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.

DAVID POLLOCK

ENDING A CENTURY OF SUBJUGATION: SYKES-PICOT’S KURDISH LEGACY

THE KURDS, straddling the contemporary borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and numbering some 35 million, are sometimes described as the largest ethnic group in the world without its own country. In truth, that dubious honor probably belongs to India’s (and Sri Lanka’s) Tamils, Pakistan’s various provincial populations, and many others in the subcontinent; but never mind. Kurdish aspirations to overturn or at least dilute the century-old Sykes-Picot lines are certainly among the most important contemporary international ethnic issues.

For the Kurds are indeed very numerous; they are often very attached to their own distinctive language, culture, history, and overall ethnic identity; and many of them remain self-consciously bereft of the independence more or less promised to them by the Western victors of World War I a century ago. Today, their resulting predicament lies at the center of some of the region’s most acute conflicts. Its resolution one way or another is necessarily a key ingredient in any long-term plan to pacify and stabilize the entire “northern tier” of the broader Middle East.

The promise of Kurdish independence was not technically part of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided most Kurdish-populated territory between Britain and France while offering independence to no one. Rather, as part of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson’s push for “self-determination” at the Versailles Peace Conference and then in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, the Kurds obtained a commitment to the possibility of sovereign nationhood. Within a few short years, however, that commitment was forcibly crushed.

The Kurds first rose up in rebellion against Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s new Turkish government, which claimed much of their homeland and about half of their total numbers, but they were soon defeated. Meanwhile, the British annexed the old Ottoman Vilayet (province) of Mosul and vicinity, along with a considerable Kurdish population, to their own new League of Nations mandate over Iraq. The French, also in line with Sykes-Picot, took over the mandate in Syria, on the southern edge of historic Kurdistan. In addition, the new government and armies of Reza Shah in Iran retained that country’s largely Kurdish far northwestern provinces firmly under Tehran’s autocratic control.

By the time of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which roughly codified the new national borders of these areas, there was no further mention of Kurdish independence; however, from then until now—increasingly in recent decades—many Kurds have kept that dream alive. The forces of this movement took entirely different forms, however, at very different times, in the various countries into which the Kurds have been divided.

And the Kurds have also been famously internally divided, not only among but also within each of those new international boundaries. Rival clans, factions, parties, personalities, dialects, ideologies, regional alignments, and other cleavages have all taken a heavy toll. Moreover, many Kurds became loyal citizens of their respective new central governments, while others resumed the fight for self-government.

In Iran, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, some of them briefly collaborated with the Soviet Union in setting up a new Kurdish “Republic of Gilan” based in Mahabad. Tehran quickly squelched that prospect, with strong support from Britain and the United States. In Turkey, after more than half a century of enforced assimilation and relative quiescence, some Kurds started a guerrilla insurgency against Ankara in southeast Turkey in 1984 under the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) banner. That futile uprising has continued, in fits and starts, until this day.

In Iraq, the Kurds in the north also rose up against their central government, first in the 1970s and again in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, after Saddam Hussein’s genocidal Anfal campaign against them in 1988. Their resistance was compromised by internal divisions

into the archrival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and their associated militias, culminating in a fratricidal mini–civil war in 1996. However, under U.S. protection from the air, Iraq’s Kurds have now successfully carved out a self-governing, relatively stable region that has endured for the past quarter century, despite many internal and external security and economic challenges.

This Kurdistan Autonomous Region, with a native population

of five million—plus nearly two million mostly Arab refugees and internally displaced persons—boasts its own Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), with its own president, parliament, and army (the Peshmerga). Its oil-based economy is struggling, however, and

remains dependent on pipelines and other support from neighboring Turkey, Iraq, or both. Most strikingly, after two decades of very uneasy and occasionally hostile relations, the KRG and Turkey have in the past five years become the closest of friends, in political, military,

and economic terms.

In Syria, with the smallest Kurdish population in both absolute and relative terms, the roughly three million Kurds concentrated in northern enclaves along the Turkish border remained comparatively quiescent until quite recently. They managed a brief campaign of

protest and civil disobedience in 2004–5, only to fall back under Bashar al-Assad’s harsh repression. Nevertheless, soon after the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Assad’s forces largely withdrew from those Kurdish areas, leaving them with a sort of de facto autonomy

that continues today.

Ironically, since mid-2014, the Kurds in both Iraq and Syria have on balance benefited from the rise of a new common enemy: the    Islamic State (IS). In August 2014, IS very nearly overran the KRG capital of Erbil, but was pushed back by the Peshmerga—with both

U.S. and Iranian backing. Ever since, the United States (and other coalition countries) has provided Iraq’s Kurdish forces with direct military aid, both in the air and on the ground, and relaxed its earlier insistence that the KRG subordinate its economy to Baghdad. In Syria, the United States has likewise provided direct military support to the main local Kurdish party and militia fighting against IS: the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and People’s Defense Units (YPG). The result, intended or not, is to strengthen Kurdish autonomy in each country.

