Although the the Turkish fighter jet downed by Syrian forces on June 22 has been found and the Turkish military is analyzing the wreckage, the questions regarding how the jet was brought down and what its actual mission was continue to linger and are now leading to a heated political debate in Turkey.
For now, Ankara is sticking to its version of events, which is that the unarmed reconnaissance airplane was shot down without warning by a Syrian missile over international waters while on a mission testing a domestic radar system. Damascus, meanwhile, insists the Turkish F-4 was mistakenly shot down by fire from an anti-aircraft gun after suddenly appearing flying fast and low just off the Syrian coast.
The Syrian version of events was given something of a boost by a June 30th Wall Street Journal article that quoted unnamed American defense sources as saying that US intelligence indicates the plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire inside Syria's airspace. The article led to an angry response from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called it a "lie" and criticized several Turkish media outlets for publishing material based on the WSJ's reporting. But the Turkish military itself has also created some confusion, with a brigadier general telling the Milliyet newspaper that Ankara doesn't have any evidence of a missile striking the plane.
Ankara has released the latest figures for Turkish-Iranian trade and they have yielded one very interesting statistic: in the last five months, three quarters of Turkey's gold exports have gone next door to Iran. Reports Today's Zaman:
Data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) have shown that Turkey exported gold worth $4.02 billion in the first five months of 2012, with $3.08 billion of that sum exported to Iran. This means Turkey’s gold exports to Iran have increased roughly eightfold compared to the same period in 2011. It is speculated Iranians are turning to gold as a method of saving as Western sanctions tighten.
The mass purchase of Turkey’s gold is being undertaken by rich Iranian families living in Turkey. These families largely do business in the fields of construction and iron and steel production. There are rumors that they purchase Turkish gold via third persons in order not to be noticed, and that they entrust the purchased gold to the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran (CBI), again via third persons. The CBI supports the purchases in order to gain strength in the face of increasing sanctions from European countries.
Rich Iranians may be turning to Turkish gold as a kind of safe haven, but the Financial Times' "Beyondbrics" blog suggests something else is going on. From the FT:
So what’s going on?
In a nutshell – sanctions and oil.
In recent months, western powers, notably the US and the European Union, have tightened financial sanctions on the Islamic regime in an attempt to force Iran to scale back or halt its efforts to enrich uranium.
In March, Iran was cut off from from Swift, the global payments network, effectively blocking the country from performing any international financial transactions.
A week after being shot down by Syrian forces, a Turkish air force fighter jet and its two crew members remain missing at sea. While rescue crews have been searching for it, Turkish officials announced that the EV Nautilus, a research ship that had previously been used to search for the wreck of the Titanic, was being called in to help with finding the wreckage of the F-4 jet.
What also remains unclear a week later is what was the Turkish jet's real mission and how and where it was shot down. As the BBC lays out in a helpful graphic, Ankara and Damascus have given vastly different accounts of the event, which has led to a serious ratcheting up of tensions along the Turkey-Syria border, where the Turkish military is now beefing up its presence and has made clear that any Syrian military activity in the area would now be viewed quite differently than before.
Although the Syrians clearly shot the Turkish jet down without any warning and, based on Damascus's track record, their explanation of the event should be taken with many grains of salt, the questions about what the jet was doing near the Turkish border are important, considering its downing has now put Turkey and Syria -- and perhaps even the region -- many steps closer to all out conflict.
After last week's Syrian downing of a Turkish air force jet, some things are becoming clear. Turkey, while refraining from doing anything rash and doing all it can to get international and NATO backing for its diplomatic efforts, is also leaving itself with a military option for responding to Syria's action. In a speech in parliament today, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Syrian forces to stay away from the now tense border with Turkey or face retaliation from Turkish forces who may perceive their movements as a threat. At the same time, Ankara also sent to the border area a (somewhat symbolic) convoy of fifteen military vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers.
Still, while Ankara is ratcheting up the pressure against Damascus, last week's incident still leaves behind it some big questions that have profound implications for how Turkey, Syria and the allies of both countries will or can move forward. Among these:
For the last few months, Turkey has been executing a rather complicated dance with regards to troubled next door neighbor Syria. While supporting and housing elements of the Syrian opposition, Ankara has continued to insist it only providing aid for "humanitarian" -- rather than military -- efforts inside Syria. And although Ankara has clearly moved far back from its once warm relations with the Assad regime, it is also clearly not interested in a military confrontation with Damascus.
Two years after Turkey-Israel relations broke down because of the Mavi Marmara incident, in which Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists during a botched raid of an aid ship heading to Gaza, the two countries remain estranged with little indication that a breakthrough in the diplomatic impasse between them is forthcoming. The Turkish government continues to demand that an apology for the event be given and that compensation to the families of those killed be offered. Although Israel appears ready to pay compensation, it has refused to apologize, seeking instead to express its "regret" over the incident.
