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Turkey’s two-pronged war fronts

Jul 29,2015 - Last updated at Jul 29,2015

Turkey’s dramatic change of policy towards Daesh is probably the most important development in the international war against the Salafist jihadist group in years. The about-face came in the wake of a suicide attack in a town close to the Syrian border, which claimed the lives of 32 Kurdish Turks. It was the first time that Daesh militants attacked targets inside Turkey. And when the outlawed PKK gunned down two Turkish soldiers last week in retaliation for what they described as Ankara’s collusion with the terror group and for failing to protect the Kurds, embattled President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was forced to take action against both groups.

A telephone call between Erdogan and President Barak Obama paved the way for the adoption of a new strategy by Turkey. Now Ankara has become an active member of the US-led coalition fighting Daesh and its fighter jets have hit targets in Syria and along the border for the first time. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu promised that this was just the beginning and that the military operation will be ongoing. But the operation took an interesting twist when Turkish jets bombed suspected PKK bases in Iraq’s Kurdistan, ending in effect a two-year truce.

The new approach ends Turkey’s reluctance to fight Daesh militants, which it was accused of supporting in Syria as a power that could bring down the regime of President Bashar Assad. Ankara was also accused of facilitating the passage of thousands of foreign fighters into Syria who mostly joined the extremists. Turkey had worked out a deal to extract its citizens from Mosul when the second largest city in Iraq fell into the hands of Daesh fighters early last year.

In addition to joining the coalition, Turkey allowed the US and other coalition members to use its military bases. There is no doubt that the new development will have a marked effect on the onslaught against Daesh in both Syria and Iraq. But the campaign against the PKK will have repercussions on Turkey’s domestic scene as well. Davutoglu is still trying to find partners to form a coalition government after the ruling AK party lost its majority in the recent elections. The results of the election were seen as a major setback for Erdogan’s political designs. The rise of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has become a game changer, sending a clear message to Erdogan that the Turkish people have had enough of his grand ambitions to accumulate power and upset Turkey’s secular tradition.

Turkey has been viewing with concern the recent gains by Syria’s Kurds against Daesh militants along the common borders. The fall of Tal Abyad last month revived fears that Syria’s Kurds were close to creating their own autonomous enclave. That and the fact the Iraq’s Kurdistan is considering breaking up from Iraq constitute a real nightmare for Turkish officials, who have curbed the country’s Kurdish demands for self-government. Now that the shaky truce has collapsed it is not clear how Erdogan will manage the war on the PKK without reversing many of the gains that Turkey’s Kurds have acquired in the past two years. 

Iraq’s Kurdistan has condemned Turkey’s bombing of alleged PKK bases in its territory and such development will affect relations between Erbil and Ankara as well.

If Davutoglu fails to form a government soon, Turks may be heading to the polls again in the coming few weeks. Erdogan will be hoping that the switch in his policy on Syria may strengthen his party’s chances. But declaring war on the PKK may also drive away Kurdish voters.

The possible creation of a safe buffer zone inside Syrian territory, something that Ankara was calling for since the conflict in Syria began, will achieve two immediate objectives in the view of analysts; one is to stem the tide of refugees and even repatriate some of them, and the second will be to derail any ambitions by Syria’s Kurds to establish their own enclave. 

One question that begs an answer is this: Why would Daesh, which has benefitted tremendously from Turkey’s passive policy of the past few years, wage an attack against one of its most important allies? One possible answer is that the attack in Suruc was the act of one rogue fighter and not a change of tactics by Daesh leadership. 

In any case Turkey’s new approach may also mean that Ankara’s staunch insistence on the removal of Assad has now been relaxed as the country gets busy on two fronts; one against Daesh and the second against Kurdish nationalists. But Turkey’s support of the Syrian opposition and of moderate fighters on the ground will continue. What is not clear though is how the renewed confrontation with the Kurds will reflect on the domestic scene inside Turkey itself.

 

The writer is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.

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