US Policy on Turkey by James F. Jeffrey and Soner Çağaptay

 U.S. Policy on Turkey

JAMES F. JEFFREY

SONER CAGAPTAY

 

TURKEY, a NATO member, sits on prime real estate. Whether leveraged as a partner to fight the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq or Syria, end the war in Syria, stymie refugee flows from Syria into Europe, or, last but not least, address Russian influence in Eastern Europe, Ankara is a crucial ally for the United States. If the U.S.-Turkey relationship faces problems, Washington will be hard-pressed to implement its policies in Turkey’s neighborhood. Turkey is one of the most important countries for the United States overall, and of central importance for U.S. policy in southern Europe and the Middle East. But Washington’s mishandling of the Syrian civil war, along with its tilt toward the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in the fight against IS in eastern Syria, risks forcing Turkey ever more into the Russian camp out of pure self-defense. In this regard, the new administration should under­stand the motives and objectives of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the most powerful Turkish leader since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established the Turkish republic in 1923.

Since 2002, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has tried to make Turkey a standalone Middle East power, so far without success. More­over, Turkish foreign policy looks now, ironically, as it did under former Turkish president Suleyman Demirel in 1995: uncertain relations with Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, with its only reliable allies the United States and thus NATO; (recently normalized) ties with Israel; and a relationship with the Euro­pean Union characterized by one step forward, one step back. An opening therefore exists for the next president to improve ties with Erdogan and enlist Ankara more securely in regional initiatives, if only in a transactional and inevitably frequently contentious way.

Why does the United States need a new policy on Turkey? The risks posed by a failed relationship with Turkey are immense, ranging from a setback for U.S. efforts to fight IS to a weakening of NATO’s ability to stem refugee flows into Europe, a development that would destabilize America’s allies. Furthermore, with or without Erdogan, Turkey is one of the most successful economic powers in the region, with a longstanding role as an important U.S. ally. Managing relations with Turkey well or badly will have ramifications throughout the world.

Flawed Traditional Approach

The next president, however, cannot bring Turkey more securely into America’s fold by using the traditional U.S. approach, whereby the United States assumes that it holds most of the cards with its foreign interlocutors, that given America’s championing of universal values it knows better than other states themselves what is good for them, and that the other countries both value relations with the United States above most other interests and feel they have few alternatives. Washington thus is often tempted to treat its friends and allies as a parent handling “misbehaving children,” with endless talk, persuasion, and, if necessary, threats to withdraw love. Not only does this approach often fail to elicit Washington’s desired outcome, but with President Erdogan and to some degree Turkey as a “system,” it has been, repeatedly, disastrously, counterproductive.

A Way Forward

Given these failings, the United States should adopt a transactional approach to Turkey focused on common security interests, while emphasizing, and to some degree negotiating to make progress on, democratic liberal values.

It is important in this transactional arrangement that the United States has tools with which to “trade.” The Obama administration has challenged the efficacy of many of these tools, but if the next U.S. president were to offer them, this would generate greater interest than usual. Washington can respond to Turkey’s needs with more vigor, effort, and resources if Ankara were more helpful on the U.S. agenda. This will vary specifically depending on the new administration’s priorities and global events, but would likely include more sensitivity to America’s legitimate concerns about Turkey’s domestic trends under Erdogan.

Erdogan’s Agenda

Step one to any “transactional reordering” is to understand Erdogan. His ultimate goal by 2023, the one hundredth anniversary of the Turkish republic’s establishment, is to steward the creation of an internationally and economically stronger, politically stable Turkey that would eclipse the epochal achievement of Ataturk himself. That goal does not include a greater anchoring of Turkey in Western values, although Erdogan appears supportive of at least formal democratic procedure, nor does it include loyal sacrifice for an American global security system. However, if convinced that such a system can advance his international and economic agenda, he can be persuaded to support it.

To achieve his goals, he needs Ataturk-like power. In 2014, Erdogan stepped down from his post as prime minister to become the country’s president. Despite his growing formal and informal powers, including continued de facto control over his party, the AKP, almost continuously running the government without coalition since 2002, the country remains a parliamentary system. Therefore, he has focused on transforming Turkey into an executive system ever since becoming president. Such a change would require a constitutional amendment to overturn the presidency’s constitutionally mandated nonpartisan status, thus allowing him to officially lead his AKP. Here, the fate that befell two past leaders, Turgut Ozal and Suleyman Demirel, is instructive. Both saw their movements wither after they became head of state. Erdogan, as seen in his recent sidelining of former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, is determined to avoid this outcome by retaining direct control of the party. In this arrangement, he would be Turkey’s head of state, head of its ruling party, and de facto head of government all at the same time.

