Compromising on Syria for vengeance: Erdogan's Grand Startegy

Since the attempted coup of July 2016, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has been fixated on vengeance against the autocratic wing of the Middle-East.

Turkey has been growing weary of the United States and her allies since the beginning of the Arab Spring. From 2011, Turkey was shouldering most of the burden behind training and equipping the Free Syrian Army against the Syrian government, while the United States refused to act militarily. In 2013, a military coup changed Egypt from Turkish ally to nemesis and, in 2014, the United States decided to use the Kurds in their fight against ISIS in Syria.

But for President Erdogan, it was the parallels between Egypt in 2013 and Turkey in 2016 which were the most alarming. US ally the United Arab Emirates backed both the Egyptian military coup and the attempted military coup in Turkey, and Saudi Arabia strongly backed the UAE in these efforts. With signs that the autocratic wing of the Middle-East increasingly had the ear of the United States, it was President Erdogan's decision to compromise with Russia, instead of the US, to yield better results.

Turkish compromise with Russia benefited both parties enormously. Since the Russian-Turkish partnership began, ISIS has been dislodged from all of Syria; Syrian rebels have been moved from various enclaves into Idlib; the US' hold on the Syrian Kurds has been weakened substantially and, recently, the southern half of Idlib was taken back by the Syrian government.

But Russia achieved these only at a price palatable to Turkey. For example, until recently the southern half of Idlib, though devoid of rebels, still had Turkish observation posts throughout - until Turkey intervened in Libya. After Turkey propped up the Government of National Accord in western Libya, Turkey removed its observation posts and ceded control of southern Idlib to the Syrian government.

What seems to be happening is that Turkey is compliant with Russia in Syria only if it receives adequate compensation for doing so. This explains why there is Russian interference across the Middle-East: Russia is using its influence over other Middle-Eastern countries as leverage for Syria. Russian support for Haftar in Libya and the Houthis in Yemen, therefore, is conditional on support for Bashar Al-Assad by regional players.

Crucially, this means that Turkey is likely to, eventually, allow Bashar Al-Assad to regain control over all of Syria - but in return, Russia will likely have to cede to Turkey control of two other nations mired in conflict: Libya and Yemen. Since Russia, Iran and Syria are all under US sanctions and since the autocratic wing of the Middle-East is largely subservient to the United States, Turkey is the only other power that Russia can rely on to attain its vision for Syria.

The reason President Erdogan is eyeing both Libya and Yemen in exchange for Syria goes deeper than influence, though: both Libya and Yemen have a UAE-backed autocratic force vying for control of the country. For Turkey, military intervention in both Libya and Yemen is personal. It is intervention against proxies of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, nations that supported the attempted military coup of July 2016.

Should Turkey succeed in exchanging all of Syria for political control of Libya and Yemen, the autocratic wing of the Middle-East would feel the very pressure that they had once applied to Turkey upon their own heads. After Libya and Yemen, Turkey would do all it could to erode autocratic influence elsewhere - and Saudi Arabia and the UAE in particular would have much to fear from a vengeful Tayyip Erdogan.

Compromising on Libya for Idlib: Putin's grand strategy

Recently, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan sent arms, Syrian militias and his military in support of Libya's Government of National Accord. By doing so, President Erdogan saved the Libyan government from General Haftar's forces, which were marching on the capital Tripoli. Such a move was long ago predicted in our Forgotten Middle-East blog.

By contrast, in February this year Russian, Syrian and Iranian forces clashed with those in Syria's Idlib. Dozens of Turkish soldiers were killed. In retaliation, Turkey unleashed a barrage on approaching Iranian and Syrian targets, only to be stopped by a cease-fire deal reached between President Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian strategy has always been to get Turkey on side in Syria. That Turkey still refuses to compromise suggests that President Putin has not yet offered sufficient compensation to justify Turkish loss of Idlib. To accomplish this, Russia is likely to compromise on Libya.

Turkey is trying to gain drilling rights for gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean. If the presence of the Government of National Accord is consolidated over all of Libya, Turkey would no longer be isolated diplomatically in their dispute. Egypt, Israel, Cyprus and Greece all oppose Turkey sharing in the gas reserves of the Mediterranean, and all support Haftar Al-Khalifa in Libya's east.

Russia, meanwhile, has largely supported Haftar Al-Khalifa in concordance with Egypt. But Russia has also encouraged dialogue between Haftar and the Government of National Accord, and its priority remains fixed on Syria. President Putin would not hesitate to seal the fate of Haftar Al-Khalifa if the result was a net gain for Syria.

