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Turkey's
Dangerous Ambitions
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Iraqis
protest Turkey's intervention in the north of their country on December
12.
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It is the same old Middle East story: The Shiites accuse Sunnis of
passionately following sectarian policies; Sunnis accuse the Shiites of
passionately following sectarian polices; and they are both right. Except
that Turkey's pro-Sunni sectarian policies are taking an increasingly
perilous turn as they push Turkey into new confrontations, adding
newcomers to an already big list of hostile countries.
Take President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's recent remarks on the
centuries-old Shiite-Sunni conflict: they amusingly looked more like a
confession than an accusation: "Today we are faced with an absolute
sectarianism. Who is doing it? Who are they? Iran and Iraq," Erdogan
said. This is the same Erdogan who once said, "The mosques are our
barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the
faithful our soldiers...." Is that not sectarian? So, with a
straight face, the president of one sectarian country (Sunni Turkey) is
accusing other countries (Shiite Iran and Shiite-dominated Iraq) of being
sectarian.
Erdogan went
on: "What about the Sunnis? There are Sunni Arabs, Sunni Turkmen
and Sunni Kurds [in Iraq and Syria]. What will happen to their security?
They want to feel safe."
Turkey's pro-Sunni sectarian
policies are taking an increasingly perilous turn.
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Never realizing that its ambitions to spread Sunni Islam over large
swaths of the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq, were bigger than
its ability to do so, Turkey now finds itself confronting a formidable
bloc of pro-Shiite countries: Russia, Iran, Syria, and Iraq, plus the
much smaller Lebanon.
Even before the crisis with Russia that began on November 24 -- over
Turkey's shooting down a Russian SU-24 along the Turkish-Syrian border --
has shown any sign of de-escalation, another Turkish move had sparked a
major dispute with neighboring Iraq.
Just when Turkey moved to reinforce its hundreds of troops at a
military camp in Iraq, the Baghdad government gave an ultimatum to Ankara
for the removal of all Turkish soldiers stationed in Iraq since last
year. Turkey responded by halting its reinforcements. Not enough, the
Iraqis apparently think. Iraq's prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said
on December 7 that his country might turn to the UN security council if
Turkish troops in northern Iraq were not withdrawn within 48 hours. Hadi
al-Ameri, the head of the militant Shiite Badr Organization, threatened
that his group would fight Turkish forces if Ankara continued its troop
deployment.
Badr Brigade spokesman Karim
al-Nuri put the Turkish ambitions in quite a realistic way: "We
have the right to respond and we do not exclude any type of response
until the Turks have learned their lesson ... Do they have a dream of
restoring Ottoman greatness? This is a great delusion and they will pay
dearly for Turkish arrogance."
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Badr
Brigade spokesman Karim al-Nuri: "They will pay dearly for Turkish
arrogance."
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Inevitably, Russia came into the picture. Russia's UN ambassador,
Vitaly Churkin, said he told the Security Council that Turkey was acting
"recklessly and inexplicably" by sending troops across the
border into Iraq without the consent of the Iraqi government. According
to Russia, the Turkish move "lacks legality."
All that fell on deaf ears in Ankara, as Erdogan repeated on Dec. 11
that Turkey would not pull out its troops from Iraq. In response, Iraq
appealed to the UN Security Council to demand an immediate and
unconditional withdrawal of all Turkish troops from northern Iraq,
calling Turkey's military incursion a "flagrant violation" of
international law.
The next day, Shiite militia members gathered in Baghdad's Tahrir
Square to protest against Turkey. Crowds of young men in military
fatigues, as well as some Shiite politicians, chanted
against Turkish "occupation," vowing they would fight the
Turkish troops themselves if they do not withdraw. Angry protesters also burned Turkish flags.
Through its efforts to oust Syria's non-Sunni president, Bashar
al-Assad, and build a Muslim Brotherhood-type of Sunni Islamist regime in
Damascus, Turkey has become everyone's foe over its eastern and southern
borders -- in addition to having to wait anxiously for the next Russian
move to hit it -- not knowing where the blow will come from.
The confrontation with Russia has given Moscow an excuse to augment
its military deployment in Syria
and the eastern Mediterranean and weaken allied air strikes against
Islamic State (IS).
Russia has increased its military assets in the region, including
deploying S-400 air and anti-missile defense systems, probably ready to
shoot down the first Turkish fighter jet flying over Syrian skies.
Waiting for Turkish-Russian tensions to ease, and trying to avoid a
clash between NATO member Turkey and Russia, U.S. officials have quietly put
on hold a request for Turkey to more actively to join the allied air
missions in Syria against IS. After having lost its access to Syrian
soil, Turkey also has been declared militarily non grata in Iraq.
As Professor Norman Stone, a prominent expert on Turkish politics,
explained in a recent
article:
Erdogan's adventurism has been quite
successful so far, but it amounts to an extraordinary departure for
Turkish foreign policy, and maybe even risks the destruction of the
country. How on earth could this happen? The background is an inferiority
complex, and megalomania. For centuries, and even since the Mongols,
sensible Islam has asked: 'What went wrong? Why has God forsaken us, and
allowed others to reach the moon?'
With the inferiority complex and megalomania still gripping the
country's Islamist polity, Erdogan's Islam is not sensible; it is
perilous.
Russian conflict is weakening the fight.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based
columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum.
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