The unusual triple alliance coming out of Syria could change the regional balance of power and unhinge NATO — if it holds together at all.

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An unusual triple alliance is emerging from the Syrian war — one that could alter the balance of power in the Middle East, unhinge the NATO alliance, and complicate the Trump administration’s designs on Iran.

It might also lead to yet another double cross of one of the region’s largest ethnic groups, the Kurds.

However, the “troika alliance” — Turkey, Russia, and Iran — consists of three countries that don’t much like one another, have different goals, and whose policies are driven by a combination of geo-global goals and internal politics.

In short, “fragile and complicated” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

How the triad might be affected by the joint U.S., French, and British attack on Syria is unclear, but in the long run the alliance will likely survive the uptick of hostilities.

Consolidating Erdogan’s Grip
Common ground was what came out of the April 4 meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Meeting in Ankara, the parties pledged to support the “territorial integrity” of Syria, find a diplomatic end to the war, and to begin a reconstruction of a Syria devastated by seven years of war. While Russia and Turkey explicitly backed the UN-sponsored talks in Geneva, Iran was quiet on that issue, preferring a regional solution without “foreign plans.”

“Common ground,” however, doesn’t mean the members of the “troika” are on the same page.

Turkey’s interests are both internal and external. The Turkish Army is currently conducting two military operations in northern Syria, Olive Branch and Euphrates Shield, aimed at driving the mainly Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) out of land that borders Turkey. But those operations are also deeply entwined with domestic Turkish politics.

Erdogan’s internal support has been eroded by a number of factors: exhaustion with the ongoing state of emergency imposed following the 2016 attempted coup, a shaky economy, and a precipitous fall in the value of the Turkish lira.

Rather than waiting for 2019, Erdogan called a snap election last week, and beating up on the Kurds is always popular with right-wing Turkish nationalists. Erdogan needs all the votes he can get to implement his newly minted executive presidency that will give him virtually one-man rule.

Driving a Wedge in NATO
To be part of the alliance, however, Erdogan has had to modify his goal of getting rid of Syrian President Bashar Assad and to agree — at this point, anyhow — to eventually withdraw from areas in northern Syria seized by the Turkish Army. Russia and Iran have called for turning over the regions conquered by the Turks to the Syrian Army.

Moscow’s goals are to keep a foothold in the Middle East with its only base, Tartus, and to aid its long-time ally, Syria. The Russians aren’t deeply committed to Assad personally, but they want a friendly government in Damascus. They also want to destroy al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which have caused Moscow considerable trouble in the Caucasus.

Russia also wouldn’t mind driving a wedge between Ankara and NATO. After the U.S., Turkey has NATO’s second largest army. NATO broke a 1989 agreement not to recruit former members of the Russian-dominated Warsaw Pact into NATO as a quid pro quo for the Soviets withdrawing from Eastern Europe. Since the Yugoslav War in 1999, the alliance has marched right up to the borders of Russia. (The 2008 war with Georgia and 2014 seizure of the Crimea were largely a reaction to what Moscow sees as an encirclement strategy by its adversaries.)

Turkey has been at odds with its NATO allies around a dispute between Greece and Cyprus over sea-based oil and gas resources, and it recently charged two Greek soldiers who violated the Turkish border with espionage. Erdogan is also angry that European Union countries refuse to extradite Turkish soldiers and civilians who he claims helped engineer the 2016 coup against him. While most NATO countries condemned Moscow for the recent attack on two Russians in Britain, the Turks pointedly did not.

Turkish relations with Russia have an economic side as well. Ankara wants a natural gas pipeline from Russia, has broken ground on a $20 billion Russian nuclear reactor, and just shelled out $2.5 billion for Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft system.

The Kurdish Question
The Russians don’t support Erdogan’s war on the Kurds and have lobbied for the inclusion of Kurdish delegations in negotiations over the future of Syria. But Moscow clearly gave the Turks a green light to attack the Kurdish city of Afrin last month, driving out the YPG that had liberated it from the Islamic State and Turkish-backed al-Qaeda groups. A number of Kurds charge that Moscow has betrayed them.