But not Kurdish independence. The United States and most other countries, particularly Turkey and Iran but also far beyond, plus the weak central governments in Baghdad and Damascus, all remain firmly opposed to that. So, when KRG president Masoud Barzani repeatedly warns of a coming referendum on independence, the most knowledgeable observers are inclined to write that off as a bluff or a bargaining chip cleverly designed to maintain his internal position while extracting the best possible deal from his neighbors and other interlocutors.

Similarly, when the PYD this month announced formal plans for an autonomous “federal” Kurdish region in Syria, it managed the remarkable feat of uniting in opposition every one of its neighbors and more: the Assad regime, the Syrian opposition, Turkey, the United States, and even the rival KRG just across the river in Iraq. Only Russia announced that this might be a reasonable approach to resolving the Syrian civil war. At the same time, both the PYD and Turkey have for the most part avoided direct confrontations across their common border—even though Ankara officially considers the PYD part of the “terrorist” PKK. That leaves Syria’s Kurds with de facto but not de jure autonomy within their own slivers of the country.

Inside Turkey, meanwhile, both the central government and the PKK have for now tragically abandoned their halting rapprochement of 2013–2015 and resumed outright low-intensity war. The PKK demands Kurdish autonomy; the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara has contemplated at least offering its Kurdish citizens more cultural and local political freedoms. The gap between the two seemed to be narrowing just a year ago; it now seems very wide, but might well one day be bridged—if not perhaps with the PKK, then with other authentic Kurdish parties, such as the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). This is one instance where the cliché “no military solution” probably really does apply.

Least and least promising on this list, from the standpoint of Kurdish rights, is Iran. With Iran never part of Sykes-Picot, that imperialist legacy cannot be blamed for the plight of Iran’s seven to ten million Kurds. Although they participate in what passes for Iranian national politics, they are denied any real local autonomy or even identity. Their governors are appointed by Tehran, and are often not Kurds. Their language is barely tolerated; only in the past year has the first Kurdish-language institution of higher education inIran been permitted to open. Any open dissent is brutally repressed, as in the Mahabad riot last year. Executions of Kurdish and many other alleged miscreants are up substantially under President Hassan

Rouhani, at ten times the rate per capita of Saudi Arabia across the Gulf. And Iran as usual stoops to playing the sectarian card: many of its favored Kurdish citizens are from the minority Shiite portion of that population, centered in the provincial city of Sanandaj. Some

anti-regime Kurds, of either sect, derisively call those collaborators jash (donkey), as they once did with the coterie of pro-Saddam Kurds in Iraq.

For the Kurds, in conclusion then, where does Sykes-Picot go from here? Several quick points are in order, all based on the preceding analysis.

First, the old borders are still surprisingly durable.

A pan-Kurdish project is simply not in the cards, for reasons not only of state sovereignty but also of  intra-Kurdish divisions.

Second, relatedly, the full independence or secession even of one national piece of ethnic Kurdistan, including from Iraq or Syria, is probably also not on the medium-term horizon.

But third, Kurdish local autonomy or “federalism” of some kind is an increasingly plausible—and likely constructive—option, not just in Iraq but also in Syria, and maybe eventually in Turkey as well.

And fourth, again relatedly, the recent exceptionally warm ties between Ankara

and Erbil strongly suggest that this particular “age-old ethnic conflict” need not be an insurmountable obstacle to political expedience. Someday, believe it or not, Turkey may find an autonomous Kurdish region on its Syrian border every bit as amenable to its interests as the one on its Iraqi border.

For U.S. policy in the region, the implications are equally clear.

Washington can usefully support not Kurdish independence, let alone pan-Kurdish aspirations, but real Kurdish autonomy within three of the four countries in question: in Iraq, in Syria, and in the longer term, subject to agreement with Ankara, even in Turkey. Call it “Sykes-Picot light.” As for the fourth country in this mixture, Iran, the nuclear deal and other realities unfortunately make its Kurdish question utterly unanswerable for the United States, or any other interested parties. Least and least promising on this list, from the standpoint of Kurdish rights, is Iran. With Iran never part of Sykes-Picot, that imperialist legacy cannot be blamed for the plight of Iran’s seven to ten million Kurds. Although they participate in what passes for Iranian national politics, they are denied any real local autonomy or even identity. Their governors are appointed by Tehran, and are often not Kurds. Their language is barely tolerated; only in the past year has the first Kurdish-language institution of higher education in Iran been permitted to open. Any open dissent is brutally repressed, as in the Mahabad riot last year. Executions of Kurdish and many other alleged miscreants are up substantially under President Hassan Rouhani, at ten times the rate per capita of Saudi Arabia across the Gulf. And Iran as usual stoops to playing the sectarian card: many of its favored Kurdish citizens are from the minority Shiite portion of that population, centered in the provincial city of Sanandaj. Some anti-regime Kurds, of either sect, derisively call those collabora­tors jash (donkey), as they once did with the coterie of pro-Saddam Kurds in Iraq.

