No Advantage to Turkish Intervention in Syria

Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Nov 27, 2012 at 12:27

Turkish dreams of empire does have an appearance of cutting close to Bashar al-Assad's frame of mind as he struggles to maintain 'ownership' of his rule in Syria. As time progresses past him in his efforts to put down the uprising, he loses more and more of his perceived control of Syria while the obvious power erosion continues to leave him even further exposed to the powers that are shaping his destiny in spite of his resistance. Casting aspersions against Erdoğan is evidence that he wants the Turkish influences out of his way, but it is obvious his power to keep those influences from affecting him is diminished while he battles for his very survival.

Syria is in a target zone of one kind and/or another. The former days of Syrian influences while the Soviet Union was behind the power base are now shifted, that while the Russians are indeed embedded in the subliminal aspirations of maintaining a presence for Russia's purposes in the region, the conflict of opposing Islamic ideals makes for a tenuous situation at minimum and creates the potential of the necessity of actual intervention as it all commences to get too far out of control for anyone. The Russians have to be nervous.

That having been said, Turkey moving into Syria for a variety of reasons is not all that unthinkable, given Erdoğan's previously expressed gestures of being more involved in the Middle East as a more stable presence than many of the Arab neighbors while putting the west (read NATO) off at arm's length. Even at that, the west seems more inclined to keep the NATO alliance with Turkey as the rest of the Middle East (sans Israel) strengthens its ties with the Brotherhood.

The perception that the schism that seems to keep Islam at odds is more ethnically based versus sectarian is notable, yet there are apparent inconsistencies. This sometimes makes for a hard read of the subliminal undercurrents when trying to understand how it is that the uprisings, which on the surface were being given over to the idea that the Brotherhood was looking for unity of the 'cause' as the basis of wresting control of the Middle East for Islam, yet finding that squabbles of an undefined sort continue to thwart that ultimate goal that was so sublimely intimated in the 2009 Cairo speech of Candidate Obama.

In reality, the west really does not have all that much to offer the Arab sympathies of the Middle East and this is more easily seen as the ethnically separated power sources in the region still cannot find too much common ground in order to present a common front. In fact, this separation portends to invite greater interferences from the west, especially as the humanitarian sympathies view towards the 'oppressed' Syrian population continues to suffer at the hands of al-Assad's armies. This might be where Erdoğan might think to interfere himself. If he does, this does not bode well for the international community.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".