Will the Russians stand aside if the Turkish forces move further into Syria and attack the city of Manbij, where the Kurds are allied with U.S. and French forces? And will Erdogan’s hostility to the Kurds lead to an armed clash among three NATO members?

Such a clash seems unlikely, although the Turks have been giving flamethrower speeches over the past several weeks. “Those who cooperate with terrorists organizations [the YPG] will be targeted by Turkey,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said in a pointed reference to France’s support for the Kurds. Threatening the French is one thing, picking a fight with the U.S. military quite another.

Of course, if President Trump pulls U.S. forces out of Syria, it will be tempting for Turkey to move in. While the “troika alliance” has agreed to Syrian “sovereignty,” that won’t stop Ankara from meddling in Kurdish affairs. The Turks are already appointing governors and mayors for the areas in Syria they have occupied.

Keeping the U.S. at Bay
Iran’s major concern in Syria is maintaining a buffer between itself and the very aggressive U.S., Israeli, and Saudi alliance, which seems to be in the preliminary stages of planning a war against the second-largest country in the Middle East.

Iran is not at all the threat it’s been pumped up to be. Its military is miniscule and talk of a so-called “Shiite crescent” — Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon — is pretty much a western invention (although the term was dreamed up by the Sunni king of Jordan).

Tehran has been weakened by crippling sanctions and faces the possibility that Washington will withdraw from the nuclear accord and re-impose yet more sanctions. The appointment of National Security Adviser John Bolton, who openly calls for regime change in Iran, has to have sent a chill down the spines of the Iranians.

What Tehran needs most of all is allies who will shield it from the enmity of the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia. In this regard, Turkey and Russia could be helpful.

Iran has modified its original goals in Syria of a Shiite-dominated regime by agreeing to a “non-sectarian character” for a post-war Syria. (Erdogan has also given up on his desire for a Sunni-dominated government in Damascus.)

War and Oil
War between the U.S. or its allies and Iran would be catastrophic, an unwinnable conflict that could destabilize the Middle East even more than it is now. It would, however, drive up the price of oil, currently running at around $66 a barrel.

Saudi Arabia needs to sell its oil for at least $100 a barrel, or it will very quickly run of money. The ongoing quagmire of the Yemen war, the need to diversify the economy, and the growing clamor by young Saudis — 70 percent of the population — for jobs requires lots of money, and the current trends in oil pricing are not going to cover the bills.

War and oil make for odd bedfellows. While the Saudis are doing their best to overthrow the Assad regime and fuel the extremists fighting the Russians, Riyadh is wooing Moscow to sign on to a long-term OPEC agreement to control oil supplies. That probably won’t happen — the Russians are fine with oil at $50 to $60 a barrel — and are wary of agreements that would restrict their right to develop new oil and gas resources.

The Saudis’ jihad on the Iranians has a desperate edge to it, as well it might. The greatest threat to the kingdom has always come from within.

The rocks and shoals that can wreck alliances in the Middle East are too numerous to count, and the “troika” is riven with contradictions and conflicting interests. But the war in Syria looks as if it’s coming to some kind of resolution — and at this point Iran, Russia, and Turkey seem to be the only actors who have a script that goes beyond lobbing cruise missiles at people.
 

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(Image: Democracy Chronicles / Flickr)

At first glance, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s drive to create an executive presidency with almost unlimited power through a nationwide referendum looks like a slam-dunk.

The man hasn’t lost an election since 1994, and he’s loaded the dice and stacked the deck for the April 15 vote. Using last summer’s failed coup as a shield, he’s declared a state of emergency, fired 130,000 government employees, jailed 45,000 people — including opposition members of parliament — and closed down 176 media outlets. The opposition Republican People’s Party says it’s been harassed by death threats from referendum supporters and arrests by the police.

