Special to WorldTribune.com

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs

Newly-elected Turkish President Reçep Tayyip Erdogan had, by Oct. 7, carefully re-started Turkey’s war inside Syria, to remove the government of President Bashar Assad, and had begun to draw the “old alliance” of the U.S. Obama White House, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia back into the Syrian war.

President Erdogan’s actions, however, included a refusal to support embattled Syrian Kurds, particularly in the town of Kobani, close to the Turkish border.

Kurds from Kobani had long been associated with the activities of the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan: Kurdish Workers’ Party), which had conducted guerilla warfare against the Turkish state until Turkey’s formal ceasefire with the PKK in 2013. The destruction of Kobani by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, while a Turkish armored brigade watched from across the border, was seen as payback against the PKK. But it has also triggered Kurdish disillusionment with Ankara.

Turkey’s efforts and statements with regard to Syria in late September and early October 2014 were under the guise of supporting military action against the ISIL, which was consolidating its position inside Syria and Iraq. However, the Turkish President was strenuously minimizing the military engagement of Turkish forces against ISIL (referred to in Western media circles as the “Islamic State”, or ISIS, ISIL, etc.), the entity now occupying significant territory inside Syria and Iraq.

U.S. President Barack Obama, like the Government of Saudi Arabia, was also using the action against ISIL as a cover to re-start the conflict against President Assad, and therefore against Iranian dominion over Syria. While Saudi Arabia has attempted to separate out its support for anti-Assad fighters in Syria from support for ISIL — which Riyadh now sees as a challenge to its Wahhabist legitimacy — it also sees the current campaign as an opportunity to get leverage in the fight to oust Assad, as part of the Kingdom’s fight to constrain Iran.

Similarly, U.S. President Obama has welcomed the chance to enter the conflict against ISIL as a means of re-engaging against Syrian President Assad. This, however, significantly impacts — and contradicts — his attempts to find a rapprochement with Iran. That “foreign policy victory” opportunity, however, which Obama had thought achievable in time to influence the U.S. mid-term elections of November 2014, now appears to have vanished.

Mahir Zeynalov, a columnist on the Turkish website Today’s Zaman, noted on Oct. 7: “[President] Erdogan made it clear that Ankara won’t join the coalition [to attack ISIL] unless a buffer zone is established, a no-fly zone over Syria imposed and rebels are trained and equipped with modern arms. Erdogan has spent one-third of his 12-year-rule to finish Assad. He won’t stop trying even if it is a sure path to a room full of trouble.”

“Erdogan believes that Assad’s only strength is his air power. Without a no-fly zone over Syria, Erdogan estimates, trained and equipped rebels won’t be successful. He is eager to arm and train rebels in an area three miles within the Syrian territory, a possible buffer zone jointly created by Turkey and allies, that would also include tomb of Süleyman Sah, grandfather of Ottoman Sultan who founded the grand empire.”

“An attack on the tomb [would create] casus belli for Turkey, would be Erdogan’s golden opportunity to establish the buffer zone within Syria. Once the Western allies okay the no-fly zone — and they are yet to reject the idea — nothing will stop Erdogan from dragging Turkey into the Syrian quagmire. Bruised by embarrassing corruption scandal at home, [a] possible military adventure in Syria would help Erdogan cover his government’s dirty laundry.”

That “dirty laundry” includes Turkey’s role in building the coalition (then also including, mainly, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar) to start a “civil war” in Syria to bring down the Assad government, but then continuing to feed in fighters, weapons, intelligence, and other support to forces which became DI’ISH and thence ISIL.

Responding to questions following a speech at the Harvard Kennedy School on Oct. 2, 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden inadvertently noted that “our biggest problem is our allies”, and implicated Turkey as a major supporter of “ISIL”. He went on: “The Turks, who are great friends — I have a great relationship with Erdogan, whom I spend a lot of time with — the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down (Syrian President Bashar al) Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war.”

“They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and Al Qaida, and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” Biden did not mention the extensive role of the U.S. intelligence community in training, arming, and supporting many members of the 30,000-or-so strong foreign fighter force in Syria.

Turkish President Erdogan demanded, and received, an apology from Biden, as did the government of the United Arab Emirates. The statement and the apology merely served to further alienate the U.S. political community from Turkey. The U.S. journal, Foreign Policy, noted on its website on Oct. 6.: “Joe Biden Is the Only Honest Man in Washington. The Vice President’s apologies to Turkey and the UAE show the dangers of accidentally telling the truth.”

Jonathan S. Tobin, writing in the U.S. journal Commentary, on Oct. 5, noted: “[T]he story of the apology to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tells us more about the Obama Administration’s dysfunctional foreign policy than it does about the Vice President’s predilection for saying embarrassing things. But rather than apologizing to Erdogan for telling the truth about the Turks facilitating the rise of ISIS by letting Islamists enter Syria, it is Biden’s boss, President Obama, who should admit that it was his foolish decisions that did more to create the disaster in Iraq and Syria that allowed the rise of Islamist terrorists.”

The episode, up to and including the commitment of Western air power to attack ISIL, has served to alienate Western public opinion to an unprecedented level against Turkey and particularly against President Erdogan.

But for Erdogan and his Prime Minister, Dr. Ahmet Davutoglu, the opportunity to both destroy Assad and Kurdish aspirations may have been considered worth the pain. It almost certainly also sealed Turkey’s fate as far as entry to the European Union (EU) is concerned, but Erdogan and Davutoglu understood that EU membership was no longer feasible.

They also realize that Turkey now finds it difficult to follow Erdogan’s suggestion of recent years that the country should join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternate to the EU. Russia already dominates Turkey’s options in many respects, and the Russian strategic success in the Black Sea following the its annexation of Crimea now further establishes Russian military dominance in the Black Sea, once again placing Turkey on the front line against Russia.

Turkey must now play “the Russian card”, stressing to the U.S. and NATO Turkey’s indispensability in containing Russian strategic expansion into the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean.

Russia, and possibly Iran, however, may well be served by allowing Turkey to be broken up: the final post-World War I restructuring. Even if Iran risks seeing a Kurdish state emerge; Tehran knows better how to handle the Kurds.

  Bashar Assad, Having nurtured ISIL, ISIL, PKK, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey relishes the decimation of Kurdish Kobani