces. Istanbul becoming the center of operations for anti-Assad political
activity, which included explicit backing of the Friends of Syria (a loose and
ineffectual anti-Assad coalition put together by the United States and Turkey).
Various forms of military assistance were channeled to the Free Syrian Army,
but it steadily lost ground against the well-equipped Syrian armed forces, which
enjoyed support and assistance from Russia and Iran.

Early in the conflict, Ankara believed that the balance of forces had shifted
decisively against Assad, and that the Syrian regime would collapse in a few
weeks. It was mistakenly thought that Syria, like Libya, would be easy prey to a
popular uprising, forgetting that the Damascus governmentunlike Tripolihad
loyal support from a series of important Syrian minorities, as well as from large
segment of the urban business world; was strongly backed by Iran and Russia;
and possessed significant military capabilities.
The situation became even messier. Even before the appearance of ISIS, it
seemed that the Al Nusra Front, which had become the most effective
opposition to Assad, was linked to Al Qaeda.
In this mix, when ISIS seemingly came out of the blue to mount an even bigger
challenge to Damascus, the alignments for and against became hopelessly
complex. It is not surprising that given these developments the Turkish
leadership was initially reluctant to confront ISIS as its battlefield record of
success seemed to pose the biggest threat to their biggest enemy!
Turkey still understandably wobbles on the tightrope that stretches between
opposing Assad and fighting the PKK and ISIS.
How this interplay of US/Turkish/Kurdish/ISIS actions and reactions will play
out is currently unknowable. To intervene in such a zone of multiple conflict is
beset with risks, costs, and unknowns; but so is standing by as horrified
spectators.
The assumption in the West has been that military power offers the only way to
calm the waters without sacrificing Western interests, but the consistent
record of intervention is one of repeated costly failures.
Perhaps, the very hopelessness of the situation makes the moment right for
bold forms of regional diplomacy. Tangibly, what this means is bringing Russia
and Iran into the game, and minimizing the influence of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Israel seems to be promoting regional disorder, destabilizing the internal public
order of the major states in the region.
Saudi Arabia apparently cares for little other than the survival of the royal
regime in the Kingdom. It can savagely undermine the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt and Hamas in Gaza yet claim to be leading the Sunni struggle against the

spread of Shia Islam, justifying its interventions in Syria and Yemen. And
globally, it is Saudi funds and Wahhabi militancy that is bringing extremist
politics to the forefront throughout the Middle East.
With such tensions, contradictory agendas, and unconditional ideologies at play
the outlook for compromise and normalcy is dim.
Oddly, Russia without ties that bind is freer to dampen the forces of extremism
than is the United States, which remains beholden to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Similarly, Iran, despite the theocratic and repressive character of its
government, has the internal stability that Turkey now lacks, and if allowed
could play a constructive force role by helping to work out a political transition
in Syria and Yemen and playing a leading part in an anti-extremist coalition
needed to cope with ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as the
Al-Nusra Front operating in Syria.
Will this happen? Of course, not. It is far too rational and realistic.
The United States, despite its power and residual leadership potential, finds
itself stuck in a geopolitical straight jacket of its own devising, and without its
ability to behave like a rational actor.
The region seems destined in coming years to fluctuate between chaos and
autocracy, and this means that Arab populations will experience repression,
displacement, chaos, and cycles of demonic political violence. More than
elsewhere, the Middle East is badly in need of political miracles.
Turkey is one of the few actors, situated within and without the Arab World,
that retains the capacity to be a constructive influence in support of
compromise and nonviolence conflict resolution. This helpful performance
depends on the Turkish recovery of composure within its borders, which seems
dependent of the AKP recovering an effective majority allowing it to form a
government after the results of the new election on November 1 st become
known.
The second best solution would be a strengthening of the AKP and CHP
(Republican Peoples Party) parties in November, followed quickly by a coalition
between these two parties that puts national unity, economic development, and
political stability ahead of partisan confrontation.

It is the anti-Erdoan preoccupation that has mainly hindered Turkeys effort at

regional leadership, although Erdoan has contributed to this atmosphere by his
reliance on autocratic tactics in quelling the Gezi uprising in 2013 and expressing
his views without sensitivity to opposition values and outlooks ever since scoring
a major victory in the 2011 elections. It is time for Erdoan and the AKP to
abandon majoritarian democracy and also time for the political opposition
parties and media to assess the Erdoan and the AKP in a more balanced, and
less polarized views.
It is unfortunate that even prior to 2011, the opposition to the AKP was
unyielding in voicing its intense hostility, giving no credit, and insisting the AKP
under Erdoans leadership was guiding the country away from the secularism of
the Republic era, and toward the imposition of an Islamic theology in the manner
of Iran. Lets hope that the CHP does well enough in the new elections to join
with the AKP in giving Turkey the government it deserves, and that Erdoan will
be content to be presidential in a constitutional system that is essentially based
on parliamentary supremacy but with some recourse to judicial checks on
arbitrary power.
The focus on Turkey, and its role with respect to Syria and the conflicts with
Syria, PKK, and ISIS is not meant to minimize the importance of the other
actors in the region that are part of the geopolitical nonogon. There are several
overlapping regional proxy wars that have complicated, perhaps precluded, a
diplomatic resolution of the conflict, including serious intraregional tensions
between Saudi Arabia and Syria, as well as the extra-regional rivalry between
the United States and Russia. Also of indeterminate significance are the variety
of undisclosed Israeli regional moves and the leverage exerted by way of its
often dysfunctional special relationship with the United States (preventing
negotiation of a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone or allowing Iran to play
an appropriate diplomatic role).
Although not as notoriously described, the willingness of the United States to
give Saudi Arabia a free pass with respect to internal repression and recourse
to force as in Yemen, and earlier Bahrain, is a further source of regional turmoil.
Al-Nusra Front, Iran, ISIS, Kurds, PKK, Russia, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, Turkey, US Foreign Policy
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Richard Falk

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who

taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa
Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of
California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board
of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. From 2008 until May 2014, he was the
U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian
territories occupied since 1967.