Analyst Özel says Turkey has to support opposition in Syria, elsewhere

“The Turkish government has already made explicit what it wants to see happening, and that is for Syria to immediately move to a multiparty system, to hold free and fair elections and to strike out emergency rule in practice,” Soli Özel told Monday Talk, adding that there has not yet been a positive response from the Syrian government.

According to reports, Syrian forces continued to kill civilians on Friday as tens of thousands of people called on President Bashar Assad to step down in some of the biggest demonstrations since the start of the uprising. The assaults concentrated on the northern part of the Jabal al-Zawya region, home to 15,000 people, many of whom are trying to flee to Turkey, which already has 10,000 refugees from attacks in Idlib earlier this month. Authorities have banned most international media from operating in Syria since the outbreak of the protests in March, making it difficult to verify reports from activists and authorities.

Turkey has a role to play in solving the conflict in Syria, Özel said and elaborated on the issue, answering our questions.

If there is civil war in Syria, your expectation is that it will spread to the region. Why is that? Would you elaborate?

The historical geography of Syria extends from Gaza to the Taurus Mountains in Turkey, and the current political geography of Syria is obviously a lot less than that; the French carved Lebanon out of Syria; in addition, the Syrians never accepted that Hatay, or Alexandretta, was “given to Turkey,” according to them, by the French. If the Syrian crisis turns into a civil war, the Lebanese would not be able to escape from it, and Turkey and other states would feel its reverberations.

How would Turkey be affected by it?

Turkey would be affected by a refugee influx. Turkey may also be affected because of what might happen to the approximately 2 million Kurds in the northeastern part of Syria.

Do you think Turkey or other countries can do some things to prevent further conflict in Syria?

The way things look today what any country can do to prevent further conflict in Syria is very limited. On Friday the Guardian reported on an American-supported “roadmap,” and we will see if the regime would be open to following it.

Why?

The regime's behavior and language suggest, as far as the regime is concerned, this is a life and death matter. This is not a matter that the Syrian regime can actually solve by being nice, and they are not going to be. They are banking on crushing the opposition with as much violence as they can possibly muster, but they've been unable to quell the rebellion. Whether their calculation is “Let's crush it now, and then we can think about opening up the system,” or “After crushing it, we don't need to do anything,” I don't know. A lot of people believed that the opposition would fold in a few weeks, but it hasn't. Yet the military is still intact and can suppress the opposition. Because the international system is not ready to face – and maybe it will never be ready – the consequences of a collapse of the Syrian regime, there is not enough pressure on the Syrian regime that would either lead it to change its ways or to break. To the contrary, there are plenty of reports – although not all of it is substantiated – that Tehran, which has heavily invested in that regime over the last 30 years, is helping out as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Saudis, the Turks, the Israelis, the French, the Americans are of two minds; they would probably like to keep Bashar Assad as a figurehead transitional figure, and if they could get rid of the more unsavory characters such as his brother Maher, then that could lead to opening up of the system. However, I don't think Bashar Assad controls the regime; he is not the leader of the regime, which is becoming more and more a narrow circle, but he is the spokesperson. He doesn't have much room to maneuver; his brother, brothers-in-law and cousins are much more hard-line than he is.

‘Turkish involvement crucial to solve Syrian conflict'

Do you see a role for Turkey to play in Syria as the Turkish prime minister has had really friendly relations with Bashar Assad?

All attempts by Turkey to get the regime to open up have failed so far. The prime minister, who usually refrains from using such language for regimes that he considers friendly, has called what the Syrian military was doing “savagery,” and he said that Maher Assad [Bashar Assad's brother] should get out and Bashar Assad should make the necessary reform moves. The relations between Prime Minister Erdoğan and President Assad are not just relations between high-level officials. They have personal and family relations. There are rumors that Erdoğan years ago had told Assad that he should not take too much time to open up the system in Syria because one day he might wake up to a crisis situation like the one we're experiencing today. This is also what enrages the prime minister -- that his good advice was not heeded. The Turkish government has already made explicit what it wants to see happening, and that is for Syria to immediately move to a multiparty system, to hold free and fair elections and to end emergency rule. So far there has not much been of a positive response.