Turkish law offers two ways to amend the constitution to eliminate the restraints on the presidency: through a two-thirds majority in parliament (i.e., 367 of the 550 deputies voting in favor) or a three-fifths majority (330 votes). In the latter case, the amendment would also need to pass a popular referendum. Currently, the AKP has 317 deputies in the legislature. Yet voting tallies and poll results indicate that the party may have maxed out its electoral support, so Erdogan will have to shift his approach to reach either of the thresholds for amending the constitution.

Enter the right-wing opposition Nationalist Action Party (MHP). By courting this party, its forty seats, and its base in the event of a referendum, Erdogan can garner at least enough votes to create an executive-style presidency. In order to win over MHP deputies and voters, he has threatened legal action against the ultra-Turkish-nationalist MHP’s bitter foe, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Such motives also partly explain the president’s ferocious campaign against the insurgency conducted by the country’s Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), considered a terrorist entity by Washington, as well as its opposition to the PYD, the PKK’s franchise inside Syria. By thus widening the AKP’s own popular support, Erdogan could help his party gain the majority it needs—whether in the current parliament, through early elections, or in a public referendum. Such an outcome would also effectively sideline Turkey’s main opposition faction, the secular-leftist Republican People’s Party (CHP), which currently holds 133 seats.

A second concern for Erdogan, besides the Kurdish nationalists, is the Gulen movement. Erdogan is convinced that this movement and its founder, Fethullah Gulen, a U.S. permanent resident in Pennsylvania, are behind the failed July 15, 2016, coup plot in which 244 Turks died and the Turkish president himself almost lost his life. Given his suspicions, Erdogan will likely never give up his quest to have Washington extradite Gulen. Many people in Turkey share Erdogan’s deep animosity toward the Gulen movement, including, most obviously, pro-AKP Turks (about half the country’s population) but also opposition Turks, among them secular Turks who deeply distrust the Gulen movement as a cult that has tried to take over the Turkish state. Secular liberal Turks see the AKP as openly Islamist and therefore dangerous, but view the Gulenists as secretly Islamist, insidious, and hence even more dangerous. Even the Kurdish nationalists despise the Gulenists. And the Gulenists, as staunch Turkish nationalists themselves, have long opposed both the PKK and cultural and political concessions to the Kurds.

What Can the United States Give?

For any relationship with Erdogan to succeed, it will, as noted, have to be transactional—that is, based on mutual interests and trade-offs rather than deep friendship and shared values. Thus, the incoming U.S. administration must know what its toolbox contains, and what it can “trade” with in such a relationship with Turkey. These trade items fall into three categories: bilateral issues, general foreign policy cooperation, and Syria/Iran.

BILATERAL ISSUES

For starters, with the Gulen issue uniquely uniting many Turks, including Turkish Kurds, around Erdogan, Washington must convince Turkey that it is swiftly and thoroughly reviewing Ankara’s request for Gulen’s extradition. If extradition is delayed or denied by the courts, the administration must rapidly deploy measures, such as limits on movement and investigation of funding, to constrain the ability of both Gulen and his organization to influence Turkish domestic affairs.

Separately, the United States can quietly guarantee Turkey that the Armenian Genocide resolution in Congress will not pass. This has always been critical in the relationship, and most Turks care deeply about the issue.

On arms sales, the United States can make a serious effort to deal with Turkey’s longstanding complaints about delay-in-delivering, detuning, and resistance to offsets in the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program for Turkey. Washington should commit to an early trip by the secretary of defense that focuses not only on geopolitics but also on adopting a model like the U.S.-Israel arms sales relationship to ensure a smoother and better-managed program. The flagship F-35 program should be given special attention. More broadly, the next president and defense secretary should repair U.S.- Turkey military ties, which have been damaged in part by Defense Department perceptions of Erdogan’s negative role in the 2003 Iraq war, break with Israel, Syria policy—including, until recently, an open-door policy toward radicals there—and opposition to the Syrian Kurdish PYD’s alliance with Washington against the Islamic State.

SYRIA/IRAN

The greatest strain on the U.S.-Turkey relationship apart from Gulen has been Syria policy, a scenario with three related threats to Turkey’s south—namely, (1) the Assad regime, allied with Russia and Iran; (2) an anti-Turkish leftist Kurdish nationalist movement, the PKK, located in southeastern Turkey and in northern Iraq, and its sister organization, the PYD, in northern Syria; and (3) the Islamic State. The first is potentially existential. The second is a serious long-term threat to Turkish territorial integrity as well as a critically important domestic political football. The third is one danger among many to Turkey but not perceived as existential. The Obama administration, by contrast, saw its primary policy in Syria and Iraq as destroying IS. Officially, the administration wanted President Bashar al-Assad to leave and saw his regime as fueling Sunni Islamic terrorism and, as noted, considered the PKK a terrorist organization. In practice, however, the dangers of confronting Assad and the Russians, and the administration’s diplomatic ambitions with Iran, severely limited interest in confronting Assad and his allies. Furthermore, Washington needed the PKK-associated PYD in the fight against the Islamic State. Both such policies placed it at loggerheads with Ankara.

