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| Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen. |
It is an irrefutable fact that the United States sponsors
the militants, but only for a limited period of time in order to achieve
certain policy objectives. For instance: the United States nurtured the Afghan
jihadists during the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union from 1979 to
1988, but after the signing of Geneva Accords and the consequent withdrawal of
Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the United States withdrew its support to the
Afghan jihadists.
Similarly, the United States lent its support to the
militants during the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, but after achieving the
policy objectives of toppling the Qaddafi regime in Libya and weakening the
anti-Israel Assad regime in Syria, the United States relinquished its blanket
support to the militants and eventually declared a war against a faction of
Syrian militants, the Islamic State, when the latter transgressed its mandate
in Syria and dared to occupy Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014.
The United States’ regional allies in the Middle East,
however, are not as subtle and experienced in Machiavellian geopolitics. Under
the misapprehension that alliances and enmities in international politics are
permanent, the Middle Eastern autocrats keep on pursuing the same policy
indefinitely as laid down by the hawks in Washington for a brief period of time
in order to achieve strategic objectives.
For example: the security establishment of Pakistan kept
pursuing the policy of training and arming the Afghan and Kashmiri jihadists
throughout the ‘90s and right up to September 2001, even after the United
States withdrew its support to the jihadists’ cause in Afghanistan in 1988.
Similarly, the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Turkey
has made the same mistake of lending indiscriminate support to the Syrian
militants even after the United States’ partial reversal of policy in Syria and
the declaration of war against Islamic State in August 2014 in order to placate
the international public opinion when the graphic images and videos of Islamic
State’s brutality surfaced on the mainstream media.
Keeping up appearances in order to maintain the façade of justice
and morality is indispensable in international politics and the Western powers
strictly abide by this code of conduct. Their medieval client states in the
Middle East, however, are not as experienced and they often keep on pursuing
the same counterintuitive policies of training and arming the militants against
their regional rivals, which are untenable in the long run in a world where
pacifism has generally been accepted as one of the fundamental axioms of the
modern worldview.
Regarding the recent
thaw [1] in the icy relationship between Russia and Turkey after the latter
shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 in November last year on the border between
Syria and Turkey, although the proximate cause of this détente seems to be the
attempted coup plot against Erdogan’s Administration last month by the
supporters of the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, but this surprising
development also sheds light on the deeper divisions between the United States
and Turkey over their respective Syria policy.
After the United States’ reversal of regime change policy in
Syria in August 2014 when Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq in June 2014 and
threatened the capital of another steadfast American ally, Masoud Barzani’s
Erbil in the oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan, the Obama Administration has made the
Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq.
Bear in mind that the conflict in Syria and Iraq is actually
a three-way conflict between the Sunni Arabs, the Shi’a Arabs and the Sunni
Kurds. Although, after the declaration of war against a faction of Sunni Arab
militants, the Islamic State, the Obama Administration has also lent its
support to the Shi’a-led government in Iraq, but the Shi’a Arabs of Iraq are
not the trustworthy allies of the United States because they are under the
influence of America’s archrival in the region, Iran.
Therefore, the Obama Administration was left with no other
choice than to make the Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq
after a group of Sunni Arab jihadists transgressed its mandate in Syria and
overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq from where the United States had withdrawn its
troops only a couple of years ago.
The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, which has recently
captured Manbij near the border with Turkey only a couple of weeks ago, are
nothing more than Kurdish militias with a tinkering of mercenary Arab tribesmen
in order to make them appear more representative and inclusive in outlook.
As far as the regional parties to the Syrian civil war are
concerned, however, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf Arab States may not have
serious reservations against this close cooperation between the United States
and the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, because the Gulf Arab States tend to look at the
regional conflicts from the lens of the Iranian Shi’a threat. Turkey, on the
other hand, has been more wary of the separatist Kurdish tendencies in its
northeast than the Iranian Shi’a threat, as such.
Notwithstanding, any radical departure from the longstanding
policy of providing unequivocal support to the American policy in the region by
the political establishment of Turkey since the times of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
is highly unlikely. But after this perfidy by the Americans of lending their
support to the Kurds against the Turkish proxies in Syria, it is quite
plausible that the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Turkey might try to
strike a balance in its relations with the Cold War-era rivals.
Remember that Turkey has the second largest army in the
NATO, the United States has been conducting air strikes against the targets in
Syria from the Incirlik airbase and around fifty American B-61 hydrogen bombs
have also been deployed there, whose safety became a matter of real concern
during the attempted coup when the commander of the Incirlik airbase, General Bekir
Ercan Van, along with nine other officers were arrested for supporting the
coup; movement in and out of the base was denied, power supply was cut off and
the security threat level was raised to the highest state of alert, according
to a
report [2] by Eric Schlosser for the New Yorker.
Sources and links:
[1] Turkish Foreign Minister’s exclusive interview to
Sputnik News:
[2] The H Bombs in Turkey by Eric Schlosser:
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