For U.S. policy in the region, the implications are equally clear. Washington can usefully support not Kurdish independence, let  alone pan-Kurdish aspirations, but real Kurdish autonomy within three of the four countries in question: in Iraq, in Syria, and in the longer term, subject to agreement with Ankara, even in Turkey. Call it “Sykes-Picot light.” As for the fourth country in this mixture, Iran, the nuclear deal and other realities unfortunately make its Kurdish question utterly unanswerable for the United States, or any other interested parties.

Turkey’s Strategy for Syria and Iraq

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by Robert Olson
Turkey is in a strong position to achieve its geopolitical objectives in the both Syria and Iraq. In Iraq, for instance, Turkey’s objective after the U.S. invasion in 2003 was to ensure that the Kurdistan Region Government (KRG), led by Massoud Barzani, would become economically dependent on Turkey. This was a successful. Turkey today is by far the most important economic and political partner of the KRG with trade exceeding $12 billion. As of 2016 over 2,000 Turkish companies operated in the KRG, many of which have built the KRG’s infrastructure.
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003, it was clear to Ankara that in order to manage Kurdish nationalist movements in Turkey it would need the help of the KRG. Turkey desired to isolate the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) —and its political arm, the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK). The uneasy relations between Erbil and Baghdad after 2003, especially over the distribution of oil revenues, consolidated the relationship between Turkey and the KRG. Nouri al-Maliki’s tenure as prime minister from 2005-20014 and his strong Shi’a bias drew Erbil even closer to Ankara.
By the first decade of the 21^st century, Ankara doubted that Iraq would remain unified Iraq as the US hoped. By this time Turkey had already tightened its grip on the KRG economy. It was also in a good position to contribute to the management of relations between the KRG and Sunnis of central Iraq. This was the case after 2007-8 with the insurgence of al-Qaeda in Iraq and then the Islamic State (ISIS or IS).
The fragmentation resulting from IS’s onslaught on Shi’a as well as Kurds and Sunnis—in addition to the possibility of IS conquering Baghdad—strengthened the Ankara-Erbil axis. The completion in 2013 of an oil pipeline from the KRG to Turkey’s port of Ceyhan, bypassing the Baghdad-controlled Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, further tied the two economies.
The completion of the pipeline made the KRG more dependent on Turkey for its survival. It ensured that the KRG would be a dependable ally in Turkey’s war against the PKK/KCK. Although Turkey negotiated intermittently with the PKK, including its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan, the discussions never reached a meaningful conclusion. For one, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) thought that by 2013, with the KRG firmly in its pocket, it could draw out negotiations until the PKK/KCK accepted the conditions proffered.
The consolidation of relations between Ankara and Erbil from 2003 onward gave a free hand to Turkey to adopt an even more unaccommodating position toward the PKK.
Turkey’s close relationship with the Kurds of northern Iraq is of long standing. Turkey did not relinquish the province of Mosul under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. It abandoned its claim to the province of Mosul only in 1926 when it became part of Iraq. Turkey was compelled to accept its loss as result of the Sheikh Said rebellion, which threatened to evolve into a larger war against Kurds. Another irony is that Great Britain agreed to pay Turkey 500,000 pounds sterling. Only in 1970 did Saddam Hussein forfeit the remainder of the payment when Turkey granted Iraq the right for the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline to traverse Turkey on its way to the Mediterranean.
Less than a month after the signing of the treaty there were British reports that Turkey was planning to settle Muslim Albanians from the Kosovo region in the areas where the rebellion had taken place. There were also reports that Turkey planned to settle 40,000 to 50,000 Circassians in Kurdish areas. The deportations reminded British intelligence officers of the deportations of Armenians in 1915. This history makes Kurds particularly sensitive to the recent expropriations of Kurdish property in southeast Turkey. Similar displacements are occurring along the Turkish-Kurdish/Alevi fault line of Maras, Malatya, Elazig, and Dersim regions where deportations of Kurds took place in the late 1920 and 1930s.
Turks are well aware that they lost the province of Mosul to the British Empire and that the rebellion of Sheikh Said was a major reason. Ironically, Turkey has regained its strong position in the KRG as a result of the U.S. war against Iraq.
Turkey’s Geo-economic Interests in Syria
