Turkey dreams of a neo-Ottoman Middle East
Credit: Dinotrakker
By James M. Dorsey
However, allow
me to extend a special thank you to paid subscribers who make The Turbulent
World possible. Your support and loyalty are invaluable. You can contribute to
an embattled world of independent reporting and analysis at a time when it
could not be more crucial.
To those
debating whether to become a paid subscriber, consider the importance of
maintaining media that empowers readers, listeners, and viewers to form
opinions based on independent, rigorous reporting and analysis.
Subscribing
now will allow you to watch a video version of this story or listen
to an audio podcast. To subscribe, please click here.
Whether you are a free or paid subscriber, I wish you happy holidays and everything you want for yourselves in the new year.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fall has seemingly turbocharged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman dreams.
In recent days, Mr. Erdogan and his most nationalist supporters fantasised about Syria being Turkish. Turkish pundits imagined a neo-Ottoman Middle East map in which Syria was incorporated into Turkey
Source: 9GAG
Mr. Erdogan
fuelled the fantasies by saying, “Every incident that has occurred in
our region, especially in Syria, reminds us of this fact: Turkey is bigger than
Turkey.” Mr. Erdogan said Turkey
“cannot limit its horizons to its current surface area” and cannot “escape or
hide from its destiny.”
Lamenting that the Middle East’s borders were defined after
World War I and the demise of the Ottoman Empire, Mr. Erdogan asserted that
Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, and Raqqa could have been “part of our homeland.”
The Turkish fanatasies fit Middle East scholar Lina Khatib’s
comparison of Mr. Al-Assad’s toppling to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall,
describing it as “the
Middle East’s 1989.”
“Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, (the) end of 54 years of
Assad family rule signals an earthquake in the regional order—with tremors that
will be felt for decades to come. Just as 1989 was marked by a series of
falling dominoes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and elsewhere, the collapse
of the Syrian regime is part of a chain of events, including Israel’s
decimation of Hezbollah, Iran’s loss of its most potent proxy forces, and the
weakening of Russia due to the war it started in Ukraine,” Ms. Khatib said.
Credit:
Wikipedia
The Turkish fantasies are all but a pipedream unless the
Syrian transition from Mr. Al-Assad to Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of Hayat
Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that led the overthrow of the Syrian
president, falters and Syria fragments.
Fragmentation is possible, even if, for now, it is unlikely.
Nevertheless, the Turkish and Israeli occupations of Syrian lands enhance the
risk.
Afraid that post-Al-Assad Syria, as Libya after the 2011
overthrow of Col. Moammar Qaddafi, could descend into chaos, Hayat Tahrir this
weekend moved quickly to crack down on violence in the coastal region of
Latakia, home to the Alawite Shiite sect to which the Al-Assads belong.
The crackdown followed attacks by unidentified gunmen on checkpoints, courts, and police facilities. The attacks, like similar incidents in Damascus and elsewhere, appeared designed to destroy evidence that prosecutors could use in the prosecution of former regime officials.
Demonstrators
in Latakia. Credit: Macro Media Center
On Saturday, demonstrators in Latakia protested against
Hayat Tahrir’s alleged meddling in their affairs.
On the plus side, Hayat Tahrir likely took heart from 10,000
soldiers in Mr. Al-Assad’s military availing themselves of the new rulers’
amnesty for conscripts who were not involved in atrocities, and handing over
their weapons at a ‘reconciliation center’ in Latakia.
Even so, Hayat Tahrir and Turkey fear Iran could exploit
Latakia's resistance.
“I think Iran
will…learn lessons in the new period; we need to help Iran constructively,”
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Al-Hadith, a Saudi newspaper. Mr.
Fidan’s remarks sparked angry Iranian responses.
Credit:
MEMRI
An article entitled “This
Neighbour Is No Longer Trustworthy,” in Iran’s Kayhan newspaper, which is
close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, described Mr. Erdogan as ”opportunistic"
and a “self-appointed caliph.” Kayhan asserted that Mr. Erdogan was seeking to revive
the Ottoman caliphate.
Mr. Erdogan “is gambling dangerously. Turkey is playing with
fire, even if its leaders think they can control the game. Turkey should know
that these are still early days. Betting on the spark it lit, which has now
spread to Syria, will have long-term consequences and may soon lay the
groundwork for the fall of its own regime, like it did to Bashar Al-Assad's
regime,” Kayhan thundered.
Meanwhile, in northern Syria, the Turkish-backed Syrian
National Army (SNA) battled the US-supported, predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic
Forces (SDF), the ground troops in the fight against the Islamic State, and the
guardians of detention facilities in which thousands of jihadist fighters and
their families have been detained.
