International Crisis Group

The Mideast Crack-Up | Tablet Magazine

By David Samuels

Q: Our current maps of the Middle East were drawn by British and French cartographers after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. Are the lines on those maps about to change? Or is this simply a moment of local bloodshed that will get cleaned up once governments—in Baghdad, Damascus, Washington, Ankara, Jerusalem, Moscow, Beirut, Beijing, Ramallah, etc.—draft a few well-worded accords?

Nathan Thrall: Long-lasting as many minority regimes proved to be, it hardly seems the case, as David Goldman suggests, that they were the “only possible stable government.” Egypt since the 1952 revolution lasted longer than minority regimes elsewhere in the region, yet it was not ruled by Copts. The Saudi regime has outlasted rivals, yet it is not made up of Saudi Shiites. Iran is not governed by Azeris. Turkey is not under Kurdish control, and Palestinian citizens of Israel have not taken over the Jewish state.

Without doubt we are witnessing the strongest challenge yet posed to the post-Ottoman order in the Levant. With every passing day, Syria comes to more closely resemble an earlier period in its history, when the French briefly divided the territory into statelets containing Druze, Alawite, Sunni, and Maronite majorities—the last of which survived to became modern-day Lebanon. The current Syrian civil war threatens to spill over into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq, which teeters on the brink of a renewed civil war of its own.

Yet, as distant as a unified Syria may seem today, most of its people still want such a state, while Iraq has survived enormous bloodshed, reversals of regional alliances, calls for partition, increasing Kurdish autonomy, and the end of Sunni minority rule. What is finally remarkable about the Middle East’s poorly drawn borders is how durable they are. Altering them could occur under present conditions but would be far more likely in the aftermath of a wider regional war.

FULL ARTICLE (Tablet Magazine)

Photo: James Gordon/Flickr

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