Brian M Downing
This week’s assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey has highlighted the international complexities and domestic consequences of the Syrian civil war. The assassin, a young policeman, denounced Russia’s role in the battle of Aleppo and added praise for jihad, presumably against Russia and its regional partners. Is there a Russian word for “blowback”?
The ambassador’s death will occasion many inside Turkey to question President Erdogan’s partnership with Russia. The two countries, once Cold War foes and geopolitical enemies for many centuries before that, are working on a settlement to the Syrian conflict, albeit only a partial one. Iran is a prominent party to the talks. The US has been conspicuously excluded.
Russia
The assault on the rebel positions in Aleppo may have been so heavy-handed that it is focusing Muslim wrath on Russia. Security around Russian embassies and officials will be increased sharply, as will defenses around military bases at Latakia and Tartus in western Syria. But bombers can and likely will get through. A car bomb killed several high-ranking Russian officers near Latakia last February. Ahrar al Sham, one of the main rebel groups in Aleppo, took credit.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a major backer of Syrian rebels. The Brotherhood is an international movement with tens of millions of loyal followers and networks able to move money and fighters across national boundaries, though Russia’s may prove more difficult to permeate. The Brotherhood sent many fighters into Afghanistan during the Russian war in the eighties.
There are thousands of Chechens fighting with al Nusrah, ISIL, and various rebel groups in Syria and Iraq. They look upon the ruins of Aleppo and remember well that Russia leveled their capital of Grozny in the late nineties. If the Syrian cause becomes untenable, they will devote their skills to Russia and the Chechen warlord who collaborates with it.
There are also a few thousand Tajiks who have crossed from Central Asia to fight in Islamist armies, presumably to prepare for jihad against the Russian-backed party bosses along Russia’s southern periphery.
Putin may well have reestablished his country as the preferred target of Islamist militants – a position the US will gladly relinquish to so deserving a rival.
Turkey
The ambassador’s assassination, and the talks with Erdogan he was preparing for, have underscored in Turkey’s population, especially young urban dwellers, the drift toward authoritarianism and new international relationships.
Cooperation with Russia will increase the power of Erdogan and decrease the influence of western democracies. He will stand alongside an authoritarian state with a proven record of stifling domestic dissent. Secular centrists are already gravely concerned over the creeping Islamization of state and society, before and after last summer’s abortive coup.
Erdogan has blamed his opponents in the Gülen movement for the assassination, as he did the attempted coup last summer. Another round of crackdowns and purges is at hand. Turkish democracy is slipping away. The West will criticize, Putin won’t.
The army has been the defender of secularism since the Ataturk days following World War One. The army is adamantly opposed to Erdogan’s Islamization and has an entrenched distrust of Russia, which has warred with Turkey since the early Ottoman days. To the officer corps, Putin is an aggressive tsar without a crown, at least not yet. It’s unclear how effective the army is as a political actor in the wake of Erdogan’s post-coup purges of the officer corps.
Turkey’s Kurdish population, aligned with their Syrian cousins, once hoped that Putin would back them against Erdogan. The Russian president, angered over losing a jet and pilot to a Turkish missile, scolded the Turks over their repression of the Kurds and hinted at extending them support. But as the enemies drew closer, the Kurds saw that hope vanished.
Erdogan and Putin are nearing an agreement to set up Turkish-backed statelets whose Free Syrian Army fighters will act as guardians against Kurdish aspirations. Syrian and Turkish Kurds see Putin as an agent of another betrayal of their national aspirations and as a partner in their continued oppression.
Even Erdogan’s religious base will question the propriety of aligning with a foreign power that has intentionally killed and maimed thousands of Muslim civilians just across the border in Syria. The heady Turkish president may find that his foreign policy triumph will bring more domestic opposition than acclaim.
Copyright 2016 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.