Geopolitical Value of Turkey’s Settlement Process

The Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) initiative to find a peaceful solution to Turkey’s decades-long Kurdish problem, or the peace process as it is widely known, should be supported not only for its humane sentiments but also for robust geopolitical grounds.
 
For decades, Turkey has followed isolationist policies towards the Middle East. Former geopolitical schools of Turkey, especially during the Cold War, interpreted the country’s geostrategic capabilities in a pretty static fashion. Under AK Party rule, Ankara drastically altered this approach and focused on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) affairs assertively.
 
As Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu expressed in his recent Foreign Policy article, “The new AK Party government hoped to reintegrate Turkey with its surroundings, and this new strategy necessitated a major break with the old foreign-policy culture.” This foreign policy initiative was built on dual tracks, namely on fostering soft power capabilities and economic integration.
 
On the other hand, ethno-sectarian violence has poisoned Turkey’s hinterland, and now Ankara has to overcome crucial challenges. At this point, the peace process is critically important to improve Turkey’s geostrategic capabilities, and to reduce the threat of a proxy war to the nation.
 
Turkey’s geopolitical challenge and the peace process
 
Turkey was born out of the Ottoman Empire’s ashes following World War I. At present, the AK Party rule has to accomplish the historic mission of shouldering Turkey at a time when the Sykes-Picot status quo of the post-World War I period is about to be upside down, as the Syrian opposition gets closer to topple Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. Clearly, the peace process can be read as a major initiative that can well enhance Turkey’s geostrategic capabilities during hard times for the Middle East.
 
Both Syria and Iraq emerged as “imposed nations”; thus, their possible disappearances or alterations in their forms of existence due to drastic cyclical shifts should not be very surprising. In that sense, the disintegration of Syria appears as a strong possibility. Even casting a quick eye over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Facebook page, where the Israeli prime minister expressed his arguments for issuing an apology to Turkey, would tell this very truth shortly.
 
Regarding Iraq’s end, maybe the most striking question was asked by Michael Knights from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy: “If we had not invaded [Iraq] 10 years ago, might we simply be considering that option now, watching Saddam or one of his sons crush rebelling Iraqi cities in the aftermath of an Arab Spring?” After the second Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein’s iron fist went out of play, already artificial glue holding “the Iraqi nation” together had given way to a sectarian civil war between the Shiites and the Sunnis, along with the rise of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq. In other words, US intervention in 2003 just sped up the time for ending the post-World War I status quo in Iraq, and now Syria is on the verge of a great change. Clearly, at its outset, the Arab Spring was seen as the “fall of the Berlin Wall” in the Middle East. However, as Thomas Friedman notes, now it seems more akin to the Thirty Years’ War with interrelated political-sectarian violence.
 
At this point, it is critically important to get a good grip on the Syrian civil war’s interaction with Iraqi affairs. As the violence in Syria has gained a sectarian narrative, many analysts anticipated prospects of a spillover into Iraq. In fact, the odds might be even worse. A spillover is already on the table regarding the dramatically worsening situation in the Golan Heights with respect to Israel’s national security. When it comes to Iraq, the right word would probably be a “merger” between Syria’s “earthquake” and Iraq’s already-tense fault lines. As a matter of fact, the deaths of over 40 Syrian troops last month, who retreated into Iraq due to a clash with the opposition and were then killed in an ambush on their way to repatriation, gave a clear idea about future trends of the violent interaction between the two neighbors. Furthermore, the military buildup between the KRG’s Peshmerga and the Iraqi Security Forces near Syria’s Kurdish-populated border areas is also important for assessing the “Kurdish angle” of the merger.
 
More important, the Iraqis’ perceptions on Syria have alienated one another depending on their identities. The Iraqi Sunnis seek an opposition takeover while the Nouri al-Maliki administration let Iranian assistance flow to the Baathist dictatorship through Iraqi territory and airspace. Meanwhile, the KRG leader, Massoud Barzani, brokered deals with several Syrian Kurdish opposition groups. In sum, each component of Iraq has been pursuing its own agenda in Syria.
 
Real strategic value
 
The peace process is important from two angles. First, given the overall picture hitherto, and also considering Tehran’s aggressive agenda and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s negative stance towards Turkey, Ankara is in need of building new partnerships in order to maintain national security when the regional security environment is on the eve of a major shift. In this respect, the KRG and the Syrian Kurds should be brought into compliance with Ankara’s strategic priorities. Thus, Turkey has to overcome its own Kurdish problem politically so that it can offer a viable social contract to its people and enhance its influence in its immediate hinterland.
 
Second, disarming the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and ensuring its withdrawal would be tantamount to depriving Turkey’s competitors of a strategic lever. Clearly, the PKK has been used as a proxy war element by third parties for decades in order to destabilize Turkey. In military terms, the subversive effects of a proxy war are defined as suffering a death of “1,000 small cuts,” namely a constant attrition, which is also pretty cost-effective for aggressors. In fact, having suffered from a terrorism plague, Turkey’s national capacity has been wasted for a long time. This time, Ankara can reverse this subversive momentum with the peace process.
 
Political solution
 
As the process unfolds, some criticize the Turkish administration due to its efforts to find a political solution to the problem. However, in a Clausewitzian sense, an armed conflict itself takes place in a political context and should be addressed considering this assumption. As Colin Gray points out, war is not a sports event; it is not conducted simply for winning, but for achieving a clearly defined political purpose.
 
Moreover, low-intensity conflicts are ultimately politically intensive compared to conventional warfare. In other words, conflicts other than war, including counterterrorism efforts, need to be won politically at the end of the day. This fact points to the very difference between military success and political victory in this type of conflict. In military terms, what Turkey achieved against the PKK by the end of the 1990s was a military success. However, a low-intensity conflict has to be concluded by a robust political victory that is built on military achievements. At present, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s administration pursues a political, and hopefully final, victory in Turkey’s counterterrorism efforts. And this shouldn’t be confused with settling for a political concession instead of taking military measures. Political initiatives and military moves are integrant in countering terrorism. For instance, when the PKK attempted to impose a “Kurdish spring” on Turkey by igniting a mass wave of violence in 2011-2012, the AK Party government launched military operations, and this allowed the process to go forward.
 
Conflict resolution is one of the hardest issues of international affairs. Building peace requires much more effort than igniting a conflict, and Turkey’s case is no exception. The peace process has so far been skillfully managed by the Turkish government. In particular, the AK Party’s far-reaching political popularity and social representation capacity are positive factors that augment the legitimacy and viability of the process. However, we should keep in mind that not everyone would be happy to see Ankara get rid of its Achilles’ heel. Put simply, the Baathist dictatorship of Syria has a notorious record of encouraging terrorism and subversive activities in Turkey, and those who want to challenge Ankara may look for splinter groups within the PKK. Nonetheless, the grounds for optimism are solid. If Turkey manages to overcome its Kurdish problem in the upside-down post-World War I status quo, then not only its social peace but also its geostrategic capabilities would be promoted to a considerable extent.