TURKEY’S INSTABILITY GROWS WITH ANKARA BOMBING, UPCOMING ELECTION & RUSSIAN INTERVENTION IN SYRIA

Turkey's Grisly Dances with the Islamic State: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Oct. 15, 2015 — On October 10, Turkey woke up to the worst single terror attack in its history.

Turkey is the Next Failed State in the Middle East: David P. Goldman, Middle East Forum, Oct. 10, 2015— We do not know just who detonated the two bombs that killed 95 Kurdish and allied activists in Ankara Saturday, but the least likely conjecture is that President Erdogan's government is guiltless in the matter.

Why Russian Jets Are Buzzing Turkey: Marc Champion, Bloomberg, Oct. 8, 2015 — One success of Russian foreign policy in recent years has been a remarkable improvement in relations with Turkey, historically a regional rival with which it fought multiple wars.

A Timely Lesson From the Mideast Past: Abraham Rabinovich, Globe & Mail, Oct. 14, 2015 — The buildup of Russian warplanes in Syria has raised concerns about a possible clash with Israeli aircraft, which periodically fly over that country.

On Topic Links

Was Erdoğan Behind Ankara Bomb?: Michael Rubin, Commentary, Oct. 12, 2015

Bomb Attack Deepens Divisions as Turkey Faces Bitter Election: Nick Tattersall & Orhan Coskun, Globe & Mail, Oct. 11, 2015

Anti-Semitism on Rise in Turkey: US Report: Hurriyet Daily News, Oct. 15, 2015

Turkey is Increasingly Unable to Handle Criticism: Robert Fulford, National Post, Oct. 9, 2015

TURKEY'S GRISLY DANCES WITH THE ISLAMIC STATE                                                                       

Burak Bekdil

Gatestone Institute, Oct. 15, 2015

On October 10, Turkey woke up to the worst single terror attack in its history. The twin suicide-bomb attack in Ankara killed 97 and injured nearly 250 people, with more than 60 of the wounded being treated in intensive care. As of October 14, no one had claimed responsibility, but all indications pointed to the Islamic State (ISIS, or IS) — the same jihadists Turkey's Islamist government once helped logistically, in the hope that they would facilitate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's downfall and the establishment of an Islamist regime there.

In fact, the attack in front of the main train station in downtown Ankara looked like a bigger-scale version of a July 20 attack in Suruc, a small town on Turkey's border with Syria. A Turkish-Kurdish suicide-bomber with ties to the Islamic State murdered 33 people at a pro-Kurdish meeting in Suruc, and paved the way for a spiral of violence that has since claimed hundreds of lives. Actually, since most of the deaths resulted mostly from Turkish-Kurdish clashes, the attacks may have claimed thousands: Kurdish militants' casualties remain unknown. Since July 20, more than 150 Turkish police and military officers have been killed. One of the two perpetrators of the Ankara bombings now is believed to be the brother of the Suruc bomber. The second suspect also has alleged ties with jihadist groups.

On October 10, thousands of pro-peace activists from different NGOs — most of them pro-Kurdish, secular, leftist and opponents of the AKP government — had gathered in front of Ankara's main railway station, to protest the wave of violence sparked by the Islamic State suicide-bombing in Suruc in July. They had no way of knowing that two other jihadists would turn their "peace rally" into a bloodbath. The usual police body searches for weapons or bombs — carried out routinely before every public rally — were omitted this time. Interior Minister Selami Altinok admitted that the body searches were not done, but refused to accept allegations of negligence…

The murder of nearly 100 people in a terror attack is shocking wherever in the world it happens, or whoever commits it. But the Ankara attack was hardly a total surprise. This author has mentioned at least a few times the findings of an August 2014 poll, which found that 11.3% of Turks did not view the Islamic State as a terrorist organization. Eleven percent is in no way a marginal figure: If a "mere" 11.3% of Turks thought so generously of ISIS, it meant that there were nearly nine million Turks sympathetic to jihadists. And only 5% of that would mean an army of nearly 450,000. The two suicide-bombers on October 10 were most likely just a two of that big bunch of 450,000 or so sleepers inside Turkey.