In this regard, the Turkish incursion into Syria in late summer 2016 offered an opportunity. The Jarabulus operation provided Turkey with a bridgehead in Syria that increased Ankara’s value to the United States as a partner in fighting the Islamic State. But U.S. and Turkish perceptions of how to fight IS in northern Syria are strongly divergent, with these differences coming to a head in early January 2017. After suffering significant casualties fighting IS in the al-Bab region, Turkish forces were unable, for technical reasons, to obtain U.S. air support and turned to the Russians for airstrikes. This led to a flurry of Turkish threats to close down the U.S. anti-IS operations out of Turkish bases. Setting aside technical issues, the underlying problem is the U.S. reliance on the PYD and its Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)

Arab allies for the assault on the IS capital, Raqqa, in eastern Syria. The Turks, for their part, fear that the PYD is using its U.S. alliance to eventually create a large, contiguous Kurdish-controlled enclave that would provide a new front for PKK activities against Turkey and possibly a corridor for Iran to reach western Syria and Lebanon.

These concerns are legitimate. If Washington could reach an agreement with Turkey on its northern Syrian safe zone that would support the Turks and their Syrian opposition allies with advisory teams and airpower, limit PYD activity in non-Kurdish areas, and refuse to recognize PYD autonomy, much of the rancor in the current relationship would dissipate. Such joint effort would also afford leverage to the United States against Iranian and Russian efforts to push for a total victory against the Syrian opposition despite the current ceasefire. Shared U.S.- Turkey efforts, including a possibly separate front to the west of the PYD forces against Raqqa, could expedite the destruction of the Islamic State. In any case, the United States can hardly prosecute a serious campaign against IS in northern Syria without Turkish bases, entailing a cost in cooperation.

 

The PKK provides another basis for cooperation. The United States could contribute more intelligence support in Turkey’s fight against the PKK, asking in return for additional insight into Turkish plans for combating the group. Washington also needs to manage the Turkey-PYD relationship in Syria beyond the Islamic State campaign. In the long term, managing this relationship should culminate in renewed peace talks between Ankara and the PKK (Ankara and the PYD both view each other through the lens of Turkey- PKK ties), a development that would almost immedi­ately change the tenor of Turkey-PYD ties. Erdogan, who wants to become an executive-style president, knows that if he can deliver a military victory against the PKK, this development would make him massively popular in the eyes of many voters. He could thus be rewarded with more than 50 percent of the vote, opening the path for an executive and partisan presidency and fulfilling his long-awaited dream.

Indeed, Turkey is unlikely to enter into peace talks with the PKK until Erdogan has forced the group into some sort of military defeat, which means Turkey- PYD ties will be fraught with tensions until Erdogan has registered such a victory. The United States might consider delivering enhanced military assistance to Turkey to help bring forth this outcome. In this regard, Erdogan’s greatest asset is Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s founder, who is now in a Turkish jail serving a life term. Ocalan has charismatic pull over the PKK—and also the PYD, with Ocalan posters in PYD offices and Ocalan badges on uniforms of the People’s Defense Units (YPG), as the PYD militia is known, signaling the group’s affiliation with the PKK. So far, Erdogan has kept Ocalan incommunicado. When he feels that he has inflicted enough military damage on the PKK, he will allow Ocalan to speak, at which point the PKK leader will likely call on the organization to lay down its weapons. Ocalan wants to get out of jail as part of a compromise with Erdogan, and to this end, he will deliver a ceasefire message to the PKK when Erdogan is ready for it. Both the PKK and the PYD will likely listen to Ocalan, their honorary and, more important, ideological leader. At this point, Turkey-PYD ties would seemingly shift back to the post-2013 period, with tensions falling significantly and Ankara and the PYD reestablishing contacts active in 2014–15.

Peace talks between Turkey and the PKK would help normalize Turkish ties to the PYD in Rojava, its Syrian homeland. In the long term, assuming an accommodation with Ocalan and the PKK, Turkey might even conceivably build a relationship with Rojava akin to its ties with the KRG. In 2007, the KRG leadership, realizing that it was surrounded by hostile states—Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey— and needed at least one friend to survive over time, picked Turkey. In the ensuing years, Erbil offered Ankara economic and financial incentives, such as access to KRG markets, as well as natural gas and oil deals. Economic ties became the building blocks of the relationship, establishing confidence, and soon closer political and even security cooperation ensued between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds.

