It was hardly a coincidence that his hosts had also invited heads of the intelligence agencies from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to the meeting in Istanbul. The American spy chief held talks with his counterparts from the three countries under the auspices of the Turkish leaders. Although the agenda of the rare meeting was a closely guarded secret, a Palestinian newspaper said at the time that the deputy head of Mossad, Israel’s infamous spy organization, was also in Turkey for talks with intelligence officials.
A month later and under the pretext of mortar attacks from Syria on a Turkish border town, Ankara issued orders for air and ground assaults on the neighboring Arab country that has been fighting a bloody insurgency for the past 19 months. Within days the Turkish parliament, with a majority of members from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK party) headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, met in an emergency session and gave the government a free-hand to order cross-border raids on Syria.
The parliamentary authority has a one-year expiry date. However, in order to quell public opposition at home it was reported that the bill passed by parliament is not tantamount to waging war on Syria. In recent days Erdogan has called on his people to be prepared for war. He has reportedly said that anyone who does not do so is not a Turk. (May be the premier was negating the ‘Turkishness’ and position of the large numbers of his people opposed to war with Syria or simply questioning their perception of national interest).
So, what is the meaning of this wholesale hostility and aggressive posturing so conspicuous in Ankara’s halls of power?
Turkey’s active role in and tireless attempts at ‘regime change’ in Damascus is an open secret. Ever since the violence broke out in Syria , Turkey along with the usurper Israeli regime, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has officially called for an end to the regime in Damascus in the hope that it can play a defining role in the “state building” project in a post-Assad Syria.
For months Turkey has emerged as a training school for terrorists and international mercenaries trying to topple embattled President Bashar Assad and his government. It has proceeded to a point wherein the recent fighting between the Syrian army and the rebels in Aleppo (close to the Turkish border) is in actuality between Turkey and Syria. Crucial Factor As such, Erdogan had been at war with Assad’s Syria long before the Turkish Parliament authorized him to do so. Nevertheless, the nod from parliament was crucial for a variety of understandable reasons.
1- Had Erdogan been certain about public support for his war policy, he would have sought to promote and protect the possible successes of the war to underpin his own credibility and that of his party. His recourse to the legislature shows that he was aware of and facing strong opposition from the public, political parties and peace activists against his strange and irresponsible policies. Small wonder that Erdogan is doing all he can to sell “his policy” as “Turkish national policy” because when reality knocks he would have partners to carry the blame and burden! Authorization from the parliament is the venue to bestow a layer of legality to the clouded views and visions of the prime minister.
2- The bloody conflict in Syria continues without an end in sight -- a bitter reality that Erdogan and his regional/international allies tend to ignore, albeit at their own peril. After all, when rulers encounter ‘attrition projects’, their political opponents plus conventional wisdom demand to know the ‘cost and benefit’ of their policies or the lack of it. It seems that so far Erdogan and company have disappointingly added to the monumental costs and achieved nothing in return. As if this was not enough, the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in recent weeks has increased its attacks killing scores of Turkish police and security forces and in the process reduced the visibly overambitious Erdogan and his administration to a political agent of the US and Israel.
Erdogan claims he is striving to promote democracy and popular rule in Syria at a time when he spends most weekends playing backgammon with the authoritarian Azeri President Ilham Aliev. After all who doesn’t know that the ruler in Baku is as democratic as his counterpart in Damascus with the apparent difference being that the former is among the coterie of the US and the brutal Zionist regime.
3- At the home front Erdogan is not on good terms with the military. In the past several months dozens of military commanders have been tried, jailed and/or forced into retirement on charges of participating in previous coups or planning new ones. The number of such commanders has risen to a level that now the army hardly has enough qualified generals to replace the old guard. Mind you this is while the Turkish army is saddled with a proxy war in Syria and recurring clashes with the PKK.
Therefore, Erdogan in a frantic bid to rescue himself and his ruling party has little option but to intensify the crisis in Syria and hope that the conflagration will end in a manner that was planned well in advance and as per the roadmap of the Turkish Parliament. The perception in Ankara is that should the Turkish army push into Syria or the borders between the two neighbors turn more insecure, the pressure from the Syrian army against the rebels in Aleppo would consequently decrease paving the way for Al-Qaeda terrorists and other mercenaries to pursue the dangerous Saudi-Qatari plan of action.
Remember Saddam Hussein? Although Erdogan and ousted Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein differ in more ways than one and the Turkish and Iraqi societies are poles apart, he is largely following in Saddam’s footsteps when it comes to dealing with Turkey’s close neighbors.
Either due to some personal vendetta or a green light from his international allies, Saddam invaded Iran in 1980 with Saudi and Kuwait petrodollars and Jordanian and Egyptian forces fighting alongside the formidable Iraqi Baath army. While Saddam ostensibly premised his bloody aggression on longstanding territorial disputes with Iran, his foreign allies and bankrollers dreamed of toppling the newly-born Islamic Republic. In other words, in his invasion and occupation of Iran three decades ago, Saddam implied regime change and ‘state building’ but at least he stuck to his territorial disputes and claims as a first step. Now Erdogan is creating similar if not the same platform for invading Syria under the same clichés and border problems, namely shelling from Syria, sheltering PKK terrorists, the inflating number of Syrian refugees pouring into Turkey, confrontation with the Assad dictatorship... This time, however, Saudi and Qatari (substituting Kuwaiti) money, Al Qaeda terrorists standing in for Egyptian and Jordanian mercenaries, and the open and direct US-led western aid and advice are in play.
In sum, the covert end result is the same: regime change and state building in Syria.Descending Fortunes If Erdogan was the same visionary leader of two years ago, it was likely that in retirement his portrait would rest alongside that of Ataturk’s. But his popularity is of the descending order and the Syrian gamble could drag his country into a catastrophic regional conflict. The Erdogan leadership often prided itself on the “zero problem” policy with all neighbors. Suddenly that now seems to be long ago and in tatters as Turkey seemingly has no fiends in its immediate neighborhood.
The Turkish premier could have performed as a strong critic of the regime in Damascus and helped the Syrian people and government in achieving what was desirable and acceptable. Instead he embarked on a policy of direct and disastrous intervention of the likes of the disgraced Saddam Hussein and in the process reduced himself to an international political agent.
The prominent Egyptian journalist and author once said of the controversial Camp David Accords: By signing the accord Egypt missed history but gained geography (return of the Sinai Desert). Erdogan will have to answer what has he achieved, or expects to achieve, from absenting himself from history.