Shocking? Not really. In August, the Turkish Justice Ministry revealed that there were only 126 people in Turkish prisons on charges of being a member of IS. "Hence the unnerving threat of IS attacks on Turkish cities, most probably by the group's "sleeper cells" inside Turkey," an article in this journal warned. IS had recently released a video promising to "conquer" Istanbul by the armies of the Caliph: "Soon, Turkey's east will be dominated by the atheist PKK [Kurdish militants], and the West will be dominated by the Crusaders. They will kill children, rape women, and enslave you. O people of Turkey; before [it is] too late, you should rise up and fight against these atheists, these Crusaders and these traitors. You should also repent. You should condemn democracy, secularism, human-made laws, tomb-worshipping and other devils."

Apparently, the people of Turkey did not "rise up and fight against these atheists, these Crusaders and these traitors." So they had to be killed by jihadists in suicide-bombing attacks. IS promised to attack, and it did. 450,000 minus two (suicide-bombers) leaves behind too big a number. Turkish cities are unsafe. Turkey's Islamist leaders look appalled to have been attacked by their one-time comrades. They should not. They wanted to dance with the devil in order to "Islamize" the failed state of Syria. The dance has ended up in carnage. It had to.

Turkey's Islamist leaders once hoped that they would triumphantly visit Damascus when it would be Sunni Islamist, not Shia and secular. Instead, their former jihadist friends hit them right in the heart of their capital. But Ankara does not learn. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, instead of calling a spade a spade, mentioned three other organizations as potential culprits for the attack. In addition to the Islamic State, he said, other suspects were the PKK, the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) and the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP).

These Kurdish and extreme left organizations mentioned by Davutoglu are big enemies of jihadists, not friends with whom to jointly organize a terror attack. Most victims were sympathizers of the Kurdish and leftist groups. Yet four days after the Ankara bomb attack, after the police had already identified the two suicide-bombers as Turkish sleepers linked with the Islamic State, Davutoglu still said that the attackers were linked with both IS jihadists and Kurdish militants. Davutoglu cannot admit that jihadists alone simply murdered people en masse in twin bomb attacks. The Ankara bombing was a bad ending of one part of the Turkish Islamists' willing dance with the devil. The dance is not over yet.

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TURKEY IS THE NEXT FAILED STATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST                                                   

David P. Goldman                                                                                                                 

Middle East Forum, Oct. 10, 2015

We do not know just who detonated the two bombs that killed 95 Kurdish and allied activists in Ankara Saturday, but the least likely conjecture is that President Erdogan's government is guiltless in the matter. As Turkish member of parliament Lutfu Turkkan tweeted after the bombing, the attack "was either a failure by the intelligence service, or it was done by the intelligence service." Betrayed by both the United States and Russia, and faced with the emergence of a Kurdish state on its borders and the rise of Kurdish parties in the parliamentary opposition, Erdogan is cornered. At risk in the short-term is the ability of his AKP party to govern after the upcoming November elections. At risk in the medium term is the cohesion of the Turkish state itself.

In public, Western leaders have hailed Turkey as "a great Islamic democracy," as President Obama characterized it in a 2010 interview. That was the view of the George W. Bush administration before Obama, which invited Erdogan to the White House before his selection as prime minister in 2003.

A minority of military and intelligence analysts, though, has warned that Turkey may not be viable within its present borders in the medium term. The trouble is that its Kurdish minority, now at 20% of the overall population, has twice as many children as ethnic Turks, so many that half of Turkey's military-age population will speak Kurdish as a first language in fewer than twenty years. An existential crisis for Turkey has been in the making for years, as I reported in my 2011 book, How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too). During the past week, a perfect storm has overtaken Turkish policy, and threatens to provoke deep political instability. Turkey may become the region's next failed state.