The Government of National Accord consolidating all of Libya would pose a serious threat to Egyptian President Abdul Feteh As-Sisi. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood would be revived and supported from Libya which, in turn, would force President Sisi to turn to Russia for help. This provides President Putin with his perfect opportunity.

The only place where Egypt could strike back at Turkey successfully would be in Syria, where the war is nearing its end. Although overt military support is unlikely, diplomatic pressure from Egypt on regional players like Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the US could see support for Idlib dropped in favour of a settlement with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

For the autocratic wing of the Sunni Middle-East - Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia in particular - losing Haftar in Libya would force a strategic rethink. With Iran under sanctions and Iraq in anti-Iran protests, the autocrats would be perceive Turkey as the greater threat to regional stability. This, in turn, only increases the likelihood of a settlement in Syria in favour of Bashar Al-Assad - himself an autocrat - and would once again demonstrate the genius of Russian President Vladimir Putin in his approach to foreign policy.

How the United States could have won the war on terror in 2003

While invading Iraq in 2003 greatly increased the threat of terrorism in the region, the only feasible option for decreasing terrorism in the region in the long-term was to weaken Iran.

While it is an exaggeration to say that Iran is the world’s number 1 sponsor of terrorism, it can certainly be said that Iran is the number 1 galvanizer of terrorism.

Without the Islamic Republic of Iran, 9-11 would have never happened. The Iranian revolution finished in February 1979 and threatened to spread the revolution elsewhere. The the first culprit of the Islamic revolution was Saudi Arabia.

9 months after the Iranian Revolution, in November 1979, extremists from within the kingdom seized the Grand Holy Mosque of Mecca and threatened to destroy it if their demands for a more Islamic country were not met. Though the extremists were executed, afterwards the kingdom underwent a conservative counterrevolution, which enabled the funding of Islamic jihad in the 1980’s and sowed the seeds for Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda.

Though the extremists in Saudi Arabia were not politically affiliated with Iran, undoubtedly they were inspired by the Islamic revolution of Iran: either through admiration of Islamists taking control of Iran, or terrified of Iran’s Shi’a extremism and wanting a Sunni response provoked from within their own country.

What President Bush did in 2003, however, exacerbated and accelerated the increase of terrorism in the Middle-East. Instead of curbing Islamic extremism, the Iraq War empowered terrorism on both sides of the Sunni-Shi’ite spectrum, giving Iraq both Shi’a extremists and ISIS. If George Bush promised to go after terrorism, his actions in 2003 profoundly enhanced terrorism’s appeal across the Islamic world for both the Sunnis and Shi’ites.

Though going after Iraq was the worst of many bad options, going after US allies who have ties to Al-Qaeda funding would have not been much better. A conflict in the Arabian Gulf would have seriously risked instability in an area where the majority of the world’s oil comes from. For those who believe the west needs to get off oil, such an intervention might be considered necessary, but pragmatically it would have left the global economy far more vulnerable during the Great Financial Crisis than it was.

Weakening Iran in 2003, therefore, would have been the better option for ending radical Islamic terrorism’s appeal in the Middle-East. Iran has been the provocateur of extremism in US allies; it funds extremism itself and it is seeking nuclear weapons with the capacity to destroy Israel and the United States. It should not be forgotten that the national anthem of Iran is “death to America, death to Israel.” This is not hyperbole. This is the anthem of who is in charge of the most powerful country in the Middle-East.

However, weakening Iran would not mean regime change. Changing the regime in Iraq empowered extremists on both sides, and a regime change in Iran would have had a similar effect. Not only so: a US occupation of Iran’s population centres would have led to enormous amount of casualties for the US, as Iran is more politically unified than Iraq.

Instead of taking control of all of Iran, it would have been more feasible for the US to annex four provinces in Iran’s southeast, taking from Iran the Strait of Hormuz and all land crossings into Afghanistan and Pakistan. These areas are sparsely populated, which would have meant that, after a conventional war, occupation of them would have been easier even than occupying Iraq.

Better still: these provinces could be annexed from Iran and given to Afghanistan, which would mean Afghanistan would have a secure sea route that is not dominated by Russia, China or Pakistan. Such an option would have enabled Afghanistan to exploit its enormous mineral reserves much more quickly and would have connected Afghanistan to US allies in the Middle-East. This, in turn, would have allowed the Afghan war to end in a shorter amount of time.

Seeing a weaker Iran, US allies who previously funded Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan would have incentive to rebuild Afghanistan as a bulwark against Iran. A weaker Iran would have given US allies less reason to fund extremism and more assurance that their security would be looked after.