Although Rojava does not have nearly as much oil as does the KRG, Turkish access to its markets and construction sectors would be a definite sweetener in any pursuit of rapprochement between Ankara and the Syrian Kurds. More important for Ankara, Rojava could offer Turkey a cordon sanitaire protecting Turkey from instability, sectarian warfare, conflict, and jihadist threats coming from the rest of Syria, in the same way the KRG acts as a very effective buffer between Iraq’s unstable center and Turkey.

The budding of a close relationship between Turkey and Rojava can only be envisioned against the backdrop of peace talks and good ties between Ankara and the PKK, and by extension good ties between Turkey and the PYD. For their own part, the Syrian Kurds might eventually decide, following the KRG example, that they cannot survive in a hostile neighborhood surrounded only by enemies, and that they will need at least one friend—Turkey—in order to survive in the long term. U.S. policy should help Ankara weaken the PKK militarily in order to usher in Turkey-PKK talks, a definite precursor to Turkey- Rojava normalization. Even if Turkey-Rojava ties never reach the level of Turkey-KRG ties, the KRG is a much larger entity than Rojava and offers Turkey many more economic benefits, Turkey and the Syrian Kurds could still come to a modus vivendi.

GENERAL FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES

Most important beyond the Syria/Iran conundrum is Russia. Highest-level discussions are needed to assess where Ankara and Washington stand on the issue of both Russia in general and Russia as an informal ally of Iran in Syria and perhaps elsewhere in the region. Turkey needs to know whether the United States will contain Russia or whether Turkey will be left on its own, as was recently the case in the al-Bab battle. For their part, U.S. officials need more clarity on the Turkish vision for the Turkish Stream pipeline project announced by Erdogan earlier this year in Saint Petersburg. If the intent is truly to substitute for the 60 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas now flowing annually through Ukraine (one-quarter to Turkey, the rest to EU states), it would have serious geostrategic and energy security implications requiring in-depth discussion. If the informal Russia-Iran alliance on Syria continues, particularly if the Russian deployments to Syria remain, Washington should also demonstrate a willingness to keep NATO’s Patriot presence, including redeployment of U.S. Patriot batteries in Turkey, until a final Geneva agreement on Syria or pullout of Russian reinforcements is enacted. The United States could also periodically deploy F-22 or F-35 fifth-generation fighters to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base to signal the seriousness of U.S. efforts to contain Russia. This U.S. commitment could also include more frequent Black Sea operations as part of NATO naval deployments, both by the United States unilaterally and with Turkey cooperatively.

 

On the Cyprus dispute as well as Turkey-Israel relations, Washington should increase engagement. This would be done in conjunction with U.S. efforts on eastern Mediterranean gas exports to a Turkish “Eurasian gas hub” and U.S. support of the Baku (Azerbaijan) pipelines to Turkey. Likewise, the United States could give concrete support with the EU on the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to bring Azeri and possibly other Caspian or even Iraqi gas to Europe through Turkey.

On Iraq, Washington and Ankara should continue their cooperation on security for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The United States should be careful, within the limits of its own relations with Baghdad, not to discourage Turkey-KRG hydrocarbons cooperation. Given the possibilities for both direct trade with and transit shipments through an ever more oil-rich Iraq, the United States should support reconciliation between Baghdad and Ankara. Real progress on this front, however, will depend on U.S.-Turkey success coordinating effective policy toward Syria and Iran.

Finally, Washington could find ways inside or outside the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) to deepen bilateral trade and investment. Going forward, building economic leverage in Turkey is the best way of ensuring U.S. political leverage in the relationship.

What Can Turkey Give in Return?

In return for the proposed U.S. steps, the five main issues on which Turkey can be helpful involve

                a stronger commitment to the fight against the Islamic State;

                a return to peace talks with the PKK;

                more flexibility on Cyprus and Israel;

                closer cooperation with Washington on military moves, especially in Syria and against Russian provocations all around Turkey; and

                more emphasis on democratic values, rule of law, and domestic freedoms.

 

Unfortunately, the Islamic State has targeted and, as seen with the New Year’s Eve Istanbul attack, will increasingly target Turkey; thus, cooperating with Turkey against the jihadist group provides an opportunity for building ties. Furthermore, even in the aftermath of Turkish-Russian normalization, the broader resurgence of Russia—now Turkey’s neighbor in Crimea and on the southern border— will undoubtedly remind Erdogan of NATO’s value and could help improve U.S.-Turkey military ties during the new administration. Relatedly, Russia’s aggression toward Turkey following the November 2015 downing of a Russian military plane demonstrated clearly how vengeful Moscow can be. Nevertheless, in agreeing to the Russia-brokered Syrian ceasefire in December, and then calling on Russia to provide (apparently ineffective) airstrikes around al-Bab in early January 2017, Turkey signaled to Washington that absent U.S. engagement and support for Turkish objectives, Turkey will make deals with Putin.