That said, there are still some signs of life left in the relationship. Israeli tourists, who once flocked to Turkey but then stopped coming in the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident, are slowly returning to Turkish resorts. Trade relations between Turkey and Israel, meanwhile, have continued to flourish, despite the tension, leading some to suggest that it's in the economic sphere where the two countries might be able to find a "fresh start."
The last year has not been kind to Turkey's "zero problems with neighbors" policy. Relations with Syria plummeted once Ankara -- after some initial delaying -- came out resolutely against the Assad regime. Ties with Iran, though still cordial on the surface, are suffering their own strains because of Ankara and Tehran's differing policies regarding the situation in Syria and Turkey's frustration with Iran over several other political and economic issues.Now Iraq can be officially added to the list of neighbors that Turkey has problems with. In late April, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki labeled Turkey an "enemy state" bent on interfering in his country's internal affairs. In response, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his Iraqi counterpart -- leader of a Shiite party -- lacks an understanding of democracy and is fanning the flames of sectarianism in Iraq. The exchange of words led to ambassadors being summoned in both capitals.
More pointedly, Turkey is now playing host to fugitive Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni who is currently wanted in Iraq on charges of running death squads in the country. The issue of the VP's fate will likely only further strain Turkey-Iraq relations now that Interpol has issued a "red notice" that asks for help in the capture of Hashimi, who says the charges against him are politically motivated.
As the French presidential election heads into a run-off, it's probably not surprising that Ankara is quietly but emphatically rooting for Socialist candidate Francois Hollande to defeat the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. Under Sarkozy, Turkish-French relations have been extremely strained, with the French President expressing his strong opposition to Turkey's European Union membership bid and also helping introduce a few months ago an ultimately unsuccessful bill that would have criminalized the denial of the Armenian genocide. On the foreign policy, front, meanwhile, Paris and Ankara have also frequently clashed in recent years, in particular with the two vying for influence in the Middle East. For example, after the end of the NATO operation last year in Libya, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Sarkozy were in a race to see which one of them could make it to Tripoli first and become the first major foreign leader to visit the newly liberated country. Sarkozy ended up winning the contest, arriving in the Libyan capitol only a day before Erdogan.So what would a Socialist victory in France mean for Turkey? The National takes a look:
Perhaps one of the most quoted Wikileaks cables to come out of the American embassy in Ankara is one from 2009 in which the ambassador at the time, James Jeffrey, describes Turkey's Middle East policy as based on "Rolls Royce ambitions, but with Rover resources."
Many in Ankara interpreted the ambassador's comment as an indication of Washington's discomfort with Turkey's increasingly autonomous and high-profile Middle East foreign policy, but a new study released by a Turkish think tank confirms a simple truth that lies at the base of Jeffrey's assessment: Turkey, at this point, simply lacks the human resources and institutional capacity to back up many of its lofty foreign policy goals. Reports Today's Zaman:
The Foreign Ministry’s present infrastructure in terms of its corporate body and personnel is insufficient for Turkey to become a “regulating actor” or “central country” in the Middle East, according to a new International Strategic Research Organization (USAK) report.
Osman Bahadır Dinçer, the think-tank’s Middle East researcher, has said the shortcomings in terms of personnel are being felt more deeply since Turkey has started to follow a foreign policy in the last 10 years that is multiple-lane and multidimensional, with Turkey often being cited as a role model in the region.
At a press conference at USAK headquarters in Ankara on Wednesday Dinçer said, “Only six out of 135 people in Turkey’s 25 diplomatic missions in Arab countries can speak Arabic.” He stressed that the capacity of the Foreign Affairs Ministry as a corporate body and the competence and sufficiency in number of the ministry’s staff are key factors in obtaining the desired results in a foreign policy initiative.
Having played host over the centuries to Greeks, Romans, the Byzantines and other great cultures, the land that comprises modern-day Turkey is filled with numerous and valuable archeological sites. To view some of the more extraordinary finds from many of those sites, though, requires going to museums in other countries. For example, the altar of Zeus from the ancient city of Pergamon, dug up by a German team in the late 1800's, resides in Berlin, while other valuable artifacts originally found in Turkey are housed in assorted European and American museums.
Filled with a renewed sense of political and economic self-confidence, Ankara is now looking for ways to regain those antiquities, resorting, if need be, to playing hardball. From a very interesting recent Newsweek article on the subject:
The Turkish government has decided that it can score nationalist points by launching a vocal campaign to recover ancient Anatolian artifacts from foreign museums. Over the last year the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism has resorted to ever-more aggressive measures, from threatening to suspend the excavation licenses of foreign archeological teams to blocking the export of museum exhibits. Last month, for instance, the ministry announced that it would not issue export licenses for several dozen museum pieces due to be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. As a result, important exhibitions—Byzantium and Islam at the Met, The Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam at the British Museum, and The Ottomans at the V&A—have either had to scramble to find alternative artifacts in non-Turkish collections or delay the exhibitions altogether.
