At first look, there’s little that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has in widespread with Doğu Perinçek, a maverick socialist, Eurasianist, and militant secularist and Kemalist.
But it’s Perinçek, a person with a world of contacts in Russia, China, Iran, and Syria whose conspiratorial worldview identifies america because the core of all evil, that Erdoğan at occasions turns to assist resolve delicate geopolitical points.
Seven years in the past, Perinçek mediated a reconciliation between Moscow and Ankara following Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet.
Now, Perinçek is headed to Damascus to engineer a Russian-backed rapprochement with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose overthrow Erdoğan had inspired for the previous 11 years ever because the eruption of mass Arab Spring-era anti-government demonstrations that morphed right into a bloody civil struggle.
Chances are high that Perinçek’s effort will likely be extra profitable than when he final tried in 2016 to patch up variations between Erdoğan and Assad however in the end stumbled over the Turkish chief’s refusal to drop his insistence that the Syrian president should go.
Erdoğan has recommended as a lot in latest days, insisting that Turkey wanted to take care of a dialogue with the federal government of Assad. “We don’t have such a difficulty whether or not to defeat Assad or not…It’s a must to settle for that you simply can not lower the political dialogue and diplomacy between the states. There ought to all the time be such dialogues.”
Erdoğan went on to say that “we don’t eye Syrian territory…The integrity of their territory is necessary to us. The regime should concentrate on this.”
Erdoğan’s willingness to bury the struggle hatchet follows his failure to garner Russian and Iranian acquiescence for a renewed Turkish army operation in northern Syria. The operation was supposed to make sure that U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds, whom Turkey views as terrorists, don’t create a self-ruling Kurdish area on Turkey’s border just like the Kurdish autonomous area in northern Iraq.
Turkey hoped the operation would enable it to create a buffer zone managed by its forces and its Syrian proxies on the Syrian aspect of the 2 nations border.
Russia and Iran’s refusal to again the scheme, which might have undermined the authority of Assad, has pressured Turkey to restrict its operation to shelling Kurdish and Syrian army positions.
America seeming unwillingness to supply the Kurds something greater than verbal help, and solely that sparsely, has pushed the Kurds nearer to Damascus and, by extension, Russia and Iran as Syria quietly expands its army presence within the area. The U.S. has lengthy relied on the Kurds to counter the Islamic State in northern Syria.
The rejiggering of relationships and alliances in Syria is happening on each the diplomatic and army battlefield.
The Turkish assaults and responses by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) with the Kurdish Folks’s Safety Units (YPG) at its core look like as a lot a army as a political drawing of battlelines in anticipation of fixing Turkish and Kurdish relations with the Assad authorities.
By concentrating on Syrian army forces, Turkey is signaling that it’s going to not stand idly by if Syria helps the Kurds or supplies them cowl, whereas unprecedented Kurdish concentrating on of Turkish forces means that the Kurds have adopted new guidelines of engagement. Turkey is additional messaging that it retains the fitting to focus on Kurdish forces at will, very like it does in northern Iraq.
Each Erdoğan and the Kurds are putting dangerous bets.
The Kurds hope in opposition to all odds that Assad will repay the favour of permitting the president to advance his objective of gaining management of elements of Syria held by insurgent forces and forcing a withdrawal of U.S. forces from the world by granting the Kurds a measure of autonomy.
With elections in Turkey looming, Erdoğan hopes that Assad will assist him cater to nationalist anti-Kurdish and anti-migrant sentiment by taking management of Kurdish areas.
Turkey needs to begin repatriating among the 4 million predominantly Syrian refugees it hosts. In early August, Turkey introduced that it had accomplished the development of greater than 60,000 houses for returning refugees to northeastern Syria.
Concern a couple of potential cope with Assad and a name by Turkish International Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu for reconciliation between opposition teams and Damascus sparked anti-Turkish protests in Turkish-controlled areas of northern Syria in addition to rebel-held Idlib.
Turkey additionally expects Assad, who’s eager to regain not solely territorial management but in addition keep centralized energy, to in the end crack down on armed Kurdish teams and efforts to maintain autonomously ruled Kurdish areas.
In consequence, Perinçek, alongside Turkish-Syrian intelligence contacts, has his work lower out for him. The hole between Turkish and Syrian aspirations is large.
Assad needs a whole withdrawal of Turkish forces and the return of Syrian management of Kurdish and rebel-held areas. He’s unlikely prepared or in a position to present the type of safety ensures that Turkey would demand.
Each the Kurds and Erdoğan are caught in Catch-22s of their very own that doesn’t bode properly for both.
The Kurds could also be left with no choices if a Turkish-Syrian rapprochement succeeds or face a Turkish onslaught if it fails.
Equally, reconciliation on phrases acceptable to Erdoğan might quantity to pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
Whether or not he agrees with Assad or violence in northern Syria escalates, Erdoğan dangers sparking a brand new wave of refugees making its approach to Turkey at a time that he can economically and politically least afford it.
In keeping with analyst Kamal Alam, Erdoğan’s downside is that the Turkish president “is operating out of time earlier than the subsequent election to resolve the Gordian knot that’s Syria. For his half, Assad can wait this out – as a result of after Turkey as soon as once more fails to bomb its manner out of the northeastern downside, Erdoğan will want Assad excess of the reverse.”
When you’re desirous about writing for Worldwide Coverage Digest – please ship us an e-mail by way of submissions@intpolicydigest.org
