Saudi Plans for Syria Ground Invasion: Bluff or a Disaster in the Making?

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18. Strategic depth meets precious loneliness

Turkey lost the initiative in Syria years ago because of two major mistakes. The first was to underestimate the longevity and entrenchment of the regime in Damascus. In other words, Syria was not like Tunisia, Libya or Egypt. Unlike in these Arab Spring countries were police states were toppled one after another, there was a clear sectarian dimension in the nature of the political regime of Damascus. More importantly, the sectarian nature of the regime in Syria reflected the very sensitive balance of power in the larger Middle East.

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Turkey's second monumental failure was to think that the worsening Kurdish problem at home would have no impact on Kurdish dynamics in Syria. The end of the peace process between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was bound to spill over to Syria. When the conflict began in Syria, Ankara was conducting negotiations with the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. As late as 2013, the whole world was praising Turkey for finally coming to terms with the Kurdish question through a strategy of co-opting rather than confronting the Kurds.

Imagine where Turkey's Syria policy would be today had the peace process between Ankara and the PKK continued in 2014 and 2015? Wouldn't Turkey's hand be much stronger in Syria if the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) were under the Turkish sphere of influence thanks to the peace process between Ankara and the PKK? This scenario could have turned Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's neo-Ottoman dream into a reality. Instead of fighting, Kurds and Turks would now be cooperating against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). A larger Kurdish regional entity in Turkey, Iraq and Syria would see Turkey as its best regional ally. To its credit, Turkey achieved part of this neo-Ottoman dream by co-opting the Iraqi Kurdish Regional President Massoud Barzani camp. The more challenging part was always going to be co-opting Turkey's own Kurds and the PKK. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) squandered this historic opportunity because of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's obsession over establishing a presidential regime.

These two strategic mistakes doomed Turkey's Syria policy. As far as Turkey's national interest in Syria is concerned, things went from bad to worse after Moscow's military intervention in the conflict and the inexplicable stupidity of Ankara that led to the downing of a Russian military jet. With Moscow's decision to support the Syrian Kurds, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) has now the military support of both the United States and Russia. In other words, Turkey's Kurdish nemesis is now backed by two superpowers. The situation could not be more ironic. Today, the PYD (and indirectly the PKK) has the support of both Washington and Moscow, while Turkey finds tremendous comfort in the fact that military giants (!) such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia are firmly behind Ankara. History books will probably remember this AKP era in Turkish foreign policy with a fancy doctrine. This must be where strategic depth meets precious loneliness.

http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist/omer-taspinar/strategic-depth-meets-precious-loneliness_412590.html
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist/omer-taspinar/strategic-depth-meets-precious-loneliness_412590.html