There has to be a fall guy in the Middle East's film noir, and that unenviable role has fallen to Turkey. Prior to the bombings, the worst terrorist incident in modern Turkish history, Erdogan suffered public humiliation by Washington as well as Moscow. As Laura Rozen reported October 9 in Al-Monitor, Washington announced a 180-degree turn in its Syrian intervention, abandoning the Sunni opposition in favor of Syrian Kurds…

Until last Friday, America and Turkey both supported the Sunni opposition to the Assad government with a view to eliminating Assad and installing a Sunni regime. That policy has been in shambles for months, but it allowed the Turks leeway to provide covert support to ISIS, the one Sunni force that shows effectiveness in the field. Russian intervention exposed the fecklessness of America's attempts to find a "moderate" Syrian opposition to back…

The Russians forced Washington to find something credible on the ground to support, and Washington turned to the Kurds, the only effective fighting force not linked to ISIS or al-Qaeda. That was precisely the result Turkey had wanted to avoid; the Kurdish military zone in northern Syria links up with Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Iraq, and the two zones form the core of a prospective Kurdish state.

Russia humiliated Turkey, meanwhile, by challenging Turkish fighters inside Turkish airspace, leaving NATO to protest loudly. Nonetheless the US and Germany have deactivated Patriot missile batteries–the only weapon system that represents a threat to Russian fighters–despite urgent Turkish requests to leave them in place. Russian fighters over Syria prevent the Turks from providing air cover for ISIS and other Islamist groups in Syria, as I noted Oct. 6 in our Chatham House Rules blog. M.K. Bhadrakumar observed in Asia Times Oct. 9, "Turkey's scope for maneuvering vis-à-vis Russia is actually very limited and it has no option but to reach an understanding with Russia over Syria."

Less obvious but no less ominous is the deterioration of Sino-Turkish relations due to Ankara's covert support for the East Turkestan Independence Movement, a terrorist organization active among the Uyghurs of Western China. Despite official assurances, Turkey continues to provide safe passage to Turkey to thousands of Chinese Uyghurs via Southeast Asia, some of whom are fighting with ISIS in Syria. Thailand claims that Uyghur militants carried out the Aug. 17 bombing at Bangkok's Erawan shrine after Thailand sent 109 Chinese Uyghurs back to China.

Erdogan has suffered not merely a collapse of his foreign policy, but a public humiliation by countries that backed his regime in the interests of regional stability–and this just before November's parliamentary elections. After the Kurdish-backed HDP party took 13% of the national vote in last June's elections and removed Erdogan's majority in parliament, Erdogan called new elections rather than accept a coalition government. Erdogan also revived military operations against Turkish Kurds in order to elicit support from Turkish nationalists, a transparent maneuver widely reported in the major media…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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WHY RUSSIAN JETS ARE BUZZING TURKEY                                                                                  

Marc Champion  

Bloomberg, Oct. 8, 2015

One success of Russian foreign policy in recent years has been a remarkable improvement in relations with Turkey, historically a regional rival with which it fought multiple wars. So why Russia would put those gains at risk to start flying combat aircraft into Turkish airspace takes a bit of explaining.

It was only on Sept. 23, just days before Russia launched its air campaign in Syria, that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Moscow to open a new mosque with his friend Vladimir Putin. Erdogan lauded the way trade between the two countries had risen to $31 billion last year — in 2002, the year Erdogan's Justice and Development Party won power, that figure was $5 billion. The Turkish leader set a target of $100 billion by 2020.

In April, contractors broke ground for a nuclear plant on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, a $20 billion Russian contract. Last year, the two countries agreed to build a pipeline taking up to 63 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Europe each year.  Several times over the last two years, Erdogan has talked publicly with Putin about joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the security body Russia formed with China and four Central Asian states.

In response to the aircraft incidents, Erdogan has now warned Russia it could lose Turkey as a friend and natural gas customer, and highlighted his country's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. On Thursday he said he might find someone else to build that nuclear plant. A day earlier, Russian natural gas giant Gazprom said the TurkStream gas pipeline project was being postponed.