Ultimately, though, what the United States and Turkey can do against the Islamic State together, with potential peace between Turkey and Kurds in mind, will dictate the success of this transactional relationship. If Turkey makes peace with Kurds at home, something enhanced U.S. assistance to Turkey against the PKK can usher in, it can even more easily make peace with Kurds in Syria, facilitating a Turkish- Kurdish bond in the Middle East similar to Ankara’s with the KRG—and one in the U.S. interest.

Washington’s ability to deliver on Turkish issues is affected by Turkey’s behavior on human rights and democracy, and how Turkey is viewed from the outside. Therefore, it is important that U.S. policy on Turkey be guided by an emphasis on rule of law, which has been damaged considerably by a decade and a half of AKP rule. The next president must raise rule of law in his dealings with Turkey as a means not only of limiting the AKP’s authoritarianism but also of reminding Erdogan that he, too, will need this norm should the AKP and Erdogan fall from power.

In the last decade, under Erdogan, Turkey went from being a country of mostly poor to a country of mostly middle-income people. Now, Turkey has a chance to move up the ladder and become a high-income economy, despite slumping economic per­formance in 2016. The country, though, cannot do so simply by making cars, as it does now, but instead by becoming a hub for the “Googles” of the world and other value-added and information-based industries. This is where unfettered freedoms come into play. In order to be a hub for “Googles,” Turkey needs to become an open society, able to attract creative professionals from around the globe and to keep its creative people at home. Only a society that provides unlimited rights and freedoms, that is seen as having a respected and independent judicial system, will achieve such a result, one in the interests of all Turks. The United States is uniquely positioned to make this argument, but then only if both transactional cooperation and leader-to-leader personal relations function better than they do today.

It is possible that Erdogan’s impetuous actions, frequent disdain for the West, and penchant for ever more authority will render any cooperative policy with the United States moot. But that is a possibility, not a certainty. The United States can tip the scales toward a different outcome with the right policies and personal relations. The latter include reining in the understandable ire of many U.S. government and military officials who chafe under Turkish criticism, a characteristic of the relationship that predates, and goes beyond, Erdogan. Finally, Washington has little to lose with a more-carrots-than-sticks approach. Sticks are in short supply: the United States and the West need Turkey; Turkey and Erdogan, in return, need the United States.

THE AUTHORS

James F. Jeffrey, the Philip Solondz distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute , is a former deputy national security advisor and U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq. Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.

SONER CAGAPTAY

TURKEY FACES ITS

TOUGHEST TESTS

 ( Policy Focus 151 December 2016)

AMONG THE MIDDLE EAST STATES established after World War I, Turkey has proven especially durable in the face of economic and political shocks. Decades after its formation, Turkey navigated the harrowing 1970s, when the country’s economy collapsed and the resulting instability led to fighting involving right- and left-wing militant groups and government security forces, killing thousands. Then, in the 1990s, Turkey was pummeled by triple-digit inflation and a full-blown Kurdish insurgency supported by at least two of its neighbors, Iran and Syria, that left tens of thousands dead. Again, the country emerged intact.

Currently, the country faces a toxic mix of political polarization, economic slowdown after more than a decade of impressive growth, multiple external threats—including from Russia, the Assad regime in Syria, and the Islamic State (IS)—and a surge of terrorist attacks. Indeed, five of the six worst terrorist attacks in the country’s history have taken place in the last three years. These attacks, which have killed at least 250 and wounded another 800, are all linked to fallout from the Syrian civil war. The failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, added a heavy layer of angst to the existing sense of national insecurity.

The long historical view suggests Turkey will be able to withstand the current shocks. But a shorter-term analytical perspective indicates things look different this time. For one thing, Kurdish problem has changed.

Until very recently, the country’s Kurdish community of 10 to 12 million, representing about 15 percent of the population, was not a unified political force; its internal splits followed the fault lines of the country as a whole.

Starting in the 1990s, nationalist Kurds tended to vote for parties sympathetic to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)—considered a terrorist group by both Ankara and Washington—which was fighting the Turkish government. But PKK backers have not represented the whole of the Kurdish electorate. Since the 1960s, the left-leaning Alevi Kurds, who adhere to a liberal branch of Islam, have voted predominantly for the secular opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). More important, conservative Kurds, who represent nearly half the Kurdish population, have tended to vote for the governing, pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) since its 2001 establishment by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the former prime minister and current president.

In short, many Kurds liked the government, which in turn fought only the nationalist Kurds. Erdogan even launched negotiations with the PKK in 2012 in hopes of ending the insurgency. Nevertheless, the dynamic changed during Turkey’s most recent elections, in June 2015, when the Kurds—liberal, conservative, and nationalist alike—coalesced around the Kurdish-nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Alevi Kurds were attracted to the HDP’s liberal approach to issues like women’s and workers’ rights, while conservative Kurds abandoned Erdogan’s party for the HDP presumably because of the president’s reluctance to help the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane when it was besieged by the Islamic State in September 2014.