Turkey has concentrated commandos, allied militia fighters,
and artillery along the border with Syria, dismantled the border wall near the
Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, and increased drone attacks on Manbij in preparation
for a possible large-scale incursion.
Mr. Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, suggested the new
Syrian government could fend off an incursion if it addressed
the Kurdish issue “properly.”
“If (the new Syrian administration) addresses this issue
properly, there will be no reason for us to intervene… We see now right steps
taken in the right direction… We need to give them some more time,” Mr. Fidan
said, adding that the Hayat Tahrir government should take complete control of
Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria.
Turkey classifies the Syrian Democratic Force as a terrorist
organisation because of its links to the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PPK),
which has waged a low-level, four-decades-old insurgency in southeastern Turkey
in its quest for recognition of Kurdish rights.
Human Rights Watch noted this week that Turkey
witnessed “a
slew of outrageous cases over the past year in which Kurdish language
songs, dances, and promotion of cultural and linguistic rights have been
interpreted by the police and prosecutors as evidence of links with terrorism.”
Hayat Tahrir, despite taking a back seat and letting the
Syrian National Army fight it out in Kurdish dominated parts of northern Syria,
will ultimately want control of Kurdish-held areas given that that they host
the country’s oil and gas reserves, most fertile lands, and water resources.
Turkey’s attempt to exploit fluidity in northern Syria to
its advantage comes as the United States fears that Islamic State remnants in
Syria will attempt
to reconstitute the group like jihadists in Iraq did when they freed
fighters from Iraqi detention facilities after the 2011 US withdrawal from the
country.
SDF’s Al-Roj
detention camp. Source: BBC
US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander General Michael
Kurilla asserted that the Islamic State planned to free 8,000 of its
fighters held in SDF-managed detention facilities.
US forces in Syria have repeatedly attacked Islamic State
targets in northern Syria since Mr. Al-Assad’s fall. The Pentagon said it had more
than doubled the number of US military personnel in Syria to 2,000 “to meet
shifting mission requirements.”
Last week, Al-Naba, an Islamic State weekly, decried the plight of the group’s inmates in the SDF camps, saying it prayed for God to empower its fighters to free them.
The Islamic State staged a
brazen breakout of prisoners in 2018, employing explosives-laden vehicles
and killing 180 people.
As part of an effort to ease frictions among competing Syrian
rebel factions, Turkey has promoted the Syrian National Army as a major player
in Syria’s future.
Mr. Erdogan hopes that Mr. Al-Sharaa’s recent meeting with
commanders of the Syrian National Army, an amalgam of some 40 Turkish-backed
militias, will lead to the group’s representation in a new Syrian government.
Mr. Erdogan believes the SNA deserves cabinet posts as a
reward for the
militia’s role in the rebel offensive that toppled Mr. Al-Assad and on the
back of its control of the northern and central parts of Aleppo and Raqqa
provinces.
“We are making constructive advice for all the opposition
groups to come together and have a unified government,” Mr. Fidan, a former
Turkish intelligence chief, said.
So far, Hayat Tahrir has appointed 14 ministers to the
caretaker government, which is slated to remain in office until March. All of
them served in the group's administration in Idlib, the rebels' erstwhile
stronghold in northern Syria.
Immediately after being appointed defence minister, Murhaf
Abu Qasra, aka Abu Hassan 600, a prominent figure in the insurgency that
toppled Mr. Al-Assad, attended a meeting of armed groups on Saturday that, according to the
state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, discussed "the form of the military
institution in the new Syria.”
The groups reportedly agreed to hand over their weapons and
fold into a new Syrian military and security force, despite Hayat Tahrir
earlier encountering resistance in Deraa in southern Syria when it attempted to
collect the arms of local militias.
It was not immediately clear whether the militia commanders agreed to a timeline for the handover.
Syrian
Democratic Forces flag. Credit; Wkipedia
The Syrian Democratic Forces was not invited to participate
in the gathering.
Even so, Mr. Al Sharaa told a joint news conference with Mr.
Fidan that the Kurdish force, like all other militia, was not exempted from the
obligations to hand over their weapons.
Returning to Ankara from a summit in Cairo of eight Global
South countries, Mr. Erdogan offered to help
Hayat Tahrir craft a new centralized political system and constitution for
Syria that would ensure Syrian Kurds are prevented from carving out an
autonomous region of their own.
Mr. Fidan was in Damascus this weekend to discuss Turkish
assistance. Turkish Defence Minister Yasar Guler earlier offered to train a new
Syrian military.
