Turkey’s move makes ME conflict more murky

We are quite mistaken if we assume that at last a powerful nation in the region, in this instance Turkey, has plucked up enough courage to take on ISIS terrorists. Far from it, Turkey apparently has little or no interest in combating or eliminating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ISIS. Its attitude had been that it did not matter who did it as long as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was ousted. Thus its policy had been one of tolerance as far as ISIS was concerned.

But when Turkey declared a war this week on ISIS and Kurdish terrorism which Ankara had been plagued with over the past three decades, obviously eyebrows were raised. Turkey’s war, it appears, is targeted no so much at ISIS, but at armed Kurdish groups not only in Turkey but also in Syria and Iraq. Turkey does not want the Kurdish separatists to become strong and carve a separate state out of the three countries and perhaps Iran, too.  Thus it comes as little surprise that the bulk of the bombs from Turkish war planes fall on Kurdish positions in Turkey, northern Iraq and Syria rather than on ISIS. 

Turkey’s lopsided war on terror won only a cautious nod from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).  At an emergency meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, NATO gave Turkey, which has the second largest contingent in the cold-war-era military alliance, its full political support in the fight against ISIS. But several member-states urged Ankara not to undermine the Kurdish peace process by using excessive military force.

A member of the Syrian Kurds militia walks in a damaged stadium in the northeastern Syrian province of Hasakeh which has been the scene of fighting with the ISIS. AFP

Turkey’s sudden decision to take on ISIS and the Kurds came in the aftermath of a massacre in Suruc, a border town near Syria on July 20. More than 30 young students, mostly Kurds, were killed in the suicide bomb attack carried out by ISIS. The attack triggered angry protests in the Kurdish region of Turkey. One fifth of Turkey’s population is Kurdish. 

Days after the massacre, Turkish security forces came under attack by the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party), a separatist group that has entered into a peace deal with the Turkish government. The group has set up camps in northern Iraq where Iraq’s Kurds run a separate government.  The PKK also has close ties with the Syrian Kurds.  The attacks on the Turkish security forces gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the opportunity he had been waiting for.  He had been ruing the Syrian Kurds’ recent victory against ISIS in the border town of Kobane.  Thousands of PKK fighters also joined the Syrian Kurds in the battle for Kobane.  The victory, which became possible largely due to US military aid, has injected new life into PKK.  Erdogan fears that if the Syrian Kurds set up a separate state in Syria, it will be only a matter of time before a Greater Kurdistan emerges from the Middle East, incorporating the Kurdish regions in northern Iraq and eastern Turkey.  The new state will have access to the Mediterranean Sea, enabling it to export oil and natural gas. Lack of direct access to the sea is the key factor that is preventing the Iraqi Kurds from making a unilateral declaration of independence.

The very mentioning of Greater Kurdistan would push Turkish leaders into action. Erdogan is no exception. He probably saw a grand design by Turkey’s enemies to destabilise the country. Only a hundred years ago, Turkey was a great power ruling the Middle East and North Africa. Turkey does not want any more territorial loss. So Erdogan felt the need for a pre-emptive strike against PKK, which is on the US list of terrorist organisations.  In the process, the Turks are also attacking the Syrian Kurds who, with US help defeated ISIS only a month ago. This only confirms that in this mad conflict, there are no clear lines as to who is an enemy and who a friend. Senior Turkish officials said there was “no difference” between the Kurdish group and ISIS. But Turkey’s NATO allies are wary of this double-edged strategy. Fight against ISIS yes, but why the Kurds? This seems to be the underlying message in their response.  
But the US is taking a different line. Though it was on the side of the Kurds in the battle for Kobane, the US appears to have given Turkey the green light to attack the Kurds in exchange for the use of Turkey’s Incirlik air base in the fight against ISIS.

Erdogan had avoided sending troops to Syria to fight ISIS.  He did virtually nothing to prevent fanatics from all over the world from using the Turkish territory to cross over to Syria and join the world’s most despicable terror group. Even the Sri Lankan school principal and his family had gone to Syria to join ISIS via Turkey, which is being accused of becoming a jihadists’ collaborator. Turkey has also become a hangout for spies of various countries that seek to achieve strategic goals by manipulating ISIS.  In February this year, the Turkish police arrested a man who admitted he was working for Canada’s intelligence. He had helped several people to join the ISIS via Turkey. Among them were the three British teenage girls who made global headlines early this year after they secretly left home to join ISIS or become the so-called Jihadi brides. 

Turkey’s action has given a new twist to the conflict that has been going on since Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other pro-West Arab states triggered an Arab Spring in Syria in 2011, assuming that just as they got rid of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, they could also get rid of Assad. But in the process, little did they realise that they would create a monster called ISIS, whose ideology has no place in the teachings of Islam. In fact, the Prophet Muhammad has warned of fanatical groups such as ISIS. He has said young fanatics dreaming the dream of fools would recite the Quran but its meaning would not go beyond their throat and they would deviate from Islam just as fast as an arrow that deivates from its target.

Whether it is a covert war against the Kurds or not, Turkey along with other countries in the region has now got an opportunity to wipe out ISIS – which many analysts suspect is a product of Israeli intelligence -- once and for all before the canker spreads far and wide to mislead the Muslims across the world and threaten the world’s peace and security.