As I write this week’s column, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga are assembling at Turkey’s border gate with Kobane. Ankara also allowed some fighters with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to enter Kobane today. Although the numbers are very modest (up to 200 FSA and 150 peshmerga), the principle is not – by allowing reinforcements to enter Kobane and help its defenders, Turkey has taken its first real, concrete action against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS). For this the international community should salute Turkey.
Turkish officials would reject any suggestion that this is their first contribution against ISIS, of course. They claim that for some time already they have been clamping down on jihadis crossing into Syria and ISIS smuggled oil. The protests ring hollow, unfortunately, as journalists on the ground describe only half-hearted official measures on these issues. Ankara’s claims sound even more hollow when video footage emerges, such as that shown this week by the private Dicle television station, showing Turkish soldiers meeting with ISIS militants on the border near Kobane, chatting with them for half an hour and then exchanging friendly goodbyes after their talk. Everyone knows that any jihadi wishing to fight in Syria generally buys an airplane ticket for Istanbul rather than Amman, Beirut or elsewhere.
Some might cite Turkey’s admittance and hosting of some 200,000 Kurdish refugees from Kobane as evidence of Ankara’s contribution against ISIS. This does indeed represent a noble humanitarian gesture for which the Turkish government should be assisted and thanked, but it hardly constitutes evidence of any willingness to oppose ISIS. After admitting over a million Syrian Arab refugees, Ankara could hardly block 200,000 Syrian Kurds at the border – especially with ISIS killers at their heels. Had they refused the Kurdish civilians entry, the international condemnation and Kurdish unrest within Turkey would have been very severe. As a proportion of the overall population, the refugee burden is also much less serious in Turkey than in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraqi Kurdistan.
Turkish leaders also keep saying that the world can not expect them to send troops into Syria if Western countries are unwilling to do the same and explicitly commit themselves to the toppling of the Assad regime. They are right, but they omit the fact that nobody is actually asking them to send troops into Syria. This particular refrain from Ankara seems borderline bizarre, akin to Germany suddenly announcing that its army cannot be expected to pacify parts of the Ukraine.
The truth is that Ankara and many Turks remain ambivalent about ISIS. The extremism of the jihadis probably makes Ankara quite nervous, and Western pressure to act against ISIS no doubt weighs upon Turkish decision makers. Except for the right-wing extremists, secular Turks also loathe what ISIS represents. But the Turkish nationalist, neo-Islamist Sunnis of the Justice and Development Party like it when ISIS attacks Assad, and they ignore the fact that only some twenty per cent of ISIS fighting in Syria has been against the regime in Damascus (the rest has been aimed at other opposition groups). They are also happy when ISIS threatens the Shiite government in Baghdad and, by extension, its Iranian patron. They are very happy when ISIS takes aim at the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Syrian Kurds and their autonomy.
Such ambivalence and an inability to see the larger picture does not serve Turkey well, however. Perhaps decision makers in Ankara finally realized the extent to which their ambivalent stance towards ISIS harmed Turkey’s reputation abroad and alienated its own Kurdish citizens. Unable to justify the embargo on Kobane any longer, they relented and, after a few more delays and false claims about the Syrian Kurds holding up the reinforcements issue, Ankara finally allowed a small number of reinforcements in.
If Turkish leaders really want to be helpful, however, they can do more. They could let the Americans use the base at Incirlik. They could take real steps against jihadis moving through Turkey as well as the smuggled oil. Most importantly, they could announce that the specific political demands of Syrian Kurds are of no concern to Turkey. If Ankara were to let the Free Syrian Army come to reasonable terms with the PYD, the coalition against both Assad and ISIS would be strengthened considerably. If the example of federalism or Kurdish autonomy in both Iraq and Syria soon inspires Kurds in Turkey to seek the same thing, leaders in Ankara could confidently proclaim that anyone is free to ask for (but not always get) anything they want in Turkey – so long as it is done within the legal political system. That is politics in a democratic system, after all.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