Nordic
Monitor, a Swedish-based network of exiled Turkish journalists and
intellectuals, said Mr. Erdogan hoped to shape a new Syria that embraces Islam,
sees Turkey as its prime ally, and embraces neo-Ottomanism.
To do so, Mr. Erdogan wants to place advisors in key Syrian
ministries to build capacity, share expertise, and position Istanbul-based
Syrian opposition figures as members of a transition government that would be
formed when the caretaker government’s term expires in March.
Turkish-backed candidates include Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, a
former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, former prime minister Riyad
Farid Hijab, Khaled Khoja (Halid Hoca), a Syrian Turkmen who acquired Turkish
nationality and changed his name to Alptekin Hocaoğlu, Christian politician George
Sabra, economist Aref Dalila, and Kurdish politician Abdulbaset Sieda.
Speaking to Yeni
Shafak, a Turkish newspaper, Mr. Al-Sharaa said, "Turkey…will take
precedence over other countries in rebuilding Syria, We believe that Turkey
will share with Syria the experience it acquired through its own economic
development … After all, this isn't a victory for the Syrian people alone, but
also for the Turkish people, because this is a victory of the oppressed over
their oppressors."
Nordic
Monitor, a Swedish-based network of exiled Turkish journalists and
intellectuals, said Mr. Erdogan hoped to shape a new Syria that embraces Islam,
sees Turkey as its prime ally, and embraces neo-Ottomanism.
To do so, Mr. Erdogan wants to place advisors in key Syrian
ministries to build capacity, share expertise, and position Istanbul-based
Syrian opposition figures as members of a transition government that would be
formed when the caretaker government’s term expires in March.
Turkish-backed candidates include Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, a
former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, former prime minister Riyad
Farid Hijab, Khaled Khoja (Halid Hoca), a Syrian Turkmen who acquired Turkish
nationality and changed his name to Alptekin Hocaoğlu, Christian politician George
Sabra, economist Aref Dalila, and Kurdish politician Abdulbaset Sieda.
Speaking to Yeni
Shafak, a Turkish newspaper, Mr. Al-Sharaa said, "Turkey…will take
precedence over other countries in rebuilding Syria, We believe that Turkey
will share with Syria the experience it acquired through its own economic
development … After all, this isn't a victory for the Syrian people alone, but
also for the Turkish people, because this is a victory of the oppressed over
their oppressors."
A recent study
of successful rebellions since 1900 by three US universities – Georgetown
University, Emory University, and the University of Virginia – underlines the
significance of the Turkish efforts, provided that they are inclusive.
The study’s conclusion that authoritarian regimes
established by rival rebel groups quickly fracture and spark new uprisings
raises questions about Turkey’s insistence on excluding the Syrian Democratic
Forces from the political process.
“Ankara has had pragmatic engagement with HTS for years,
forging ties that could now help it steer the new authorities in Damascus in a
direction to its liking,” the International Crisis Group said in an analysis
of the regional repercussions of Mr. Al-Assad’s downfall.
This week, Hayat Tahrir intends to initiate a national
dialogue involving representatives of all Syrian communities, political and civil
society groups, and rebel militias to chart the country’s transition.
The dialogue will likely force Hayat Tahrir to clarify its
vision for Syria’s future, the degree to which the group is willing to share
power, and whether its governance model is more transparent and inclusive than
the way it ruled in Idlib before the offensive that toppled Mr. Al-Assad.
In doing so, the dialogue will probably offer a first
indication of how fraught Syria’s political transition will be, particularly
with Hayat Tahrir wanting to govern Syria for a period of five years before
holding elections.
Source:
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
For its part, Israel projects its recent occupation of
Syrian territory beyond the long-occupied Golan Heights conquered in the 1967
Middle East war as a hedge as much against a possible splintering of Syria as
in anticipation of a Turkish-backed Islamist regime in Damascus.
Hayat Tahrir “in the driver’s seat in Damascus, under
Turkish patronage, raises the
daunting possibility for Israel of hostile Islamists on its northeastern border.
That predicament could become even darker if the Kurds are pushed back, making
room for a resurgence by ISIS,” the Islamic State, said Shalom Lipner, a former
adviser to several Israeli prime ministers.
In a throwback to the 1970s when the United States and
Israel backed Iraqi Kurdish insurgents, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said
Israel should consider helping Syria’s Kurds. Mr. Saar described the Kurds
as Israel’s “natural allies.”
“We have long relations with the Kurds; it’s part of our
history, it’s part of their history. But Israel
is not going to take on the American role in supporting the Kurds,” said
retired Major General Yaakov Amidror, a former national-security adviser to
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological
University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of
the syndicated column and podcast, The
Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
Comments
Post a Comment