There are several possible reasons why Russia would risk jeopardizing this relationship by flying jets into Turkish airspace (Russia says these were accidents, but neither Turkey nor NATO find that credible). The first is that having entered the Syrian war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad, Russian leaders know the Turkish government will be alienated anyhow. It is on the other side in this conflict, and few have staked as much on Assad's fall as Erdogan.

Yet that explains only why Russia would feel less need to be wary of Turkish sensibilities, not why it would to do something as deliberately provocative as locking radar onto Turkish jets on the Turkish side of the Syrian border — on one occasion for five minutes and 40 seconds, according to Turkey's armed forces. Russia probably has a concrete and parochial goal: forestalling Turkish plans to create safe zones in Syria.

The best response to Putin's latest military adventure would be to establish areas in the north and south of Syria, in which refugees and militants belonging to the acceptable Sunni opposition to Assad — those groups that could be part of any political settlement — would be protected. This would involve establishing no-fly zones, limiting Russia's field of action in the air and on the ground. Turkey and Jordan have long proposed such buffer zones, and Erdogan was pushing his case again on a trip to Brussels this week. Safe zones would lock down parts of Syria, making Assad's further pursuit of the war less valuable because the territory could not be reclaimed. The zones could also begin to relieve Syria's humanitarian and refugee crisis, which has reached Europe in earnest this summer.

Russia's military support for Assad has already done something similar on the other side: With so much Russian prestige at stake, Assad isn't getting driven out of Damascus any time soon. With little purpose in continued fighting on either side, a settlement based on a Bosnia-style federalization of Syria would be the logical outcome. Putin, however, is obsessively wary of NATO no-fly zones. In Libya, where Russia agreed to let a Western alliance establish one under a United Nations resolution in 2011, it was used not just to protect civilians but to provide air support to rebels, who then toppled former President Muammar Qaddafi, a Russian ally. The same might happen in Syria — certainly that's what Erdogan would want.

So when Turkey's aging F-16s are buzzed by state of the art Russian SU-30s, the message is: Don't even think about trying to set up a no-fly zone in Syria. I don't believe for a moment that Putin is prepared to launch a hot war with NATO or Turkey over Syria. Outnumbered, outgunned and far from home, Russian assets in Syria would be hugely vulnerable. Russia's otherwise bizarre decision to fire ship-borne cruise missiles into Syria from the Caspian Sea seems designed to paper over that weakness.

Putin compensates for his relative lack of military resources by making it clear that he is far more ready to take risks than NATO, Turkey or the U.S. He appears determined at least to help Assad continue the war until he possesses all of the territory he would want to receive under any eventual settlement. Imposing a no-fly zone now isn't impossible, but it would require calling Putin's bluff, a showdown that U.S. President Barack Obama is unlikely to risk.

Whether Putin is serving his own best interests is another matter. Paradoxically, his Syrian goals would be best served by cooperating in the creation of safe zones. With Russian planes and commanders involved, he could ensure they weren't abused. The relationship with Turkey would no longer have to be sacrificed. Europe would overflow with gratitude for Putin's help in reducing, or even reversing, the flow of Syrian refugees.

The U.S. would be only too pleased to support the settlement process that followed, at which point Putin might even get the global alliance with Assad to defeat Islamic State that he says he wants. He would be seen as the man whose decisive intervention brought this terrible war to an end…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]   

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A TIMELY LESSON FROM THE MIDEAST PAST                                                                            

Abraham Rabinovich

Globe and Mail, Oct. 14, 2015

The buildup of Russian warplanes in Syria has raised concerns about a possible clash with Israeli aircraft, which periodically fly over that country. If an Israeli-Russian air confrontation were to occur, it wouldn’t be for the first time.

