International Crisis Group

With its Syria plan in tatters, Turkey needs a strategy reboot | The Globe and Mail

By Hugh Pope

For much of the late 2000s, Turkey hoped that a booming economy, the prestige of combative Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a burst of regional admiration for its successful mix of Muslim governance and democracy would reap it a harvest of Middle Eastern influence and profit.

At the heart of this strategy was an intimate relationship with the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, the model for Turkey’s “zero problems” policy. The two countries signed model deals for visa-less travel, free trade and infrastructure integration. The leaders brought half their Cabinets to summit meetings. The Assads even lunched with the Erdogans on the eve of their 2008 holiday on the Turkish riviera.

Now the Syrian catastrophe has landed squarely on Turkey’s doorstep: 450,000 refugees, with the UN predicting double that by year’s end; costs of $1-billion and rising to look after the influx, only a tenth of which is covered by outside donors; and increasing tensions on the border. A recent Syrian air force raid close to one Turkish border crossing killed five Syrians, wounded 50 people, hit an aid warehouse and an opposition base. Just days later at another border crossing, Syrians wanting to cross rioted, fired weapons and killed a Turkish policeman, wounded 11 other people and burned buildings and cars.

As regional instability has spread since 2010, Turkey’s Middle Eastern position has suffered too. The Libya war badly disrupted Turkey’s big contracting interests there. The loss of Syrian trucking routes to regional markets has joined the previous loss of Iraqi ones. Ankara’s backing of armed Syrian opposition groups has encouraged negative perceptions of Turkey acting not just as a would-be Sunni Muslim hegemon, but also as taking sides within the Sunni Arab world. Arab and Iranian commentators are critical of what they see as Ankara’s hubristic tendency to seek what they see as Ottoman-style regional dominance.

FULL ARTICLE (The Globe and Mail)

Photo: Flickr/World Economic Forum

The Best-Laid Plans | The Majalla

By Hugh Pope, Crisis Group’s Turkey/Cyprus Project Director

When the Syrian crisis first broke out, Ankara planned for a short, easily resolved conflict. As the civil war stretches into its third year, Turkey needs to rethink its refugee strategy or face burdensome expenditure and increasing regional tensions.

Syria’s catastrophe is increasingly leaping over the border of its northern neighbor, Turkey, igniting a whole new set of challenges for the Ankara government and blurring what was once a hard Cold War frontier.

At least 300,000 Syrian refugees have now officially fled to Turkey, with the real number probably 450,000 and set to double this year. Turkey has spent hundreds of millions of dollars, which it can barely afford, looking after them, and so far aid from its allies and donors is covering only a fraction of outgoings.

Pressed against the Turkish border, 100,000 more Syrians are waiting. Turkey only lets in a trickle, hoping their problems can be dealt with inside northern Syria. Currently, only a small amount of humanitarian aid can cross the Turkey–Syria border, limited by sovereign sensitivities at the UN, bureaucratic obstacles in Ankara and security risks in northern Syria.

FULL ARTICLE (The Majalla)

Photo: IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation/Flickr

Turkey: What’s the Way Forward for Ankara’s Syria Policy? | Eurasianet

By Yigal Schleifer

Like most other countries, Turkey has no desire to see the current Syrian regime stay in power but also has little appetite for intervening militarily in Syria. At the same time, like many of its neighbors, Ankara is finding itself dealing with a growing Syrian refugee and humanitarian crisis, one that could have a disruptive effect on Turkey’s own domestic affairs.

A new report released today the International Crisis Group takes a look at this dynamic, suggesting that Ankara needs to recalibrate its Syria policy if it wants to keep the effects of the conflict in that country from spilling across the border.

FULL ARTICLE (Eurasianet)

Photo: James Gordon/Flickr

Blurring the Borders: Syrian Spillover Risks for Turkey

Antakya/Ankara/Istanbul/Brussels  |   30 Apr 2013

As the humanitarian crisis reaches catastrophic proportions,Syria needs to open its borders to external aid, while Turkey and its international partners need more long-term planning to meet growing refugee needs and avoid having instability spill over the porous border.

Blurring the Borders: Syrian Spillover Risks for Turkey, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the issue of cross-border aid and the situation of Syrian refugees in the border province of Hatay, which epitomises the humanitarian and security challenges Ankara faces. Turkey has generously welcomed up to 450,000 refugees, but this is unlikely to be sustainable if the war continues past 2013 and the international community does not share the burden.

The report’s major findings and recommendations are:

• Turkey should allow entry to all Syrians who flee and have massed on the Syrian side of the border, and it should facilitate quick registration for international humanitarian organisations offering aid to Syrians. The international donor community should increase funding and assistance, and European states should share the burden by accepting more Syrian refugees. 
•  UN agencies should engage immediately with Damascus. Members of the UN Security Council on 18 April underlined the need to facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance, including across borders. Syrian authorities should cooperate fully with the UN and relevant humanitarian organisations and allow them to deliver cross-border aid.
• In the meantime, the international community, where security allows, should scale up existing cooperation with Syrian local communities and organisations across the Turkish border to help Syrians in the north, particularly in cut-off areas. All parties should ensure safe and unimpeded access for aid organisations. 
• Turkey should stop betting on a quick resolution of the Syria crisis, give full support for a negotiated settlement, and take steps to avoid any perception in the region that it is seeking to act as a partisan, Sunni Muslim hegemon.
• Timely Turkish precautions have calmed sectarian tensions in the pivotal Turkish border province of Hatay, and Ankara should sustain initiatives to keep off-duty Syrian opposition fighters away from Alevi-populated areas and to settle new Sunni Muslim refugees elsewhere.

“Turkey has responded remarkably to the humanitarian crisis on its border, accepting ever larger numbers of Syrians and meeting their needs with little international support”, says Sabine Freizer, Crisis Group’s Europe Program Director. “But as the Syrian crisis is likely to continue, Ankara needs to open up more to international partners and develop a comprehensive multi-year plan to ensure the sustainability of its response”.

“Ankara wants to build a sphere of influence, stability and prosperity in the Muslim countries to its south”, says Hugh Pope, Crisis Group’s Turkey/Cyprus Project Director. “A well-planned, non-sectarian policy to care for the large refugee population inside Turkey will allow Ankara to lay the foundation for friendly relations with whatever Syria emerges from the conflict”.

FULL REPORT

Syria crisis: truce in Aleppo | The Guardian’s Middle East Live

By Matthew Weaver

Gloomy assessment

The conflict in Syria could drag on for years and a quick decisive battle for Damascus looks increasingly unlikely, according to a gloomy assessment co-authored by one of the most respected Syria watchers.

Damascus-based researcher Peter Harling director of the Middle East programme at the International Crisis Group says the conflict is proceeding with “perverse predictability” with both sides becoming increasingly ruthless and sectarian.

FULL POST (The Guardian)

Photo: James Gordon/Flickr