Meanwhile he’s deliberately picked fights with Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands to help whip up a storm of nationalism, and he charges that his opponents are “acting in concert with terrorists.” Selahattin Demirtas, a member of parliament and co-chair of the Kurdish-dominated People’s Democratic Party, the third largest political formation in Turkey, is under arrest and faces 143 years in prison. Over 70 Kurdish mayors are behind bars.

So why is Erdogan so nervous? Because he has reason to be.

A Wobbly Juggernaut
The juggernaut that Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) put together to dismantle Turkey’s current political system and replace it with a highly centralized executive with the power to dismiss parliament, control the judiciary, and rule by decree has developed a bit of a wobble.
First, Turkey’s nationalists — in particular the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) — are deeply split. The leadership of the MHP supports a “yes” vote on the referendum, but as much as 65 percent of the rank and file are preparing to vote “no.”

Second, there is increasing concern over the economy, formerly the AKP’s strong suit. Erdogan won the 2002 election on a pledge to raise living standards — especially for small businesses and among Turks who live in the country’s interior — and he largely delivered on those promises. Under the AKP’s stewardship, the Turkish economy grew, but with a built-in flaw.

The 2000s were a period of rapid growth for emerging economies like China, Russia, and Turkey. China did it by building a high-power manufacturing base and exporting its goods to the global market. Russia raised its economy through commodities sales, particularly oil and gas. Turkey’s huge spurt, however, was built around domestic consumption, in particular real estate and construction. Indeed, Turkey’s historical strength in manufacturing has languished.

Much of the construction boom was financed through foreign loans, and as long as investors were comfortable with the internal situation in Turkey — and money was cheap — real estate was Erdogan’s Anatolian tiger. But when the U.S. tightened up its monetary policies in 2013, those loans either dried up or got more expensive.

Turkey wasn’t the only victim of U.S. tight money policies. Washington’s monetary shift also badly damaged the economies of Brazil, South Africa, India, and Indonesia. But the effect on Ankara has been to increase the debt burden and fuel a growing trade imbalance. Growth fell from 6.1 percent in 2015 to 1.5 percent in 2016.

The fall of the Turkish lira means imports cost more at a time when Turkey’s private sector has accrued a foreign exchange deficit of $210 billion. Consumer inflation will almost certainly reach 11 or 12 percent this year and the jobless rate is over 12 percent. Among young Turks, age 15-24, that figure is over 25 percent. Almost 4 million people are out of work, and many Turks now spend 50 percent of their income on food, housing and rent.

To add to these woes, the credit agencies Moody’s, Standard and Poor, and Fitch recently designated Turkey’s status as “non-investment” and downgraded its economic outlook from “stable” to “negative.” Part of the downgrade was based on politics, not the economy. Fitch pointed out that if Erdogan’s referendum passed, it “would entrench a system in which checks and balances have been eroded.”

Businesses are generally not bothered by authoritarian regimes, but they are uncomfortable with instability and a cavalier approach to the rule of law. Erdogan’s erratic foreign policies and the government’s seizures of private businesses whose owners choose to oppose him do not create an atmosphere conducive to investor confidence.

There is also growing nervousness about Erdogan’s internal and external policies. Turkey once had a policy of “no trouble with neighbors,” but Ankara is suddenly fighting with everyone. Erdogan strongly supported efforts to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. He backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He put troops in northern Iraq aimed at keeping the Kurds down. He started a war with his own Kurds and bullies and intimidates any domestic opposition.

A case in point is the lucrative tourist industry that normally contributes about 5 percent of Turkey’s GNP. Turkey is the sixth most visited country in the world, but the industry was down 36 percent in 2016, a loss of $10 billion.

Formerly, large numbers of tourists visited from Russia and Iran. But Erdogan alienated the Russians when he shot down one of their bombers in 2015 and angered Iran when he went to Saudi Arabia and denounced the Iranians for trying to spread their Shiite ideology and “Persian nationalism” throughout the Middle East. As a result, tourism from both countries largely dried up, hitting Istanbul and coastal cities like Antalya particularly hard.