The start of PKK violence in July 2015 scared some of these Kurds away from the HDP. As the November elections approached, such blocs included middle-class Kurds worried about violence and conservative Kurds who disliked the return of the PKK’s leftist message. Nevertheless, the HDP remains the dominant party in seven of Turkey’s solidly Kurdish-majority southeastern provinces, including Diyarbakir, where the party received a composite 73 percent of the vote.

Despite the defections in late 2015, the political consolidation of the Turkish Kurds under the HDP means Turkey’s new battle with the PKK risks starting a war with almost its entire Kurdish community. The nature of fighting over the past year has offered a case in point. In September 2015, the government enforced a weeklong curfew; shut down electricity, Internet, and phone access; and sent in thousands of troops and police to Cizre, a Kurdish-majority town of 130,000 on the Turkish-Syrian-Iraqi border, before security forces could establish a tenuous hold on the area. Previously, when the government fought the PKK, it could count on help from the local Kurdish population, but that is no longer the case.

Turkey has other concerns as well. As a result of Ankara’s Syria policy, which since 2011 has aimed to oust the Assad regime without having secured concrete, long-term U.S. assistance, Turkey holds the unique position of being hated by all major actors fighting in Syria, from the Assad regime and Russia to the Islamic State, the PKK, and the PKK’s Syrian franchise, the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

The Assad regime is connected to at least one attack, the Reyhanli bombing in May 2013, which killed fifty-two people. Russia, upset with Turkey’s anti-regime stance and livid over its downing of a Russian jet in November 2015, threw its strength behind the PYD to defeat Ankara-backed, anti-Assad rebels in Syria. In return, Turkey has shelled PYD positions. Given its deep involvement in northern Syria, where the Ankara-supported rebels stand in the way of PYD plans to connect the group’s Afrin and Kobane cantons, Turkey risks a direct conflict with the PYD. Such a development could—for the first time ever—thrust Turkey into a two-country Kurdish insurgency.

In July 2015, after IS claimed credit for a suicide bombing in the Turkish town of Suruc that killed more than thirty, Erdogan agreed to open Turkish bases to U.S. planes and drones, and pledged to join the U.S. campaign to bomb IS targets in Syria. In doing so, Erdogan has ensured that IS sees Turkey as an enemy and the group will inevitably, and unfortunately, attack Turkey again. An Istanbul car bombing in June 2016 marked one such strike.

In theory, Turkey is powerful enough, with U.S. backing, to withstand the threats from both IS and the PKK. It is not clear, however, whether the government has the necessary domestic support to do

so. This is the crux of current worries over Turkey’s trajectory: at another time, most Turks, however grudgingly, would have stood behind the government for the sake of their own security, even at

the cost of life and liberty. That no longer seems to be true, given the transformed political climate, and herein lies the greatest challenge:

Turkey is already torn, with the pro- and anti-AKP blocs hating each other even more than they fear terrorism at large. Moreover, Turkey is a parliamentary democracy, but it increasingly

looks like a de facto presidential system with Erdogan at

the helm. Erdogan has won successive elections since 2002 and built a cult of personality rooted in his self-portrayal as an authoritarian underdog, a victim forced to crack down harshly on those whose “conspiracies” undermine his authority. On this basis, he has successfully targeted and politically brutalized the secular Turkish military, businesses, liberals, the media, Armenians, Jews, left-wing voters, Alevis, and now the Kurds.

Combined with the story of Turkey’s economic success, this narrative has contributed to Erdogan’s enduring, if shrinking, popularity. Although he stepped down as prime minister and AKP leader

in August 2014 to honor his party’s term limits, he has continued to run Turkey as president from behind the scenes. The June 2016 resignation of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his replacement

by former transportation minister Binali Yildirim—along with a reshuffled cabinet heavily oriented to Erdogan’s interests and roots in the East Black Sea region—have reinforced the sense of power

consolidation under Erdogan. Separately, the AKP won about 49.5 percent of the vote in the

last election, and Erdogan himself retains significant support from Turks who identify with his humble roots and social conservatism. Erdogan thus continues to dominate not only AKP politics but also

Turkish politics. In seeking his goal of officially transforming Turkey into a presidential

system, Erdogan is intent on maintaining his image as a strongman to boost his right-wing base. In this regard, Erdogan is hoping to peel away voters from the right-wing Nationalist Action

Party (MHP). Accordingly, he will maintain a hardline posture against the PKK, and by extension the PYD in Syria. This part of Erdogan’s presidential agenda could put Turkey on a collision course with the United States, which relies on the PYD to fight IS. It is thus in Washington’s interest to monitor the Turkish-PYD relationship and, more important, promote Turkish-PKK peace, the only path to a corresponding, and permanent, Turkish-PYD peace. The core questions thus emerge: Can Turkey withstand the simultaneous challenges of a multicountry Kurdish insurgency, IS attacks, and political violence between pro- and anti-AKP camps, and perhaps a rupture with the United States over the PYD issue? More broadly, can Turkey replicate its resilience of the 1970s and the 1990s?

