http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/20127581333324728.html
Why Turkey won't go to war with Syria
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has yet to understand the new deal
struck between Russia and the US.
Pepe Escobar
<http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/89/89/mritems/Images/2011/5/3/2
01153141716347734_9.jpg>
Pepe <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/profile/pepe-escobar.html>
Escobar
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is
named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009)
Aljazeera: July 06, 2012
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan never saw it coming.
He knew he was in trouble when the Pentagon leaked
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830704577497081567553846.h
tml?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews> that the Turkish Phantom RF-4E shot down
last week by Syrian anti-aircraft artillery happened off the Syrian
coastline, directly contradicting Erdogan's account, who claimed it happened
in international air space.
And it got worse; Moscow, via Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,
<http://en.ria.ru/world/20120630/174333287.html> offered "objective radar
data" as proof.
There was not much to do except change the subject. That's when Ankara
introduced a de facto buffer zone of four miles (6.4km) along the
Syrian-Turkish border - now enforced by F-16s taking off from NATO's
Incirlik base at regular intervals.
Ankara also dispatched tanks, missile batteries and heavy artillery to the
500 mile (800km) border, right after Erdogan
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/06/20126271837381879.html>
effectively branded Syria "a hostile state".
What next? Shock and awe? Hold your (neo-Ottoman) horses.
Lord Balfour, I presume?
NATO condemns downing of Turkish jet
The immediate future of Syria was
<http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidesyria/2012/07/2012628142225151490
.html> designed in Geneva recently, in one ore of those absurdist
"international community" plays when the US, Britain, France, Turkey and the
Gulf Cooperation Council's Qatar and Kuwait sat down to devise a "peaceful
solution" for the Syrian drama, even though most of them are reportedly
weaponising the opposition to Damascus.
One would be excused to believe it was all back to the Balfour Declaration
days, when foreign powers would decide the fate of a country without the
merest consultation of its people, who, by the way, never asked them to do
it on their behalf.
Anyway, in a nutshell: there won't be a NATO war on Syria - at least for
now. Beyond the fact that Lavrov routinely eats US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton for breakfast, Russia wins - for now.
Predictably, Moscow won't force regime change on Assad; it fears the
follow-up to be the absolute collapse of Syrian state machinery, with
cataclysmic consequences. Washington's position boils down to accepting a
very weak, but not necessarily out, Assad.
The problem is the interpretation of "mutual consent", on which a
"transitional government" in Syria would be based - the vague formulation
that emerged in Geneva. For the Obama administration, this means Assad has
to go. For Moscow - and, crucially, for Beijing - this means the transition
must include Assad.
Expect major fireworks dancing around the interpretation. Because a case can
be made that the new "no-fly zone" over Libya - turned by NATO into a
30,000-sortie bombing campaign - will become Syria's "transitional
government", based on "mutual consent".
One thing is certain: nothing happens before the US presidential election in
November. This means that for the next five months or so Moscow will be
trying to extract some sort of "transitional government" from the bickering
Syrian players. Afterwards, all bets are off. A Washington under Mitt Romney
may well order NATO to attack in early 2013.
A case can be made that a Putin-Obama or US-Russia deal may have been
reached even before Geneva.
Russia has <http://rt.com/politics/nato-transit-russia-afghanistan-059/>
eased up on NATO in Afghanistan. Then there was the highly choreographed
move of the US offering a formal apology and Pakistan duly accepting it -
thus <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/07/201275915696842.html>
reopening NATO's supply routes to Afghanistan.
It's crucial to keep in mind that Pakistan is an observer and inevitable
future full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) - run by
China and Russia, both BRICS members highly interested in seeing the US and
NATO out of Afghanistan for good.
The "price" paid by Washington is, of course, to go easy on Damascus - at
least for now. There is not much Erdogan can do about it; he really was not
in the loop.
Keep the division of labour intact
So here's the perverse essence of Geneva: the (foreign) players agreed to
disagree - and to hell with Syrian civilians caught in the civil war
crossfire.
In the absence of a NATO attack, the question is how the Assad system may be
able to contain or win what is, by all practical purposes, a
foreign-sponsored civil war.
Yes, because the division of labour will remain intact. Turkey will keep
offering the logistical base for mercenaries coming from "liberated" Libya,
Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Lebanon. The House of Saud will keep coming up with
the cash to weaponise them. And Washington, London and Paris will keep
fine-tuning the tactics in what remains the long, simmering foreplay for a
NATO attack on Damascus.
Even though the armed Syrian opposition does not control anything remotely
significant inside Syria, expect the mercenaries reportedly weaponised by
the House of Saud and Qatar to become even more ruthless. Expect the
not-exactly-Free Syrian Army to keep mounting operations for months, if not
years. A key point is whether enough supply lines will remain in place - if
not from Jordan, certainly from Turkey and Lebanon.
