A crisis in Russian-Turkish relations

S P SETH

The recent shooting downing of a Russian warplane by Turkey has added a new dimension to an already complicated and dangerous situation in the Middle East. Turkey blamed Russia for breaching its air space in its bombing raids over Syria.  Ankara had earlier complained of Russian over flights but in the latest incident, it decided to act alleging that Russian military aircraft was ignoring warnings from its air force. Turkey is a member of the Atlantic alliance, which makes the shooting down of the Russian plane potentially a serious issue between not just between Turkey and Russia but also between Russia and the Atlantic alliance. Even though neither Turkey nor Russia is inclined to let it develop into a military conflict, President Obama supported, in principle, Turkey’s right to defend its sovereignty, finding fault with the way Russia is operating in Syria close to the Turkish border targeting moderate rebels (and not IS) to bolster up the Assad regime.

Why did President Erdogan and his administration decide to act against Russia  for its bombing raids inside Syria? Such straying of aircraft into another country’s air space wouldn’t normally invite such drastic action like the shooting down of an aircraft, as Russia wasn’t involved in a warlike situation with Turkey. Indeed, the plane in question was shot down in Syria on the Syrian-Turkish border. It was therefore a provocative action on Turkey’s part.

And it resorted to such dramatic provocation for a number of reasons. Having won recent parliamentary elections on the issue of stability and security for his country, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey wanted to build on it in the international arena. Russia is seeking to bolster up the Assad regime that the Erdogan administration has been unsuccessfully seeking to unseat by favouring the Syrian rebels. At the same time, Turkey has been unhappy with the US over, what it considers, its failure to remove Bashar al-Assad regime. But the US dithered, even after Assad crossed Obama’s ‘red line’ when it used chemical weapons. Ankara wanted him replaced by a moderate rebel coalition under its patronage, and thus get rid of the ‘hated’ Alawite (a Shia sect) rule over the country’s Sunni majority.

Instead, to Erdogan’s great disappointment and exasperation, the Obama administration seemingly collaborated with Russia to save the Assad regime by their joint action to get rid of its chemical weapons.  Which, in their view, created conditions for the rise of IS, making the so-called IS caliphate into the dreaded phenomena it has become. But, in Ankara’s view, Assad appears an even bigger monster for oppressing and killing his people and for daring to ignore Erdogan’s dictum to step aside. And after Russia’s military intervention in his favour, Assad looks like further entrenching his position. This has greatly incensed the Erdogan administration. Having failed to register its unhappiness with Russia by oral warnings over its over flights on bombing raids in Syria, it apparently decided to act dramatically and provocatively, if not aggressively, by shooting down its military aircraft. And it certainly succeeded in capturing international attention, with what consequences is still not clear.

President Vladimir Putin called it “a stab in the back” carried out by the accomplices of terrorists, saying it would have serious consequences for Moscow’s relations with Ankara.  In other words, he accused Turkey of supporting terrorists. Elaborating, Putin reportedly said that, “We established a long time ago that large quantities of oil and oil products from territory captured by Islamic State have been arriving on Turkish territory” and that was how IS militants had been funding themselves. And Moscow even accused Erdogan family, particularly his son, of involvement in the oil smuggling racket from IS.

At the same time when Russia has sought to fight terrorists, according to Putin, Turkey has been attacking its planes. Russian aircraft “was shot down on Syrian territory by an air-to-air missile from an [Turkish operated] F-16… It fell on Syrian territory four kilometres from the Turkish border. It was flying at 6,000 metres, one kilometer from Turkish territory when it was attacked.”  And this, Putin said,  “despite the fact that we signed an agreement with our American partners to warn each other about air-to-air incidents.” Indeed, according to this account, Russia had passed on the flight details of their military aircraft to the Americans to avoid incidents, but it was of no avail, with the Russian president hinting at complicity.

And here is the thing. President Erdogan worried that international efforts at a united front against IS, more so after the momentum from Paris carnage, might further come to the rescue of the Assad regime as happened between Russia and the US after they agreed to get rid of his chemical weapons arsenal. The shooting down of the Russian plane for violation of Turkey’s air space was supposed to rally NATO behind it, being an attack on a NATO member’s sovereign space. And this will throw a spanner into the works, as if, to sabotage any progress with Russia over a united strategy against IS, likely based on Moscow’s position that Assad would still be around, at least during any political transition.

But it seems that it hasn’t worked so far. NATO support for Turkey has been, at most, lukewarm, emphasizing more the de-escalation of the crisis. At the same time, if Ankara was expecting Moscow to rethink its support for the Assad regime, it appears to have only strengthened its resolve to stand by the regime and increase its bombing of border areas in Syria. And this is not all. Russia is  freezing/scrapping all economic and trade relations, including a very thriving tourism sector, with serious consequences for Turkish economy.

The Erdogan administration was apparently over-estimating NATO solidarity on its behalf and under-estimating Russian reaction. Its bluster has serious consequences for its wide-ranging and fast growing relations with Russia. And Ankara is now trying to backtrack and de-escalate the situation. Hopefully, things will settle down over time and put a damper on Erdogan’s delusions of power, though there are no signs of it yet. And might even help to tone down his obsession and paranoia about the Kurds who, he fears, might come out stronger from a virtual US-Kurdish alliance to beat back IS. This is another reason Ankara is unhappy with the US, fearing that Kurdish gains might eventually work to its disadvantage by strengthening Kurdish separatism. Turkey is thus caught in a web of its own making, getting only deeper into it. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.