Turkey has had contacts with the opposition groups…

It is important that the Turkish government allowed the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria to hold its congress here for a change of leadership before the uprising started. Since the events started, the head of the Brotherhood came to Ankara and İstanbul, and then we had an opposition meeting in İstanbul and another three-day opposition meeting in Antalya. There are already established organic links between Turkish ruling party officials and opposition figures in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Morocco. The Turkish government is distancing itself from the existing regime in Syria, but it will not find itself in a void because the ruling party has dialogue with the opposition groups. Still, by engaging with both sides, Turkey can actually help to define a common ground that is necessary for an orderly and hopefully peaceful transition. Turkey might have failed in some of its initiatives, but you need the good offices of Turkey to solve the problem. Turkey shares an 877-kilometer border with Syria. Any solution, in one way or another, necessitates Turkish involvement.

Turkey's criticism of Syria and contacts with the opposition have not been well received by either the Syrian or the Iranian regimes…

Obviously, the Syrian regime is not open to criticism. The Syrian president pointed out the Kurdish issue in Turkey and invited Kurdish groups to Damascus; that was a message to Turkey: “If you get on my nerves, I can always rekindle the Kurdish card.” That's too dangerous a game in my view. At the same time, they are trying not to break relations totally. The Iranians are using much harsher language about the Turkish role. But so far a certain equilibrium has been maintained.

Should Turkey continue to support the revolts?

Turkey has no choice other than to support the revolts because if you don't, then all your claims -- about your commitment to democracy, the rule of law and the will of the people – will appear to be lies, and you will be no different than those Westerners you call hypocritical in their positions. It is also a question of management. It is interesting that the government is not insisting on the mistake of supporting the pro-status quo regimes as we've seen with Libya and Syria as well. There might be, of course, events that are uncontrollable.

‘Turkey's Kurdish problem hard to sustain'

What would you say about the effects of the crisis in relation to Turkey's Kurdish problem?

So far the Syrian Kurds have not entered the “fight.” If they were to do that and if there is a massive influx of Kurds from Syria to Turkey, the Turkish government would like to take that flow not within our borders but outside. Obviously, if Turkey wants Syria to democratize and asks the regime to be more inclusive, Turkey would be in a much more comfortable position if its own Kurdish problem is taken care of. But it‘s not that easy. On one hand, the government negotiates with Abdullah Öcalan [imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)]; on the other hand, the prime minister's position is tough on the Kurdish nationalist BDP [Peace and Democracy Party], which in coalition with leftists managed to elect 36 independent deputies, but they are not in Parliament because they are protesting the rule dismissing the election of one of their deputies, Hatip Dicle and the blocking of five others who are currently under detention. So the government is giving mixed messages. In addition, Öcalan supported the boycott of Parliament and gave yet another deadline, July 15

What will happen to Öcalan? Is he going to be out of jail as this has also started to be debated? How do you think Turkish society is going to take the issue since Öcalan has been accepted as a “baby killer terrorist” in the not so distant past?

So far the language that has been used in reference to Öcalan and the PKK has not been soft. The Turkish public sees the issue as a terrorism issue in general. It will not be easy to sell the solutions to the problem to an unprepared public. But the good thing is that nobody has a heart for continuing the violence. Everybody is questioning what the fight is about. We occasionally hear from the families of the soldiers who are killed by the PKK that they are not so proud of their sons' martyrdom because they don't know what the fight is about anymore.

Do you think the Habur experience showed that the PKK fighters are ready to come down from the mountains?

The Habur incident was certainly mismanaged by the Turkish government and also by the PKK. If there will be another opening, I'd doubt that a mistake like Habur would reoccur. The PKK already has already lost the battle but because the winners of the war “did not know what to do with the victory,” we wasted five years between 1999 and 2004, and then arms were again picked up. People are still dying, but we don't know why. Now, even if there were an agreement tomorrow that the PKK will lay down arms and will come down from the mountains, there will be a long process before us. It will take time since there will be people on both sides who'd want to cripple the process. A number of interlocutors above the ages of 32-35 say that “we may be the last generation of Kurdish nationalists whom you can actually speak the same language with” because there is a group of youngsters whose only experience is the burning of their villages and houses and forced migration to cities where they live in undesirable conditions, and the only language they speak is violence; their fate has not been linked in a positive way to the larger community.”

Considering the revolts in the region, do you think the government must act urgently to resolve the Kurdish issue?

