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(Dr. Shujaat Ali Quadri)
From fishing in troubled waters of Syria to doing business in both war and peace between Russia and Ukraine, and standing by “brotherly” Pakistan in military stand-off with India, Turkish footprints, rather those of its hardnose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are at play everywhere. Policies of Erdogan’s Ankara are premised on assumption that the US-led world order is in decline and it has to survive in a multipolar world by having a foot in each camp, and having a presence in each land.
For Erdogan and his Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), authoritarianism at home and selling faith and trading goods abroad has been a policy manual culled from Machiavelli’s playbook. An international affairs expert, who occasionally functions as Erdogan regime’s South Asia advisor, says that Ankara has a predilection to turn as soft as a sufi and as brutal as colonialists, given requisites of national and international situations.
Erdogan rose to power when Turkey was in the throes of several insecurities. He drew capital out of Islamist manoeuvring and sentimentalism – hitherto a copyright of groups like Muslim Brotherhood. He mixed it with economic turnaround. Rural, poor and lower middle classes saw in him a savior and his fortunes shot up, never to bounce back till this day. As he was perched on the top, he exercised every trick in the book to survive and expand the reach of Turkey, even successfully building an illusion of return to the grandeur of the Ottoman caliphate.
Since Islamism is a currency infected with everlasting conflicts, Erdogan’s Turkey began to voice solidarity on every issue that would win it following among Muslims. So, when the Arab Spring broke out in 2011 and the regional policeman, the United States, struggled to grok and navigate a path, Turkey pounced on the opportunity. First, it threw weight behind rebels in Libya and Erdogan, then Prime Minister, himself flew to Tripoli and attended Friday prayers at Tripoli’s Martyr Square. Soon, then runaway Libyan autarch Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed. Turkey, like the United Kingdom and France, won a contract to import Libyan oil at prices only best known to Ankara, London and Paris. Libya descended into chaos, but Turkey was not seen wailing for its Muslim brothers. Libya remains wounded and disarrayed to this day.
As the world moved into the post-Arab Spring phase, Turkish stature grew, its economy shrunk, but its chicanery of using Islam as a foreign policy tool burgeoned even more.
Syria and Kurds
Most notable role that Turkey played has been in its immediate neighbourhood – Syria and Kurdish regions. After the ouster of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after 13-year civil war, Turkey is being portrayed as a winner. Islamists backed by Turkey, shepherded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an affiliate of Al Qaeda, and led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, who, like his organisation, has been a designated and award-carrying terrorist, are ironically shaping the destiny of a nation whose very name denotes widening of horizons.
When the Syria conflict was only unfolding and the European powers limited their response to calling for Assad’s resignation, Turkey sought a military intervention to dislodge Assad. It meant that it would spill Syrian blood, and it did in subsequent years, so much that it literally flowed in the Euphrates and in the ocean. Ankara joined hands with the US to train and fund rebels who were ready to smother Assad’s forces. These rebels were known jihadists and radicals like members of Jabhat Al-Nusra group – which later emerged as HTS.
From 2015, the US and other Western powers shifted their focus to fighting radical Islamists, but Ankara continued backing them, preparing a backyard where it would wield unchallenged influence. However, this was also the period when a dreaded and grim terror outfit – Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or Daesh – sprang up to bloody the war theatre. Simultaneously, Russia sent its troops to save the Assad regime. The US decided to rely on the Kurdish-led People’s Defense Units (YPG) by arming them in the growing fight against ISIS, but Turkey pounded Kurds at every available pretext, often compromising the fight against ISIS whose brutalities dwarfed all known inhuman excesses.
Fighters of the ISIS were reported to have camped in close vicinity of Turkey’s Syria border and many of them used Turkey as transit for canvassing for recruits and ensuring food and health supply, if not weapons. A 2015 European Parliament report mentions that Syrian oil in the custody of ISIS was routed through Turkey for sale in the world market. The report actually indicts sons of Erdogan for direct involvement in this murky trade. “It appears that BMZ Group Denizcilik ve Insaat, a shipping company owned by Bilal and Mustapha Erdogan, is transporting ISIS oil, some of it through occupied Cyprus,” the report says.