The answers lie largely with Erdogan, whose plans to change the country’s constitution and render himself an executive president, only emboldened by the overthrow attempt, could result in an increasingly polarized Turkey. Such a country, overwhelmed by terrorist attacks and exposed to manipulation by Putin and IS, will crumble.

In that context, and given the country’s deep divisions, Turkey’s only way out, unlikely even before the coup attempt, would have entailed Erdogan pulling back to his powers as defined by the Turkish constitution: a nonpartisan president who does not run the government. Even if Erdogan were to somehow accept such an outcome, his doing so would not necessarily heal the damage he has wrought, particularly when it comes to Syria. Turkey will remain exposed to the civil war there, and Russian intervention will only complicate its position. But insofar as Erdogan has brought his country to the brink, he has the ultimate responsibility for easing tensions before they explode.

Turkey´s New Anti-PKK Strategy: Consequences and Feasibility

15 Dec 2016

By Karol Wasilewski for Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM)

In this paper, Karol Wasilewski analyzes the Turkish government’s newly adopted “total liquidation” strategy against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The strategy, which is not risk free, is designed to use combined military, economic and political means in order to put military pressure on the PKK, dry up its sources of funding, and provide financial aid to urban areas that have been hard hit by the ongoing conflict.

This article was originally published by the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) on 1 December 2016.
The Turkish government, empowered further by the state of emergency, adopted a new strategy in its fight with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The declared goal is the total liquidation of the PKK. It will contribute to deepening political polarisation at home while in the regional dimension it may lead to greater Turkish involvement in Iraq and Syria. It is also possible that the strategy will intensify the tension between Turkey and its Western allies. Both the situation in Turkey and in the region make the achievement of the Turkish politicians’ goal dubious.

Old Conflict, New Mode
In July 2015, a two-plus year peace process between Turkey and the PKK (considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the EU and the U.S.) ended. The breakdown in negotiations was caused both by developments in the region and in Turkey, in particular, the siege of Kobanî by Islamic State (IS) and Turkey’s parliamentary elections in June 2015. Both developments highlighted the differences of interests between the sides.
On 22 July 2015, PKK members killed two Turkish policemen in Ceylanpınar, which provoked Turkey to bomb PKK positions in Iraq, resuming the conflict. This new phase, however, is different than previous ones in several ways. First, the PKK decided to carry the fight to Turkey’s southeastern cities. Turkish security forces picked up the gauntlet and responded heavily. Second, the wide use of radicalised youth through the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (tied to the PKK) was a novelty in the conflict as well. Other organisations affiliated with the PKK, such as the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, intensified their activities. Third, the conflict has been waged in unique circumstances. The primary influence was regional dynamics, principally the Kurdish Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) success in northern Syria (although PYD is linked to the PKK, Turkey views it as a Syrian branch of the PKK). Also significant was the use of social media, used as part of an information war.
These new modes of this old conflict have led to a surge in the number of civilian deaths, massive urban destruction in the southeast, and deepening of political polarisation in Turkey. At the moment, the total number of casualties because of the fighting is hard to pin down as both sides in the conflict use statistics as propaganda. However, the large scale of the confrontation can be seen by looking at the number of internally displaced people. According to the International Crisis Group, it has exceeded 350,000.