Damascus may not have the power to strike the top Western actors in this
drama. But it can certainly wreak havoc among the supporting actors - as in
Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, Turkey.
Jordan, the weak link, a wobbly regime at best, has already closed off
supply lines. Hezbollah sooner or later will do something about the Lebanese
routes. Erdogan sooner or later will have to get real about what was decided
in Geneva.
Moreover, one can't forget that Saudi Arabia would be willing to fight only
to the last dead American; it won't risk Saudis to fight Syrians.
As for red alerts about Saudi troops getting closer to southern Syria
through Jordan, that's a joke. The House of Saud military couldn't even
defeat the ragtag
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/06/2012630195727807952.htm
l> Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen.
A final juicy point. The Russian naval base at
<http://blogs.aljazeera.com/topic/syria/russia-preparing-send-two-amphibious
-assault-ships-syrian-port-tartus> Tartus - approximately a mere 55 miles
(90km) away from where the Panthom RF-4E was shot down - now has its radar
on 24/7. And it takes just a single Russian warship anchored in Syrian
waters to send the message; if anyone comes up with funny ideas, just look
at what happened to
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2008/08/2008810225659470997.html>
Georgia in 2008.
Time to shuffle those cards
Erdogan has very few cards left to play, if any. Assad, in
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/07/201273142230371284.html>
an interview with Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper, regretted "100 per cent"
the downing of the RF-4E, and argued, "the plane was flying in an area
previously used by Israel's air force".
The fact remains that impulsive Erdogan got an apology from wily Assad. By
contrast, after
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2010/05/201053133047995359.html>
the Mavi Marmara disaster, Erdogan didn't even get an unpeeled banana from
Israel.
Alawite activists flee to Turkey
The real suicidal scenario would be for Erdogan to order another F4-style
provocation and then declare war on Damascus on behalf of the
not-exactly-Free Syrian Army. It won't happen. Damascus has already proved
it is deploying a decent air defence network.
Every self-respecting military analyst knows that war on Syria will be light
years away from previous "piece of cake" Iraq and Libya operations. NATO
commanders, for all their ineptitude, know they could easily collect full
armouries of bloody noses.
As for the Turkish military, their supreme obsession is the Kurds in
Anatolia, not Assad. They do receive some US military assistance. But what
they really crave is an army of US drones to be unleashed over Anatolia.
Turkey routinely crosses into Northern Iraq targeting Kurdish PKK guerrillas
accused of
<http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/turkish-planes-troops-attack-ira
q-kurds/story-e6frf7lf-1226171895227> killing Turkish security forces.
<http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/turkish-planes-troops-attack-ira
q-kurds/story-e6frf7lf-1226171895227> Now, guerrillas based in Turkey are
reportedly crossing the border into Syria and killing Syrian security
forces, and even civilians. It would be too much to force Ankara to admit
its hypocrisy.
Erdogan, anyway, should proceed with extreme caution. His rough tactics are
isolating him; more than
<http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/137522/most-turks-oppose-taking->
two-thirds of Turkish public opinion is against an attack on Syria.
It's come to the point that Turkish magazine Radikal
<http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2012/06/lonely-man-of-middle-east.
html> asked their readers whether Turkey should be a model for the new
Middle East. Turkey used to be "the sick man of Europe"; now Turkey is
"becoming the lonely man of the Middle East", says the article.
It's a gas, gas, gas
Most of all, Erdogan simply cannot afford to antagonise Russia. There are at
least 100,000 Russians in Syria - doing everything from building dams to
advising on the operation of those defence systems.
And then there's the inescapable Pipelineistan angle. Turkey happens to be
Gazprom's second-largest customer. Erdogan can't afford to
<http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gazprom-warns-turkey-on-gas-deal.aspx?page
ID=238&nID=24422&NewsCatID=348> antagonise Gazprom. The whole Turkish energy
security architecture depends on gas from Russia - and Iran. Crucially, one
year ago a $10bn Pipelineistan deal was
<http://openoil.net/2012/03/28/syrias-transit-future-all-pipelines-lead-to-d
amascus/> clinched between Iran, Iraq and Syria for a natural gas pipeline
from Iran's giant South Pars field to Iraq, Syria and further on towards
Turkey and eventually connecting to Europe.
During the past 12 months, with Syria plunging into civil war, key players
stopped talking about it. Not anymore. Any self-respecting analyst in
Brussels admits that the EU's supreme paranoia is to be a hostage of
Gazprom. The Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline would be essential to diversify
Europe's energy supplies away from Russia.
For the US and the EU, this is the real game, and if it takes two or more
years of Assad in power, so be it. And it must be done in a way that does
not fully antagonise Russia. That's where reassurances in Geneva to Russia
keeping its interests intact in a post-Assad Syria come in.
No eyebrows should be raised. This is how ultra-hardcore geopolitics is
played behind closed doors. It remains to be seen whether Erdogan will get
the message.
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is
named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
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