Turkey’s Erdogan struggles to realise his Middle East ambitions

Date:17Oct2016

The offensive into Jarablus in August was ostensibly to fight Isis but also to push back the Syrian Kurds, whom Ankara considers an extension of outlawed Turkish Kurdish groups, from the border region. Mr Erdogan’s fear is that Kurdish militants across Turkey, Syria and Iraq will seek to take advantage of the regional conflict to establish a de facto state in northern Syria.

Past a small gate on the Turkish-Syrian border lies the dusty, half-shattered town of Jarablus — a symbol of Turkey’s largest military intervention in Syria’s five-year war.

Here, on the streets of what was once a town of about 25,000 people, Turkish-trained Syrian rebels, the Free Syrian Army, or FSA, roam in Toyota pick-up trucks while Turkish officials prepare locals for a visit from the foreign media.

Food starts being handed out just as the foreigners arrive in an open-topped double- decker bus to gawk at a playground, shoot video footage from a destroyed building and grab the nearest civilian for an interview. Indeed, to spend a day on a guided tour with government minders in this town that the Turkish military liberated from Isis two months ago is to see both the ambitions and the limits of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s vision for the Middle East.

This stage-managed display arranged for public consumption, both in Turkey and abroad, is Operation Euphrates Shield, announced by Ankara in August. Turkish troops and the FSA hope to create a 5,000 square kilometre buffer zone, stretching deep into Syrian territory, where Syrians fleeing the war will live under Mr Erdogan’s protection.

But beyond the unseen security perimeter managed by Turkish soldiers, Jarablus appears as a symbol instead of Mr Erdogan’s frustrated foreign policy goals in a war that he has always wanted to play an outsize role in.

Mr Erdogan’s decision to send Turkish troops into Syria capped off years of foiled objectives in his own backyard. The US — Ankara’s Nato ally — chose to support a Kurdish militia Mr Erdogan considers to be terrorists. Russia backed President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whom Mr Erdogan despises, while Isis and Kurdish militia came to control much of Syria’s border region with Turkey.

The offensive into Jarablus in August was ostensibly to fight Isis but also to push back the Syrian Kurds, whom Ankara considers an extension of outlawed Turkish Kurdish groups, from the border region. Mr Erdogan’s fear is that Kurdish militants across Turkey, Syria and Iraq will seek to take advantage of the regional conflict to establish a de facto state in northern Syria.

Yet the president’s regional ambitions were frustrated again this week when Kurdish and predominantly Shia Iraqi military forces began an offensive for Mosul, while Turkish troops, stationed without Baghdad’s approval just outside Iraq’s second city, were left out of the battle plans.

Mr Erdogan fumed and insisted that Turkey be involved, to no avail.

Nihat Ali Ozcan, a retired Turkish military officer, said Mr Erdogan’s position on Mosul was partly aimed at shoring up his own standing after he crushed a failed coup in July.

“Mr Erdogan is using foreign opportunities as leverage in domestic issues,” he said.

The president’s desire for a role in the Mosul operation was born out of the same ambition as Turkey’s decision to liberate Jarablus in August, as well as Dabiq, last week, analysts say. Denied the role of regional peacemaker he has long sought, the intervention instead serves the twin goals of thwarting the Kurds and proving to Turks — and the rest of the world — that they remain a force in the region.

Jarablus was about to fall to Syrian Kurds, backed by the US, just before Turkey acted to stop them from joining two independent cantons into an uninterrupted stretch of land.

“For two years, Isil [Isis] was in Jarablus, and Turkey didn’t really do anything,” said a western diplomat. “And while we are all happy that Turkey has taken a stand, we should be clear that it was a stand against the Kurds, not against Isil.”

Containing the Syrian-based Kurdish militia, which is called the People’s Protection Unit, or YPG, now appears Mr Erdogan’s only achievable goal in the Syrian conflict, analysts say.

On Thursday, the army claimed to have killed up to 200 YPG fighters north of Aleppo after Ankara sent fighter jets into Syria for the first time since November when Turkey downed a Russian warplane.

In order to contain the YPG, holding Jarablus and extending the buffer zone to neighbouring cities is crucial to Ankara: it would in effect dismember the Kurdish militias into two ungovernable cantons, dashing their hopes of creating an autonomous zone.

Jarablus and its surroundings are largely safe now. The nearly 150 Isis fighters that locals estimated had controlled the town largely melted away when the Turkish tanks moved in.

A medical centre is up and running, ambulances take patients over to Turkey for treatment, bread is shipped in, electricity is restored and a giant poster of Mr Erdogan glares out over a main street.

But so far, in spite of repeated promises to spread its operation past Jarablus, to Syrian towns such as al-Bab in the west and Manbij in the south, the Turkish military has stayed put. That may change after Turkey’s failure to win a role in Mosul, a western official said.

“Mr Erdogan is very good at perceptions. It is not important what reality is: people [in Turkey] love hearing Mr Erdogan’s ambitions on the eight o’clock news when they come home,” said one security analyst who declined to be named.