Daily Times

The great worry about the Syrian uprising early on was that it might develop into a brutal civil war, which has already happened. The death toll is estimated around 30,000 and rising. The scenes of wanton destruction of entire suburbs and towns, principally by aerial attacks from an increasingly desperate Bashar al-Assad regime, are heart rending. On the battlefront between the rebels and the government, neither side has a decisive edge and the situation is stalemated.

The big danger is that the Syrian crisis might develop into a regional conflict, with even more disastrous consequences. In a way, it already has an external dimension. For instance, the rebels are getting their weapons from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The United States and Britain are also actively helping. The Bashar regime, on the other hand, is receiving valuable military and non-military help from Iran, including elements of its special forces. Russia continues to ship weapons.

With both the government and the rebels having powerful backers, it is not difficult to work out where it is all leading. A human tragedy in Syria is slowly transforming into a regional geopolitical disaster and that too at a time when the situation in the Middle East, in the wake of Arab Spring, is very fragile. The first major step in this direction is Turkey’s blunt warning of armed retaliation, if Syrian artillery and mortar shells were to hit its border territory. This was in response to a recent mortar shelling of a Turkish border town killing five civilians. The Turkish government now has parliamentary authorisation to take whatever military action to deal with the situation.

Ankara is now in a blustery mood, having mobilised its armed forces for, what looks like, a major operation some time soon. In one instance, Turkish armed retaliation has already reportedly killed 14 Syrian soldiers. There has also been a forced landing of a Syrian passenger plane flying from Moscow, suspected of carrying military equipment from Russia, which has infuriated Moscow, as the plane does not appear to have been carrying much in the way of weapons. The plane was carrying 30 passengers, half of them Russians.

When the Syrian rebels rose up against the Bashar regime, Turkey sought to prevail upon Damascus to resolve its crisis peacefully through democratic reforms. But as Damascus proved obdurate, it has increasingly supported the rebels’ cause, trying to mobilise international opinion against the regime. With the recent shelling of its border town resulting in the death of five of its citizens, it is now fired up against the Bashar regime.

At the international level, Ankara immediately took up the matter with the United Nations Security Council that has since passed a resolution condemning the attack, but it did not sanction any specific course of action against any such repetition. This was obviously a sop to get Russia and China to support the resolution, as they would not have agreed to a military response.

At the international level, the Syrian insurrection has seen the revival of a cold war of sorts in the Middle East between the US and its western allies on one side, and Russia and China on the other. The creeping great powers’ political and, possibly, military involvement in an already embattled country can have unpredictable consequences for the region.

Turkey’s second response to the Syrian mortar attack was to take up the matter with its NATO allies. And predictably NATO countries have come in support of Turkey, indicating that any military attack on Turkey could involve NATO as well. Turkey is going about it in a calculated and systematic way, though still maintaining that it is not angling for war. Indeed, if its military preparations are anything to go by, it is all set to strike.

Turkey’s government is keen to play a major role in the Middle East region, much of which was once a part of the Ottoman Empire. And, in Syria, it has been politically active from the onset of insurgency. Following the influx of Syrian refugees across the border into Turkey, the rebels are using the border areas for attacks inside Syria. Turkey’s tough approach to Syria has the support not only of its NATO partners, but a number of Arab countries keen to see the end of the Bashar regime.

The US and western countries have been promoting Turkey as a model democratic Islamic country, which is adding to its confidence to talk and act tough. And if Turkey succeeds in bringing down the Assad regime, it would have earned the gratitude of the US and some of the Arab countries working hard for the same objective. This would greatly enhance Turkey’s regional status, entitling it to play a determining role in the post-Bashar era.

But it might not quite work like this for several reasons. First, while all of the Syrian rebels want to bring down the Bashar regime, their common goal ends here. There is no discernible unity among the rebels about what would and should happen after the Bashar regime is overthrown. And attempts to forge that unity by Turkey, Arab states and the US haven’t made much progress, if any. Any interventionist role by Turkey and others to shape a new political order in Syria is likely to be resisted along the way by one or more groups fighting for their respective agendas.

Second, the rebel movement has been infiltrated by al Qaeda and other extremist elements interested only in creating greater mayhem in and outside Syria. And Turkey might not be immune to it. There is a danger, along the way, of linkages developing between Syria’s Kurdish minority and the Turkish Kurds (and other rebels), where there is an insurgency, on and off, against Turkish domination. The Bashar regime has already relaxed their control of the country’s Kurd region. In a period of political and strategic flux, events can take a dramatic turn that Turkey might not be able to control. In other words, despite Turkey’s calculated and neat strategy, the results might be the opposite of what is intended.

The Alawites’ minority, now in power, is not going to simply go away. With Turkey now engaged in bringing down the Bashar regime, long memories of Ottoman (Turkish) rule are likely to find a fresh lease of life. In a recent article in the London Review of Books, Nir Rosen quotes historian Hanna Batatu who wrote, “Under the Ottomans they [the Alawites] were abused, reviled and ground down by exactions and, on occasion, their women and children led into captivity and disposed of by sale.” According to Rosen, “They were practically serfs to the Sunni feudal lords put in place by the Ottomans.” And these painful memories will further firm up their determination to keep fighting for their survival.

The point is that even if the Bashar regime is overthrown, there will be a variation of it to keep up the struggle. Therefore, Syria will continue to be a battleground of all sorts of competing and contending forces and, at times, a proxy war of international and regional interests seeking dominant political, economic and strategic space in an already volatile Middle East. Turkey, therefore, over time, might find itself subsumed into a seemingly endless game of international chess, but with blood and gore.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.co.au