US President Barack Obama laid out his strategy to fight the Islamic State (IS) last week. His multi pronged approach includes a systematic campaign of airstrikes; support for forces battling IS on the ground, including the Iraqi military and the Kurdish Peshmerga; redoubling US efforts to cut off IS funding; improving intelligence; strengthening defense; and stemming the flow of foreign fighters into and out of the Middle East.
Without addressing the specifics of the regional division of duties in the campaign against IS, the president repeatedly stressed that the most important component of his strategy was working with regional allies.
Turkey is one of 10 members of the “core coalition” that was created to counter IS, which was announced at last week’s NATO summit in Wales. Given its long border with Syria and Iraq and the threat IS poses to its domestic security, Turkey should be a natural candidate for cooperation against IS.
Ankara has become increasingly concerned about the rise of IS since the extremists captured Mosul and took Turkish consulate staff hostage in June. Yet Turkey will probably be the most reluctant partner in the fight against IS. Turkey attended the recent talks in Saudi Arabia where US Secretary of State John Kerry sought to build support for Obama’s plan, but Ankara shocked many when it did not join the Arab states in signing the communique.
Several concerns underlie Turkey’s reluctance to play a frontline role. In June, IS militants raided the Turkish consulate in the northern Iraq city of Mosul and captured 49 Turkish citizens, including the consul general, staff members and their families.
Since then, Turkey’s top priority has been the safe return of the hostages. Ankara believes that joining a US-led military campaign against IS might endanger the lives of Turkish hostages.
Turkey’s second concern is its ongoing peace process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). In response to the growing IS threat, the PKK, the Peshmerga, and the People’s Protection Units, (the YPG, the military arm of the PKK’s Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party) established a united Kurdish front.
PKK militants have come to the aid of Peshmerga fighters in the war to halt the jihadi group’s advance into the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region. The YPG was the main force battling IS, and it helped thousands of Yezidis escape an IS attack on their community.
The United States and some European countries have been directly arming the Peshmerga to facilitate its fight against IS. Reportedly, some of the arms sent to Peshmerga ended up in the hands of the PKK. Ankara has become increasingly concerned about the PKK strengthening militarily at a time when Ankara is moving forward with a deal that would disarm the group.
Turkey is also concerned about the Shiite in Iraq growing stronger at the expense of Sunnis as a result of western military support. Ankara considers the rise of IS a direct outcome of discrimination by the Shiite government against the Sunnis.
If the United States continues beefing up the Shiite-dominated Iraqi army, Turkey thinks the Sunnis will become more alienated and marginalized, and therefore more receptive to IS ideology. A shift in the balance of power toward the Shiite would also strengthen Iran’s hand in Iraq, an outcome Turkey wants to avoid.
Obama’s IS strategy creates additional complications for Ankara. Turkey has been at the forefront of the coalition against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the early days of the uprising. It even turned a blind eye to weapons transfers to groups linked to Al-Qaeda (the most effective fighting force against the regime), hoping to hasten Assad’s fall.
A US attack against IS in Syria, however, is likely to strengthen Assad’s hand and help him gain ground in opposition-controlled areas like Aleppo where the moderate Syrian opposition is stuck between IS in the north and regime forces in the south.
Public opinion in Turkey is another point of concern. According to a recently released German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Trends Survey results, 57 percent of Turkish society disapproves Obama’s foreign policy, up 4 percent from the previous year. The conservative Sunni base of the ruling party is likely to oppose any Turkish role in a US-led combat mission against a Sunni entity.
Hemmed in by these constraints, Turkey seems more likely to play a secondary and more discreet role in the US-led coalition against IS in Syria rather than a major role in a military campaign.
Turkey recently stepped up intelligence sharing and tightened security cooperation with its western allies in an effort to contain the flood of foreign fighters who have entered Syria via Turkey. In collaboration with the European Union, it is now conducting tighter screening of passengers on inbound flights, and it recently beefed up border patrols on the frontier with Syria.
Turkey’s borders remain extremely porous, however, an issue raised in talks between Kerry and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Turkey last week.
After having failed to convince the US administration to take a more forceful action in Syria for two years, Turkey is welcoming Obama’s decision to provide greater support to the moderate Syrian opposition. It has already played an important role in efforts to strengthen the Free Syrian Army.
Turkey hosts a so-called operations center staffed by intelligence officials from the United States and other countries that have provided arms including light arms, ammunition and anti-tank missiles to limited numbers of vetted rebels. Turkey will probably intensify its cooperation with the US on training and arms delivery. Turkey is refusing to allow the Incirlik air base or Turkish airspace to be used by the United States to stage attacks against IS, but it may open the air base for logistical and humanitarian operations.
With the rapid IS advance in Iraq and Syria, Turkish policymakers are caught between a rock and a hard place. Of all the NATO members of the “core coalition” against IS, Turkey is the most vulnerable to IS terror attacks.
It not only shares a long border with Iraq and Syria, but also hosts 1.2 million Syrian refugees, many of them living in major cities. The large refugee community makes it harder for authorities to monitor jihadis and easier for IS militants to move about the country freely.
The foreign fighters from the United States and Europe who are traveling to Syria to join the ranks of IS use Turkey as both a transit country and a recruitment ground. Reportedly, there are now well-established networks of radical Islamist factions including Al-Qaeda-linked groups within Turkey. They have already staged several attacks against Shiite mosques in Istanbul.
Left unchecked, the extremists are likely to pose a greater threat to Turkey’s national security but Turkey seems increasingly reluctant to play a major role in the fight against IS.
To overcome Turkey’s reluctance, Washington must take concrete measures to address Turkey’s concerns. The first step might be to work with Turkey to secure the safe return of Turkish hostages held by IS; a second might be to ensure that the arms delivered to Peshmerga and Iraqi security do not end up in the hands of the PKK.
* Gonul Tol is Executive Director of the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute.