It is hard to sustain the Kurdish problem with a violent dimension for too long. The government might be counting on the incredibly good relations with the northern Iraqi Kurds; they might be using the influence of the Kurdish leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, on the Kurds of Turkey's Southeast, but the voting patterns in the Southeast show us that there is a Kurdish nationalist chord, and you've got to deal with it.

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‘Turkey, Israel understand they need normalized relations'

What should we expect in connection to Turkish-Israeli relations? Do you think the turmoil in the Middle East could actually prove positive for Turkish-Israeli ties?

Turkish-Israeli relations have deteriorated considerably since Israel's assault on Gaza in December 2008. The deadly attack against the Mavi Marmara brought relations to the breaking point because of the killing by Israeli soldiers in international waters of nine Turks. We are soon going to see the Palmer Commission's report and whether or not it satisfies Turkey's demands. There is an obvious shift in the stance of both the Turkish and Israeli governments, though. Turkey changed its own previous position by asking the Mavi Marmara organizers to reconsider, and indeed they did. Israel bashing is no longer necessary. On the Israeli side, I have the impression that those who tried to block reconciliation efforts are weakened and that they may not be able to kill this opportunity. In the wake of the Arab revolts, both sides understand that they need normalized relations with one another for different reasons. I tend to think that Turkey has the upper hand here, and therefore somehow its demands on the flotilla attack -- apology and compensation -- must be met. On the other hand, if Turkey wishes to be an important player in the wider Middle East issues, it is imperative that it maintain a dialogue with Israel. I have the impression that the US and Turkey are working very closely on Syria and that the Obama administration does not want a continuation of the poisoned atmosphere between Ankara and Tel Aviv. At the end of the day Syria is a problem for both parties.

‘Lebanon even more fragile after court's indictment'

The UN-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri handed over indictments and four arrest warrants to Lebanon on Thursday, according to initial reports, accusing four Hezbollah members of involvement in the February 2005 bombing in Beirut that killed Hariri and 22 others. What do you expect in relation to Lebanon and the involvement of Turkey in the events?

The Turkish government has tried to interject its good offices into the last crisis in Lebanon, but obviously Iran and Syria are far more powerful actors there. Lebanon is very vulnerable to developments in Syria. Now the indictment is presumably ready on the murder of Rafik Hariri; saying that senior Hezbollah members were involved in the killing of Hariri is not going to help the stability of a very fragile nation. A retriggering of either civil war or an adventurous move by Hezbollah to divert attention – which would mean in this case provoking Israel to attack – would turn this hot summer into hellishly hot.

‘NATO operation in Libya a flop'

Do you see a role for the Turkish peacekeeping forces in the region?

So far the NATO operation has been a flop. Those who initiated the operation ran out of money and ammunition, which led the US secretary of defense to say that they cannot continue to pay 75 percent of NATO's expenditures. And everybody was expecting that Muammar Gaddafi was going to give in rather fast, but he hasn't because he won't feel the pressure until you put ground forces on; however, nobody is foolish enough to do that. Gaddafi seems to sustain himself. There are rumors of secret talks going on in London to find a place for him to go, but the last person of stature who spoke with him was the president of South Africa. It seems that he will never surrender. The fact that the next meeting on Libya is going to take place in Turkey shows that Turkey is once more directly insinuating itself in these developments, becoming part of the decision-making process after the initial talks in Paris had taken place without Turkey's participation. When it comes to peacekeeping in post-conflict Libya, the thinking is that Turkish troops naturally have a place there because Turkey has a well-proven record in such operations. But we should start debating: Do we really need to be everywhere? If the Americans don't have infinite resources, do we really have infinite resources to engage in almost every conflict around us?

So a NATO operation in Syria is not likely?

I don't think anybody anywhere in the world has any desire to engage in Syria militarily; even if they do, they need a UN Security Council resolution, and neither China nor Russia would allow it. I don't think Brazil would allow it, either.

[PROFILE] Soli Özel

He currently teaches in Kadir Has University's international relations department. He is also a columnist for the daily Habertürk and writes political analyses for the Turkey series of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). He has also taught at UC Santa Cruz, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the University of Washington, Hebrew University, İstanbul's Boğaziçi University and İstanbul Bilgi University. He has received fellowships from St. Antony's College, Oxford University, the EU Institute of Security Studies and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.