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.
After being grounded for several months following an unspecified digestive tract illness and subsequent surgery, the normally on-the-go Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was back in action this week, with a trip that took him first to South Korea and then Iran. In both cases, the question of nuclear power -- that of Turkey and of others -- was high on the agenda.
While other issues, namely Syria, are on Erdogan's plate during his visit today to Tehran, the question of Iran's controversial nuclear program will clearly dominate his talks with the Iranians (among others, the Turkish PM is meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani). In the past, Erdogan had been accused of being too quick to defend the Iranians and the intentions of their nuclear activity, but there was some indication that time around he was coming to Tehran with a sterner message. Initial reports out of Iran, though, found Erdogan voicing support for a "peaceful" Iranian nuclear program. “No one has the right to impose anything on anyone with regards to nuclear energy, provided that it is for peaceful purposes,” Erdogan said during a press conference with Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi.
From being Cold War adversaries, Turkey and Russia have taken significant steps in recent years towards deepening their economic and political ties, to the point that some Turkish pundits started describing their relationship as a "strategic alliance." Trade between the two countries has blossomed (although much of it is in the form of Russian gas flowing into Turkey), while Ankara and Moscow have also agreed to scrap visa requirements for one-month-long stays.
But recent events regional events, which have found Ankara and Moscow taking divergent views, are putting the budding relations between Turkey and Russia to the test. Russia's heavy investment in Greek Cyprus has not gone unnoticed by Ankara. But an even greater challenge is being posed by the uprising in Syria and Moscow's continuing support for the Assad regime. As analyst Ziya Meral writes in a recent piece for Bitterlemons-international.org:
....just as the so-called "Arab spring" has soured the budding romance between Syria and Turkey, there are underlying anxieties over how long Turkey can keep calm about Russian involvement in Syria.
From the Turkish point of view, Russian interests in Syria are thin. A small symbolic naval base, seemingly lucrative yet limited arms sales, and assertion of the usual bravado of "standing against colonial western interventionism" are no compensation for what Russia stands to lose through its dangerous Syria policy.
