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| Abdullah Gul, Gulen and Erdogan. |
After reading a few detailed reports on the failed coup plot
in Turkey, especially the informative analysis
[1] by Metin Gurcan, I have reached a conclusion that instead of a serious
attempt at overthrowing the government, the coup plot actually was a
large-scale mutiny within the ranks of the Turkish armed forces. Moreover,
although Erdogan is blaming the Gulenists out of malice, but my opinion is that
the coup was attempted by the Kemalist liberals against the Islamist government
of Turkey.
For the last five years of the Syrian proxy war, the
Kemalists have been looking with suspicion at Erdogan Administration’s policy
of deliberately nurturing the Sunni jihadists against the Shi’a regime of
Bashar al Assad. As long as the US was onboard on the policy of training and
arming the Sunni Arab jihadists in Syria, until June 2014 when Islamic State
overran Mosul that led to the reversal of the previous American policy of
regime change, the hands of Kemalists were tied.
But after the US declared a war against Islamic State and
the consequent divergence between the American policy of supporting the Kurds
in Syria and the Islamist government of Turkey’s continued support to the Sunni
Arab jihadists, which led to discord and the adoption of contradictory
policies; and then the spate of bombings in Turkey claimed by Islamic State and
the Kurds in the last year, all of these factors contributed to widespread
disaffection among the rank and file of Turkish armed forces, which regard
themselves as the custodians of the secular traditions and the guarantors of
peace and stability in Turkey. The fact that one-third of 220 brigadiers and
ten major generals have been detained after the coup plot shows the level of
frustration shown by the top and mid-ranking officers of the armed forces
against Erdogan’s policies.
The dilemma that Turkey is facing in Syria is quite unique:
in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013
the stage was all set for yet another no-fly zone and “humanitarian
intervention” a la Gaddafi’s Libya; the war hounds were waiting for a finishing
blow and the then Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and the then Saudi
intelligence chief, Bandar bin Sultan, were shuttling between the Western
capitals to lobby for the military intervention. Francois Hollande had already
announced his intentions and David Cameron was also onboard.
Here it should be remembered that even during the Libyan
intervention Obama’s policy was a bit ambivalent and France under the
leadership of Sarkozy had taken the lead role. In the Syrian case, however, the
British parliament forced Cameron to seek a vote for military intervention in
the House of Commons before committing British troops and Air Force to Syria;
taking cue from the British parliament the US’ Congress also compelled Obama to
seek approval before another ill-conceived military intervention abroad; and
since both of those administrations lacked the requisite majority in their
respective parliaments and the public opinion was also fiercely against another
Middle Eastern war, therefore, Obama and Cameron dropped their plans of
enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria.
In the end, France was left alone as the only Western power
still in favor of intervention; at this point, however, the seasoned Russian
Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, staged a diplomatic coup by announcing that
the Syrian regime is willing to ship its chemical weapons’ stockpiles out of
Syria and subsequently the issue was amicably resolved. Turkey, Jordan and the
Gulf Arab states – the main beneficiaries of the Sunni Jihad in Syria, however,
had lost a golden opportunity for dealing a fatal blow to the Shi’a alliance
comprising Iran, Syria and their Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah.
To add insult to the injury, the Islamic State, one of the
numerous Sunni jihadist outfits fighting in Syria, trespassed its mandate in
Syria and overran Mosul in northern Iraq in June 2014 and threatened the
capital of America’s most steadfast ally in the oil-rich region – Masoud
Barzani’s Erbil. The US had no choice but to adopt some countermeasures to show
to the world that it is still sincere in pursuing its schizophrenic and
hypocritical “war on terror” policy; at the same time, however, it assured its
Turkish, Jordanian and Gulf Arab allies that despite fighting a symbolic war
against the maverick jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, the Western policy of
training and arming the so-called “moderate” Syrian militants will continue
apace and that Bashar al-Assad’s days are numbered, one way or the other.
Moreover, declaring a war against Islamic State in August
2014 served another purpose too – in order to commit the US Air Force to Syria
and Iraq, Obama Administration needed the approval of the US Congress which was
not available, as I have already mentioned, but by declaring a war against
Islamic State, which is a designated terrorist organization, the Obama
Administration availed itself of the “war on terror” provisions in the US’ laws
and thus circumvented the US’ Congress.
In order to understand the Kurdish factor in the Syria-Iraq
equation, we should bear in mind that there are four distinct types of Kurds:
1) the KDP Kurds of Iraq led by Masoud Barzani; 2) the PUK Kurds of Iraq led by
Jalal Talabani; 3) the PKK Kurds of Turkey; and 4) the PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria.
The first of these, i.e. the Barzani-led KDP Kurds of Iraq have traditionally
been Western allies who have formed a strategic alliance with the US and Israel
since the ‘90s, the First Gulf War. All other Kurds, however, have
traditionally been in the anticolonial socialist camp and that’s the reason why
PKK has been designated as a terrorist organization by NATO because Turkey has
the second largest army in the NATO.
Unlike the Barzani-led Kurds of Iraq, however, the PYD/YPG
Kurds of Syria, who are ideologically akin to the socialist PKK Kurds of
Turkey, had initially formed an alliance with the pro-Russia Assad regime
against the Sunni Arab jihadists in return for limited autonomy; the
aforementioned alliance, however, was not just against the Islamic State but
against all the Sunni Arab jihadist groups operating in Syria some of which
have been supported by NATO and Gulf Arab states.
It was only in August 2014, after the US' declaration of war
against ISIS, that the PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria switched sides and now they are
the centerpiece of the US policy for defeating ISIS in the region. One can’t
really blame the Kurds for this perfidy because they are fighting for their
right of self-determination, but once again the Western powers had executed
their tried-and-tested divide-and-rule policy to perfection in Syria and Iraq
to gain leverage and to turn the tide despite the dismal failure of their
stated policy of regime change for the initial three years of the Syrian civil
war, i.e. from August 2011 to August 2014.
Until August 2014 when the declared US policy in Syria was
regime change and the PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria had formed a defensive alliance
with the Assad regime against the Sunni jihadists to defend the semi-autonomous
Kurdish majority areas in Syrian Rojava; that equation changed, however, when
ISIS captured Mosul in June 2014 and also threatened the US’ most steadfast
ally in the region: Masoud Barzani and his capital Erbil in the Iraqi
Kurdistan, which is also the hub of Big Oil’s Northern Iraq operations. After
that development United States made an about-face on its Syria policy and now
the declared objective became the war against Islamic State.
That policy change in turn led to a reconfiguration of
alliances among the regional actors and the PYD/YPG Kurds broke off their
previous arrangement with Assad regime and formed a new alliance with NATO
against the Islamic State. Unlike their previous defensive alliance with the
Syrian regime, however, whose objective was to protect and defend the Kurdish
majority areas in Syria from the onslaught of the Sunni Arab jihadists, this
new Kurdish alliance with NATO is more aggressive and expansionist, and its
outcome is obvious from this Amnesty International
report [2] on the forced displacement of Arabs and demographic change by
the Kurds.
Sources and links:
[1] Why Turkey’s coup didn’t stand a chance:
[2] Syrian Kurds razing villages seized from Islamic State, Amnesty
International report:
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