Turkey was so adamant to see Assad ousted that Turkish air forces shot down a Russian SU-24 fighter jet in 2016, bringing it into a direct confrontation with Moscow. However, Erdogan applied pragmatism-over-ideology and reconciled with Russian President Vladimir Putin by offering the Kremlin an apology and full cost of lost aircraft and blood money to two Russian Air Force personnel. Reconciliation paid dividends to Ankara in short and longer terms.
As part of a deal with Russia, Turkey allowed Russian-Assad forces to retake control of Aleppo in 2016. While their trained comrades were slaughtered and forced to flee Syria, Turkish forces stood stoic and detached.
Since Erdogan took office in 2003, he has gradually centralised power by systematically suppressing any political opposition. This has involved controlling the media, limiting civil liberties and interfering with the judiciary. Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in Turkey, has faced continued wrath of his authoritarian rule. He has reshuffled mayors in Kurd-majority areas too often. Kurdish leaders have been criminalised frequently. Moreover, Turkish forces have bombed Kurdish locations within Turkey, in Syria and Iraq, resulting in deaths of around 30,000 Kurds since Erdogan came to power.
Presently, there is a lull in Turkey-Kurds conflict, yet the repression of Kurds extends into everyday politics.
Ties With Israel, Betrayal of Palestinians
Erdogan’s rhetorical streak to impress upon Muslims often harps on championing the cause of Palestinians. On public fora, all Turkish leaders are seen and heard demonising Israel, but in recent years, Turkey has been in romance with Tel Aviv.
“The Palestine policy is our red line. It is impossible for us to accept Israel’s Palestine policies. Their merciless acts there are unacceptable,” Erdogan told reporters after Friday prayers in Istanbul in December 2020. Turkey then even offered passports to senior Hamas leadership that had taken refuge there. When UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Morocco normalised ties with Israel, Turkey joined Iran in denouncing this milepost moment in the history of the region and termed it as betrayal of Palestinians.
But, concealed from public knowledge, Erdogan’s Turkey has been favouring Israel in three pivotal ways:
- Azerbaijani oil shipments to Israel
- Food and steel exports to Israel
- All trade sustaining Israel’s war machine
Turkish generosity to Israel has continued even through the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Ankara has been as emotionless towards Palestinians as Arab states who have abandoned their own brothers and left them to the wolves.
Turkey-Pakistan: Only Needy Pals
Hit by crises on multiple fronts, Pakistan is forced to rely on countries other than China, which, contrary to prevailing perception, doesn’t overflow with munificence. Arab states are also investing in expectation of a rich quid pro quo. Turkey thus has opportunistically filled a vacuum. It approached Pakistan, Afghanistan and India at the same time. In Pakistan, it saw more eager customers for both its equipment and brand of Islamist ideology. The Pakistani public is mad after popular Turkish TV dramas. Ertugrul and Osman series based on Ottoman history have been a rage. Interestingly, these two operas have been equally passionately watched by Indians. But they earned an easy market for Turkish goods only in Pakistan.
When Erdogan visited Pakistan in February, the two countries signed a total of 24 agreements and MoUs (memoranda of understanding) in the fields of trade, water resources, agriculture, energy, culture, family, and social services, along with science, banking, education, defence, and health.
The total trade between two countries hovers at around $1.4 billion – in which Turkey enjoys a surplus. The trade volume will soon touch to $5 billion, with more profit to Turkey.
The defence partnership between the two countries has expanded with joint projects such as Milgem warships, aircraft modernisation, and drone acquisitions, deepening and expanding military collaboration. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s report says that 11 percent of Pakistan’s arms imports come from Turkey now, making it the third largest arms supplier to Islamabad after China and Netherlands.
Many Turkish companies have won contracts to develop special economic zones in leading Pakistani cities.
It was out of this business palship that Turkey resorted to batting for Pakistan on the Kashmir issue and even linked it to a wider Muslim ummah (community). It sold Pakistan its famous Bayraktar TB-2 armed UAV drones as it did to Russia and Ukraine simultaneously. As soon as the recent conflict between India and Pakistan heightened, Turkey reportedly sent an emergency supply of these drones to assist the Pakistan Army.
Pakistan fired a barrage of these drones into India on May 8&9. They killed five Muslims in Jammu, including children. The lust for lucre hence ended in the blood of his Muslim brothers, but Erdogan is perhaps immune to such charges. His hands are stained with blood of so many innocents that a few more will not move his heart or pause his ambitions.