Turkey

There is a drug war brewing in the Middle East, and Syria is at its center. The country has been destroyed by its eleven-year civil war, and in the ruins of what was once a prosperous country, an entirely different economy now takes shape. It’s an economy of poverty and privation, where food and energy prices are perpetually high, and supplies of basic commodities are uncertain. The regime of Bashar al-Assad, now unlikely to be overthrown, has become the Middle East’s biggest moocher — a rent-seeking entity that begs for “reconstruction” funds from nearby monarchies to keep its own corrupt machinery in operation. Wartime brings its own economic calculations.

Washington’s allies are deploring the Biden administration’s mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan, and they’re worrying publicly about its implications for Nato. Russian leaders, resisting the urge to gloat, express well-founded concerns over the spread of jihadist terrorism northward into Central Asia. And China is moving in, cutting deals with the Taliban to mine lithium and other critical minerals. The reaction in Turkey has been more ambiguous, but also more interesting. Early in the evacuation, Turkey sent soldiers to Kabul to secure the airport. It is already clear that Turkey’s Islamist government is ready to recognize and work with the Taliban — while also loudly discouraging Afghan refugees from trying to enter Turkey.

Back in 2015, when Turkey downed a Russian jet on the Syrian border, relations with Moscow nosedived. Russia imposed sanctions on Turkey, and its government-controlled media laid bare financial and military links between radical groups in Syria and high-level Turkish government officials. Russian pressure on Turkey was so crippling that Erdogan had to write a letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin to apologize. Putin knows how to handle bullies — because he is one. Not only did Russia's pressure force Turkey to toe line, but it also turned Turkey into one of Russia's biggest allies. Ankara even purchased S-400 Russian anti-air defense systems at the expense of alienating its Nato allies.

Six years ago, at the opening match of the new Basaksehir Stadium in Istanbul, an unlikely soccer star emerged. The red team’s aging, six-foot center-forward lumbered toward the white team’s goal, and a delicate chip over the advancing keeper brought a goal that sent the stadium into ecstasy. The scorer was Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was the run-up to an election in which he became his country’s 12th president.For Erdogan, a former semi-professional footballer, it was brilliant self-promotion. Like Fidel Castro’s baseball pitching or Chairman Mao’s ‘world-record’ Yangtze river swim, Erdogan’s contrived sporting prowess helped make him as much a cult as a politician.

President Trump’s recent moves in northern Syria are already paying off. Overshadowed as it was by the ‘impeachment' kabuki a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump’s hosting of Turkey's president Erdogan at the White House today signals progress in an area of significant US national interests.Some perspective on the hysteria over Trump’s ‘abandonment' of the Kurds last month. First, the notion that any Kurdish group represents 'the Kurds' anywhere is absurd. The world’s 30 million or so Kurds live in four countries –– Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, in order of numbers.

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Whenever neoconservatives and liberals chant in unison about American policy in the Middle East — as when they championed the Iraq invasion, for example, or the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, or the thwarted attempt to topple the Assad regime in Syria — it means we are being told a pack of lies. Par for the course is the hysterical response to President Donald Trump’s ‘betrayal’ of the Kurds in the wake of Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria. Turkey’s goal was to repatriate at least two million of 3.6 million Syrian refugees inside Turkey in a border zone controlled, until the invasion began, by the US-allied, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

The White House’s decision to move aside and allow a Turkish assault in northeast Syria highlighted the morass that is the US’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Criticism of the decision, rebuked as ham-fisted and reckless, was bipartisan. This is the kiss of death for the Kurds (the US’s allies, who are left defenseless),  the largest ethnic minority in Syria, and one of the victims of Turkey’s human rights abuses that have spanned centuries. Lost in the turbulent tangles of the news is another one of Turkey’s victims, a population of Christians who are a distinct ethnic group that has been historically targeted by the Ottoman Empire.

In pronouncing this morning in his 'great and unmatched wisdom' that it is wise for America to abandon the Kurds, Donald Trump has just slightly increased the possibility that the Senate will vote to impeach him. Fooling around in Ukraine is one thing. But dissing the Kurds is another for congressional Republicans. A chorus of Republican hawks has emerged to decry Trump’s move.Mitt Romney called it a 'betrayal'. Susan Collins told Politico, 'This is a terribly unwise decision by the president to abandon our Kurdish allies, who have been our major partner in the fight against the lslamic State.' Terribly unwise? For Collins, who usually confines herself to expressing 'concern', those are fighting words. Still, Romney and Collins have been mildly critical of Trump all along.