New Strategy: “Total Liquidation”
The failed 15 July coup in Turkey became an important turning point in the Turkey-PKK conflict. The Turkish authorities decided to toughen its stance towards both the organisation and the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. An early sign of this may have been when the pro-Kurdish Democratic People’s Party (HDP) was excluded from government actions aimed at muting tensions in the domestic politics. The HDP’s leaders were not invited to meetings with the prime minister or president, nor to a huge political meeting in Yenikapı. Moreover, there were some subtle changes in the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rhetoric. After the coup, Turkey’s leaders equated the PKK with the Gülen movement, which it accuses of staging the attempted overthrow. Furthermore, they started to emphasise that “Turkey has no Kurdish problem, just a PKK problem.” The authorities’ stance toughened even more after the introduction of a state of emergency on 20 July. The government seized the authority to issue decrees that later served to dismiss southeastern city mayors who were suspected of links to the PKK and thus accused of supporting terrorism (on 11 September, 28 or so mayors were removed). It seems that the wide powers granted by the state of emergency have made Turkish leaders believe that their stated goal of the total liquidation of the PKK is possible.
The new strategy combines military, economic and political actions. On the military front, the authorities want to intensify the fight by transitioning to offensive actions consisting of increasing the mobility of units battling the PKK and supported by armed drones. The aim of this is to exert permanent military pressure on the PKK. Moreover, the security forces will be strengthened, including building up so-called village guard units, a paramilitary structure that recruits mainly ethnic Kurds with the aim to defend local civilians against the PKK. In the economic sphere, the authorities will try to hit PKK sources of funding. As important will be a project to renew urban areas devastated by the ongoing conflict. The government aims to allocate around $3.5 billion to this work. In politics, the authorities have taken aim at NGOs, media and politicians suspected of having links to the PKK. The government’s actions here seek to create an atmosphere that keeps people sympathetic to the PKK in check. It is also possible that in the future, the Turkish leaders will try to create an alternative to the HDP and a more AKP-leaning Kurdish political front.
The strategy is not limited to Turkish territory. President Erdoğan has claimed that the offensive’s aim is to hit the terrorist organisation at its sources. This means that military activities will be carried out on Syrian and Iraqi territory, where the PKK is very active. The Turkish government will also try to isolate the PKK in Iraq and diminish the PYD’s influence in Syria. To achieve this goal, it will try to cooperate with Masoud Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, who for years has had strained relations with the PKK. In this aspect, the new strategy fits in with the government’s previous actions aimed at intensifying intra-Kurdish divisions both at home and in the region.
The Turkish government, using the powers granted by the state of emergency, has already started to implement the new strategy. Closing Kurdish media and arresting HDP leaders such as Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ are signs of that. Likewise, the use of drones to fight the PKK has intensified of late and the strengthening of units in the Silopi district near the Turkey-Iraq border may be a sign that the Turkish government is considering military intervention in northern Iraq.

Consequences and Possibilities
When it comes to Turkey, the effect of the strategy will probably be increased political polarisation. This, in turn, may pose a threat to the country’s security, since the IS strategy towards Turkey is to stir up division within Turkish society and make use of it for its own ends. Moreover, hitting the political side of the Kurdish movement, in addition to banning pro-Kurdish associations and closing media outlets, may result in the radicalisation of some Kurds (in the last election, HDP won more than 5 million votes). It is also probable that the PKK will intensify its actions, including killings of officials appointed by the government to replace the dismissed mayors. At the same time, the strategy may lead to the consolidation of the AKP’s and Erdoğan’s electorate, resulting in strengthening the government’s position.
In the regional dimension, the strategy requires an increase in Turkish actions on Iraqi and Syrian soil. As an example, Turkey’s efforts to take part in the Mosul anti-IS operation stems in part from concerns about the PKK’s presence in the cross-border Sinjar region. Thus, Turkey’s tense relations with Iran, which is interested in preserving its influence over Iraq, and the central government in Bagdad may be further strained. Moreover, Turkey’s anti-PKK strategy constitutes a challenge for the U.S. and its plans regarding the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts. This is a result of the Americans’ close cooperation with the PYD on Syrian soil. Turkish measures aimed at the PYD may further complicate the Americans’ moves during the northern Raqqa anti-IS offensive that started on 6 November. What is more, the strategy’s political dimension may increase tensions between Turkey and the EU, which has expressed worry about the state of Turkey’s democracy. The strain may be boosted by Turkey’s accusations that Western European countries do not give it enough support in its fight with the PKK (although such allegations emerge whenever the Turkey-PKK conflict resumes). To prevent the tensions from growing further, the EU may engage in political dialogue with Turkey.
Although the Turkey’s new anti-PKK strategy has many facets, achieving its declared goal may not be an easy task. First, doubts have been raised that the strategy may contribute to the radicalisation of some Kurds, which would serve the PKK’s interests. Besides this, a serious deficiency of the strategy is that it seems not to take into account the significant shift in opinion on the so-called Kurdish question. Strictly speaking, it seems to ignore the fact that the PYD’s intensive and effective fight with IS has brought it international sympathy and a relationship with the U.S. This, in turn, makes Turkey’s strategy costlier to achieve its goals and may impede its actions, unless the incoming U.S. administration decides to change its approach to the PYD, as hoped for by Turkey. Finally, one serious obstacle to achieving the strategy’s declared goals may be the condition of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) after the failed coup. Although both politicians and the military’s current top commanders have offered assurances that the TSK’s potential has not been diminished as a result of the widespread purges in the coup’s aftermath, the next few months will show whether the military is capable of achieving the Turkish leaders’ declared goal.

About the Author
Karol Wasilewski is a Turkey analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) and a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies (University of Warsaw). He is the author of: 'Turkey’s European Dream. Western Identity and its Influence on the Foreign Policy of the Republic of Turkey’. @kwasylewsky