Russia Military’s Actions in Syria Cause Rift with Turkey

Tim Arango, New York Times

6 October, 2015

Image: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, right, with Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the  European Commission, in Brussels on Monday. CreditFrancois Lenoir/Reuters

ISTANBUL — Russia’s bombing of rebel groups in Syria backed by Turkey and the incursions by Russian warplanes into Turkish airspace have undercut President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s priorities of stemming the flow of refugees into his country and pushing for the ouster of the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Mr. Erdogan, who for years has been at odds with the United States over Washington’s reluctance to act more aggressively to oust Mr. Assad, reacted angrily to Russia’s new military push to bolster him. While in many ways close to Russia, Mr. Erdogan is now leaning more heavily on his allies in NATO, reflecting the shifting forces buffeting Turkey as it copes with the military, economic and humanitarian fallout of Syria’s civil war.

“An attack on Turkey means an attack on NATO,” Mr. Erdogan said at a news conference in Brussels on Tuesday.

“Our positive relationship with Russia is known,” he said. “But if Russia loses a friend like Turkey, with whom it has been cooperating on many issues, it will lose a lot, and it should know that.”

Turkey, which from the outset of Syria’s civil war more than four years ago backed rebel groups in the mistaken belief that Mr. Assad could be quickly toppled, finds itself largely unable to reverse the trajectory in Syria. What became increasingly clear in recent days after Russia began its bombing campaign in Syria is that Mr. Erdogan’s long-held ambition of persuading Western allies to establish a safe zone in northern Syria has crumbled.

“It’s quite clear to me that if we had spoken a month ago about safe zone or a no-fly zone it would have been a good idea,” said Marc Pierini, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels and a former European Union ambassador to Turkey. “Talking today, I’d say it’s a no-go.”

Mr. Erdogan, in Brussels this week for talks with European leaders over the migrant crisis convulsing Europe, continued to push for a safe zone in northern Syria as the only acceptable solution to create stability in Syria and discourage refugees who are increasingly leaving Turkey on perilous sea journeys for Europe.

“The polite reply here was that this is U.N. business and not for the E.U. to entertain,” Mr. Pierini said. “The idea is dead in the water.”

Underscoring the degree of Turkish concern about Russia’s military involvement in Syria, which seemed to expand this week when Russian officials in Moscow suggested Russian “volunteer” fighters would be sent to Syria, officials in Ankara, the Turkish capital, predicted a new influx of refugees. Speaking to the Turkish daily Hurriyet, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said that up to one million more Syrians could arrive in Turkey, which is already straining under the weight of nearly two million Syrian refugees.

At first Russia suggested that its priority was fighting the Sunni militants of the Islamic State, an aim shared by the United States, which is leading an international coalition that for more than a year has waged an air campaign against the group in Iraq and Syria. But Russia has deployed military equipment, such as ground-go-air missiles and interceptor jets, that has no use against militant groups that do not have an air force. This made clear that Russia’s priority is to buck up Mr. Assad, and it has raised concerns that if a no-fly zone or safe zone were established, as Turkey has pushed for, it could be challenged by Russia.

“The Russian presence has changed the entire parameters in Syria, including a safe zone,” said Mensur Akgun, director of the Global Political Trends Center, a research organization in Turkey. “No one will dare confront Russia.”

The new tensions between Russia and Turkey over Syria have highlighted a deeply complex relationship between the two countries. In some ways Turkey’s relationship with Russia is similar to its relationship with Iran, the Syrian government’s most important regional ally. In its dealings with each country, Turkey is able to separate sharp differences over issues like the war in Syria with deepening economic ties, not to mention a robust tourism industry between the two countries.

For instance, Turkey, with a growing economy and little of its own energy supplies to fuel it, relies on both Iran and Russia for natural gas imports. Turkey depends on Russia for more than half of its natural gas, and Russia has plans to build a nuclear power plant in Turkey. This week, even as tensions escalated between Turkey and Russia over Syria, Turkey’s energy minister said that talks would continue over a natural gas pipeline project through Turkey, which would benefit from natural gas at discount prices.

Mr. Erdogan’s leadership style has often been compared to that of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Both men have been criticized for becoming increasingly authoritarian and cracking down on free expression, and both men have been their countries’ pre-eminent political figure from both the positions of president and prime minister.

On a visit to Moscow in September, Mr. Erdogan appeared with Mr. Putin at the inauguration of a new, giant mosque, and praised Russia. “I am sure that the opening of the mosque, at a time when we need humanity, will contribute to establishing peace in the world,” he said. “Russia is a good example for coexistence of people of different faiths.”

On the same visit, Mr. Erdogan also promoted Turkey’s economic relationship with Russia. He said that bilateral trade had reached $31 billion last year, and that Turkey’s goal was for that figure to hit $100 billion by 2023. “Let us hope that fortune is on our side and that we will succeed in reaching this objective,” he said.

Turkey’s relationship with Russia is also deeply clouded by history. Analysts have written of the fear of Russian ambitions that infect the Turkish psyche and are rooted in the history of the many wars – at least 17 by one count – fought between the Ottoman Empire and Russia over centuries.

Even before Russia’s recent military buildup in Syria, Russia was an important ally to Mr. Assad, a fact that analysts have said restrained Turkey from intervening more directly in the conflict. Writing in The Atlantic two years ago, Soner Cagaptay, an expert on Turkey at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said, “Turks suffer from a deep-rooted, historic reluctance to confront the Russians.”

“Consequently,” Mr. Cagaptay wrote, “Turkey is unlikely to confront Moscow even when Russia undermines Turkey’s interests, such as in Syria where Russia is supporting the Assad regime, even as Ankara tries to depose it.”

What is clear, though, is that Russia is willing to confront Turkey. By violating Turkey’s airspace twice in recent days – not a mistake, as Russia said, but a deliberate move, according to NATO – Russia seemed intent on forewarning any of Mr. Assad’s foes not to violate Syrian sovereignty.

NATO, whose officials have been critical of Turkey in recent years for not doing enough to crack down on jihadist fighters crossing its border to fight in Syria, objected to the Russian incursion, and Turkey scrambled its own warplanes to intercept the Russian planes. In statements, Turkish officials hinted that if it happened again it might shoot down any Russian jets that cross its airspace.

Yet those warnings not withstanding Turkey, because of history and its deep economic links to Russia, “will try its utmost to avoid any type of confrontation the Russians,” Mr. Akgun said.

Ceylan Yeginsu contributed reporting. 

Copyright: New York Times 2015

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