In 1970, during the so-called War of Attrition between Israel and Egypt, Cairo appealed to Moscow to halt Israeli air attacks on its hinterland. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) had begun attacking infrastructure deep in Egypt in an attempt to force Cairo to halt shelling of Israeli troops along the Suez Canal. Responding to their client state’s request, the Soviets deployed scores of its warplanes and pilots at three Egyptian airfields. Preferring not to tangle with a superpower, Israel initially halted its deep raids. But when Soviet planes began flying into the front-line Suez Canal zone, Israel decided to engage them directly.

The IAF command chose to lure the Soviets into combat in an aerial ambush. Israel’s best pilots were chosen for the mission. With years of combat against Arab air forces under their belts, the IAF pilots were among the most experienced in the world; between them, the 14 pilots chosen for the mission had 59 “kills.” Nevertheless, going up against the pilots of a superpower was a challenge they did not take lightly.

On July 30, 1970, the IAF dispersed some of the planes around the sky in small formations that, on enemy radar screens, appeared to be on routine reconnaissance or ground attack missions. Some were deep in Sinai, out of radar range. The bait was an attack on an Egyptian radar station by two Phantom jets. Within a few minutes, Russian-speaking Israeli intelligence staff, monitoring the Soviet bases, reported planes going up, 24 in all. The MiG-21s carried Egyptian Air Force markings, but the language of the pilots and controllers revealed their identity.

At a signal, the Israeli aircraft – Phantoms and Mirages – converged. The Israeli pilots had dubbed the canal zone “Texas” because of the frequent encounters there with Egyptian warplanes and deadly SAMs (surface-to-air missiles). But it had never been as Wild West as this day, with 36 warplanes rushing toward one another.

The Israeli radio monitors, who had come to know the Soviet pilots by their voices and appreciated their sense of humour, reported the pilots’ tone to be even as they realized they were entering into combat, probably for the first time. Within seconds, the tone changed to bafflement and then panic as the Israeli planes split up and plunged into the Russian formations. The sky was full of aircraft swivelling in dogfights. “They could manoeuvre very nicely, but they couldn’t do the ‘final’ that you need in combat. We saw immediately that they were inexperienced,” one of the Israeli pilots, Avihu Bin-Nun (who would go on to become a commander of the IAF) recalled years later.

Within three minutes, five Russian planes were shot down; only one pilot succeeded in parachuting to safety. By then, the Russian ground controller was shouting and directing the pilots, who he began calling by their first names, to land at any airfield they could see. (One Israeli plane was hit but made it back to base.) The commander of the Soviet air force arrived in Egypt the next day. According to subsequent media accounts, he told the pilots that if they talked about what happened to anyone, including family, their next flight would be to Siberia. Choosing not to twist the bear’s tail, Israel announced it had shot down a number of Egyptian planes. The truth would eventually emerge. Egyptian airmen, frequently derided by their Soviet trainers as poor pilots, could not resist revelling in the Soviet embarrassment…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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On Topic

Was Erdoğan Behind Ankara Bomb?: Michael Rubin, Commentary, Oct. 12, 2015—The Ankara bombing of a peace rally organized by Kurds, labor unions, and civil society groups was the worst single act of terrorism in Turkish history. Among both Turks and those outside Turkey, it has shaken confidence in Turkey and its stability. No terrorists have issued a claim of responsibility.

Bomb Attack Deepens Divisions as Turkey Faces Bitter Election: Nick Tattersall & Orhan Coskun, Globe & Mail, Oct. 11, 2015 —Aside from a carefully worded statement urging unity, President Tayyip Erdogan was unusually quiet after Turkey's worst ever bomb attack.

Anti-Semitism on Rise in Turkey: US Report: Hurriyet Daily News, Oct. 15, 2015—Anti-Semitism has risen in recent years in Turkey, a U.S. State Department report has said, adding that the Turkish government has continued to discriminate against its non-Sunni Muslim citizens.

Turkey is Increasingly Unable to Handle Criticism: Robert Fulford, National Post, Oct. 9, 2015 —Turkish political leaders, especially President Recep Erdogan, suffer from wounds to their amour propre. Their pride and their sense of self-esteem make them sensitive, sometimes even hysterical, about every word said against themselves and their country.