Iranians and Russians aren’t the only ones looking elsewhere for fun and relaxation. Erdogan’s sturm und drang rhetoric directed at European countries that refused to let him campaign for his referendum among their Turkish populations — “Nazis” and “fascists” were his favored epithets to describe Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria — has tourists from the West looking to vacation in Greece, Spain, and Italy instead.

Trouble in the Neighborhood
To label Erdogan’s foreign policy “schizophrenic” is an understatement.

On one hand, he’s backed off from his earlier demand that Syrian President Assad must go, and he’s working with the Russians and Iranians — and Egyptians — to find a negotiated settlement to the horrendous civil war.

On the other, he is wooing Saudi Arabia, the major backer of al-Qaeda-associated groups in Syria who’ve made it clear that they aren’t interested in negotiations or a political settlement. He’s also clashing with Russia and the U.S. over their support for Kurdish forces battling the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

In one rather bizarre example of schizoid foreign policy, Turkey sponsored a March 14 meeting of 50 Syrian tribal leaders to form an “Army of the Jezeera and Euphrates Tribes” to fight Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party in Syria. Beating up on the Kurds is standard Erdogan politics, but how he squares attacking Russia and Iran while professing to support a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war isn’t clear.

His political calculations keep backfiring. For instance, when Iran signed its international nuclear agreement and sanctions were lifted, Turkish businesses were eager to ramp up trade with Tehran. Erdogan’s searing attack on Iran largely scotched that, however, and the Turkish president has very little to show for it. Erdogan calculated that embracing Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies would more than offset alienating Iran, but that hasn’t happened.

The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar have a combined overseas investment portfolio of $262 billion, but only $8.7 billion of that went to Turkey. Europe makes up the great bulk of foreign investments in Turkey, distantly followed by the U.S. and Russia.

In part this is because the Gulf monarchies have their own financial difficulties, given low oil prices and the grinding war they are fighting in Yemen. But one suspects that Saudi Arabia is wary of Erdogan’s AKP, which is a cousin of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis consider the Brotherhood their main enemy after Iran, and they strongly supported the 2013 military coup against the Egyptian Brotherhood government. The recent thaw in relations between Turkey and Egypt has resulted in a chilling of ties between Riyadh and Cairo.

Meanwhile the Islamic State has recently targeted Turkey, in large part as blowback from the Syrian civil war. Ankara formerly turned a blind eye to the Islamic State’s supply lines into Syria because Erdogan wanted to overthrow the Assad government and replace it with a Muslim Brotherhood-friendly regime. Now that policy has backfired on Turkey, much as U.S. support for the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan led to the formation of al-Qaeda and the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Kurds have also engaged in a bombing campaign, but that is a response to Erdogan’s attacks on Kurdish cities in southeastern Turkey.

Getting to Yes — Or Else
It’s not clear how widespread the “no” vote sentiment is, although it supposedly includes up to 100 AKP parliament members worried about concentrating too much power in the president’s hands.

Pollsters say a significant number of voters are unwilling to say how they will vote. In the current atmosphere of intimidation, it could mean those “refuse to say” will turn to “no.” Certainly Erdogan’s prediction of a 60 percent approval has gone a glimmering.

What happens if people do vote no? And would Erdogan accept any outcome that wasn’t yes?

One disturbing development is the formation of a paramilitary group called “Stay as Brothers, Turkey.” Organized by Orhan Uzuner, whose daughter is married to Erdogan’s son Bital, the group claims up to 500 members. The opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet calls the group “Erdogan’s militia,” and some members of the Nationalist Movement Party say the Brothers are sponsoring weapons training and encouraging members to arm themselves. With the military firmly under control following last year’s attempted coup, even a small group like the Brothers could play a major role if Erdogan decides he’s finished with the democratic process.

Certainly the president is in a bind. He needs foreign investments and tourism to get the economy back on track, but he’s alienating one ally after another.

He could tighten Turkey’s monetary policies to staunch the outflow of capital, but that would slow the economy and increase unemployment. He could lower interest rates to stimulate the economy, but that would further weaken the lira.

His strategy at this point is to double down on getting a yes vote. If he fails, things could get dangerous.
 

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