Turkey’s ties to the Kurds of Syria, like those of Iraq, have also been in place for some time. Ankara’s concerns increased after the Sheikh Said and subsequent rebellions were crushed in 1938. The rebellions compelled thousands of Kurds to flee to Syria. Some of the progeny of those Kurds are now leaders of the Kurdish nationalist movements in Turkey, including the PKK/KCK.
Kurds who participated in the creation of the PKK and who then fled to Syria in 1978 to escape an impending military coup found fertile ground to expand their fight against Turkey. They commenced armed conflict in 1984. Over the last 35 years, thousands of Syrian Kurds have fought in the ranks of the PKK, some as top commanders. Turkey has always been concerned withthe potential of Syrian Kurds uniting effectively with Kurds in Turkey.
This became a reality in 2012 when the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the leading Syrian Kurdish nationalist party, declared the autonomy of the three disconnected cantons—Jazira, Kobane, and Afrin—stretching along the 510 mile Turkish-Syrian border. In 2015, the PYD managed to connect Jazira and Kobane.
As far as Turkey is concerned there is no difference between the PKK and the PYD. Indeed, they are closely connected with interchangeable commanders and similar ideologies. The fragmentation of Syria since 2012 and the growing strength of the PYD and its armed force, People’s Protective Units (YPG), further reinforce Ankara’s belief that the two nationalist movements threaten what Ankara perceives to be its national security. U.S. support for the PYD/YPG during and after the battle of Kobane in late 2014 and early 2015, and its efforts to enlist the PYD/YPG into the war against IS enraged Ankara.
Ankara knows that in order to expand it geopolitical power into northern Syria, it has to deal a devastating blow to the PKK/KCK. This would also make it easier to manage the PYD/YPG after IS and jihadists forces are weakened or defeated. It wanted to weaken the PKK/KCK to the point that it would not be able to impede effectively the settlement of Syrian refugees in the Maras, Malatya, Elagiz, and Dersim provinces. Turkey is creating numerous new military and police installations to facilitate settlement of refugees in these provinces. It is engaged in building dams as defensive barriers between the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq. The dams also serve to destroy habitats used by the PKK. The destruction in Shirnak province seems to be intended to remove population from the border areas from a planned oil pipeline from the KRG.
Turkey’s Role in the Region
In the future, Turkey will be the major player in the economy of northern Syria and perhaps elsewhere in Syria. Other major players—Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the U.S.—simply do not have the wherewithal or ability to match Turkey’s potential. Russia will retain its bases in Latakia and with the Alawites whether Bashar al-Assad remains in power of not, but it is not in a position to contribute or to benefit economically in the rehabilitation of Syria. Facing other global challenges, Russia will largely focus on maintaining its military capabilities in the Black, Aegean, and eastern Mediterranean Seas as well as the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Iran is not able to be a major economic factor in Syria. Like Russia, it supports Alawites and Hezbollah, the latter mostly in Lebanon. Both can help Iran project its geostrategic power into the Mediterranean and play a role in containing Israel. Saudi Arabia’s interest in Syria will diminish as a result of myriad challenges. The weakening and/or destruction of the military power of IS and the rejuvenation of secularism and Sunni nationalism will lessen Saudi influence. The U.S. has declared that in the coming decades its main global interests lie in East and South Asia. The U.S. has never shown much interest in developing or nurturing the economies of the peoples of Syria and Iraq or any Middle East country.
Turkey’s geopolitical and geo-economic interests in Iraq and Syria now stretch some 729 miles from its border with Iran, across Iraq (219 miles) and Syria (510 miles). From 100 to 150 miles on each side of these borders live approximately 20-25 million people depending on where the borders are drawn. It includes the large cities of Diyarbakir, Erbil, Selamani (Sulaymaniaya) Gaziantep, Aleppo, Adana, and Iskenderun.
The collapse of state institutions in Iraq and Syria makes it clear that in the emerging vacuum only Turkey is poised to take the great advantage of its position. In Iraq, Turkey will have to share a condominium of power with Iran, especially with regard to the KRG. The two-hour discussion between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 15 in Istanbul reportedly dealt at length with how to deal with the challenges of terrorism, sectarianism, and Kurdish nationalism in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq.
The 20 million Kurds of Turkey and 9 million of Iran will demand close management by Ankara and Tehran. Both countries realize this. But Iran will not be a major factor in the unfolding developments in Syria. It does not have enough people on the ground. Only Turkey is poised to benefit from the ongoing turmoil.