TURKEY FACES BOTH WAYS
'ISLAMIC STATE' TURKEY AND THE WEST: DOUBLE DEALING AS A STRATEGY
TURKEY'S TWO FACED POLICIES ON IS
On twentieth of September this year, as the same time as IS was holding journalists and aid workers, ready to be dressed in garish orange jumpsuits and beheaded in front of well-placed TV cameras, 47 Turkish hostages were released
unharmed, well dressed and obviously reasonably well cared for. This, seemingly
without a quid pro quo from the Turkish Government, is not normal IS modus operandi and understandably it
raised some eyebrows. Some might even think shady business had gone on.
No, was the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan's response to western cynics,
the release was the product of the ingenious work of Turkey’s intelligence
services. Some eyebrows however remained raised.
Turkey sits famously between three worlds, Europe, Asia and
the Middle East. The European dimension to Turkey has always been important
both inside and outside Turkey, whether as the clichéd ‘sick man of Europe’ or
as the dynamic pro-western NATO member aspiring for EU membership. The key
figure in modern Turkish history being Kemal Ataturk who sought to decisively
turn Turkey into a modern, fiercely independent, though western leaning republic.
The westernisation imposed on Turkey by Ataturk impacted most severely on the
Islamic nature of Turkish society. Religion was firmly placed outside politics
and in particular outside the military. The tensions this created have been a
feature of Turkish society ever since.
With the success of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and
Development Party (AKP), which won three general elections, 2002, 2007 and
2011. The balance in Turkey has shifted away from Ataturk’s secular agenda
towards a more ‘moderate’ Islamist ethos. Erdogan having faced down
the military in the notorious sledgehammer
case.
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| Recep Tayyip Erdogan |
Erdogan, now elected President, is however a much more
complex character than the above scenario might suggest. For whilst he has
sought, albeit slowly, to loosen Turkey’s secular constraints on religion and
dilute free speech and restrict protest and dissent, he has also sought
accession to the EU.
Turkey also however is very much part of the Middle East and
sits on the fault line of Sunni/Shia conflict, the civil war in Syria and the
ISIL incursion into Iraq. In addition it is home to a very large Kurdish
community, the Kurds being the largest ethnic grouping in the world without a
state, represents 18% of Turkey's population (about 14 million, out of 77.8 million
people).[1] Turkey
has fought a long struggle with the PKK a Kurdish paramilitary group fighting
for independence, whilst tensions on the ground between Turkish and Kurdish
communities have often been fraught. In a Nixonian counter intuitive move
Erdogan's administration has come closer to bringing a peace and an end to the Kurdish/Turkey
conflict than any previous government.
When the civil war broke out in Syria Erdogan backed the anti -Assad rebels, though Turkey made no
distinction between the original democracy demonstrators and fighters of the
Free Syrian army and the growing army of jihadists, who flowed across Turkey’s border
into Syria without hindrance. The success of these fighters, often seasoned veterans from
Chechnya or Afghanistan, who used extreme violence and terror to intimidate and
terrify opposition soon made themselves known to the world as ISIL, Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant, now re-branded Islamic State
The rise of IS has created serious problems and dilemmas for Turkey,
not least in Northern Syria where IS is battling against Turkey’s greatest
fear, armed nationalist Kurds in the shape of the YPG, loosely allied to the PKK.
A member of NATO and
theoretically an ally against IS Turkey’s strategy has been thus far anything
but helpful to the coalition. Indeed reports of Turkish collusion with IS
circulate widely, more definitive proof is hard to find. However on Sunday a
journalist for the Iranian TV channel Press TV, Serena Shim, who was
investigating evidence of such collusion, was killed in a ‘car accident,’ after
being threatened by Turkish
Intelligence officials. ‘She had
reported that Islamic State militants had crossed from Turkey into Syria on
trucks bearing the symbols of the World Food Organisation and other NGOs.’[2]
Whatever the truth of Turkish collusion, and it is beyond
dispute that Turkey allowed thousands of Jihadi’s to cross its border into
Syria, the reality on the ground is that Turkish forces stand watching as the Syrian
Kurdish town of Kobane fights for its life against a sustained IS onslaught. At the same time preventing reinforcements and supplies reaching the defenders.
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| Turkish Soldier poses with IS fighters |
Meanwhile Turkey declares its loyalty to
those in the West combatting IS whilst pushing its own agenda for the
overthrow of Assad and the creation of a buffer zone, which would involve occupying Kurdish
regions of Syria, anathema to the Kurds. There is also a significant constituency in
Turkey that is, if not openly pro IS, certainly hostile to the Kurds. nor has Turkey been immune from the virus of Islamism. This has led to the
Turkish government to speak with two voices and play a double game.
For a domestic audience Erdogan launches into a virulently anti-western
tirade declaring the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ syndrome to be a greater threat
to the region than IS. While for European
consumption a charm offensive has been launched to persuade Europe
of shared values and interests, at the same time as a Turkish Diplomat
appeared on RT, the Russian propaganda channel, bad mouthing western nations including the UK.
If you are going to play a double game you have to do it
more subtly than this. Tired of Turkish resistance America finally decided to
support the Kurdish defenders by dropping supplies from the air. Erdogan’s Ottoman style
rhetoric meanwhile registered loud and clear in Washington, London and Brussels.
Turkey
is already haemorrhaging goodwill and international support as pictures of
Turkish tanks sit idly by as Kobane faces becoming another Srebrenica.[3] Turkey cannot have it both ways, either it must decide to become a fully paid up member
of the fight against IS barbarism or pursue its narrow local goals. Erdogan can
face both ways no longer.
