The relations between Turkey and Syria, more accurately, Bashar al Assad’s regime, have reached to the extreme tension level.
As it’s known on June 22, the Turkish Phantom recon jet, which took off from Turkish Erkhach, Malatia military base, in one and half hours disappeared from the view of Turkish radars on the border with Syria in the area of Mediterranean sea. After that the foreign affairs ministry of Syria stated that the air defense of Syria had destroyed an airplane in its territorial waters, because it had violated the air space of Syria. On June 24, the foreign affairs minister of Turkey Ahmed Davudoghlu stated that the Turkish jet was destroyed without a notification in the neural air space and added that Turkey had applied to the fourth article of NATO charter, according to which the NATO member states should hold a working meeting when one of the member states is being attacked or is under threat of attack. When writing about this, the American New York Times observes that Davutoghlu has not quoted a more powerful clause (number 5), which defines that an attack on a member state is considered an attack against NATO and obliges all the member states to counter-attack. On June 25, deputy-Premier of Turkey Byulent Arnch in his official statement noted that the incident will not become a reason for war but it won’t stay unanswered either. Military experts expressed interesting opinions about this incident. For example, expert Igor Korotchenko during his interview to the Russian Ria Novosti agency didn’t rule out that the goal of the Turkish recon jet could have been the recon of the Syrian air defense systems and thus provoking the Syrians. Another military expert Said Aminov expressed a similar opinion. On June 26, with the demand of Turkey in Brussels a NATO extraordinary session was summoned, the purpose of which was the discussion of the destruction of the Turkish plane. After the meeting hosting ambassadors from 28 member states the NATO member states released a statement, which denounces Syria’s act. And the Secretary General of NATO Anders Fog Rasmussen mentioned in a press conference, “We carefully follow the developments in Syria and examine the process in the south-eastern part of Syria.” However, Rasmussen also mentioned that during the meeting they haven’t discussed the enforcement of clause 5 of NATO charter. This means that the NATO hasn’t discussed the matter of levying a war against Syria. Having quotes the opinion of an expert A. Shumilin, Ria Novosti agency writes that this session was the minimal reaction of NATO to the incident in order to ease the tension between the two countries. The plummet of Turkish-Syrian relations, which Moscow Middle East Institute expert Yuri Shcheglovin calls “cold war between the two states,” started after the revolt in the Arab world when the wave of the Arab spring reached Syria. It’s interesting that the expert explains the tension between Turkey and Syria by the intention of Turkey to become a leading force in the Islam world. We should perhaps agree with this concept as right after the Arab spring Turkey has changed its foreign policy. Turkey has started to share its territory with thousands of Syrian refugees and started to create training camps for the opposition groups of Syria. The transportation and catering of weapons to Syria is mostly done through Turkey. The political wing of the Syrian opposition – the Syrian National Council was established in Istanbul in August 2011, after which the sessions of the Council are periodically organized in Turkey. The trade and economic ties between the two states have also recorded a serious slump. According to Sana news agency of Syria and Turkish journalist Emin Chulashan compared to 2011 the export of Turkish products to Syria reduced by nearly six times and reached 336 million USD from previous 1,7 billion. We should say that this tense relationship between Turkey and Syria has existed in the past as well. During the 20th century there have been ups and downs. After the Second World War, during the Cold War era, Turkey and Syria were on drastically different poles. Turkey was a NATO member and an ally of the US and Syria was being supported by the Soviet Union. In the 1980-90s there were three serious problems in the relations of Turkey and Syria – distribution of water reserves, the Kurdish issue (Syria gave refuge to the leader of PKK Abdullah Ojalan and his warriors) and the third problem was Hatay region, which was historically part of Syria’s Alexandret. By the way, after the anti-government uprising in Syria dozens of thousands of Syrian refugees were located in camps of Hatay. The culmination of Syrian-Turkish relations was in the fall of 1998, when Turkey after concentrating troops along the Syrian border threatened Syria with a military intervention. However, it was possible to avoid a military collision because Turkey urged Syria the Treaty of Adana, according to which Syria was obliged to stop supporting the Working Party of Kurdistan and its leader Ojalan specifically. After the signing of this treaty and especially after the Justice and Development party of Turkey came to power the Turkish-Syrian relations have gradually started to develop. Turkey, having relied on its then-advisor to the Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoghlu’s concept “zero conflicts with neighbors” started to broadly develop political, economic and other ties with Syria, which reached their peak in 2010. However, in 2011 the leadership of Turkey, having quickly forgotten its good relations with Assad’s family and having realized the new changes in the region, drastically changed its political by playing a new card with its old friend Assad’s opponents and bet on the Syrian insurgents. In this regard, expert Shcheglov writes that after failing in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya Turkey had already developed its new strategy of having a leading role in the formation of power in the Islam world despite the fact that in this case he had lost to its main opponents Qatar, Saudi Arabia as well as Libya and Egypt. But it’s still planning to have a tense “struggle” for its victory and is going to focus on new less radical Sunni governments formed in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. “It is no accident that in Tunisia an-Naida party that came to power announced of their intention to follow the Turkish model,” he writes. We should say that the so-called moderate Islamist democracy, which was approved of by the west and is being applied by Erdoghan’s government in Turkey, is an American model developed quite awhile ago. Turkey as the main ally and “spokesman” of the US in the Middle East tries to push on the Islamist world this model. This step of Ankara once again came to prove that Turkey is not sincere to its neighbors and its police resembled to its so-called politics “zero problems with neighbors” of the past. The same approach was used during the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement process. By trying to improve relations it was attempting to connect the issue with the NKR conflict and interfering with the processes of the South Caucasus. The Turkish-Syrian relations have a key vitality for Armenia and the policy of the latter in regard to Middle East and may have no less importance on Armenia-Syria relations and the status of Armenians living in Armenia. However, Armenia is still trying to maintain neutrality in the Syrian case. As of the possibility of military collision between Syria and Turkey we should mention that it is quite implausible regardless of the current tension between the two states. As it was mentioned above, there has been a threat of military collision between Syria and Turkey in the past as well but it never reached to the level of war. The analysts also think that war is not very possible. For example, a German deutsche welle reporter Peter Philip during his interview to deutsche welle mentioned that the war between the two countries is little possible because it may decentralize the situation in regions along the 900-kilometer border. One of the main reasons of impossibility of war Shcheglov finds the fact that Turkey as a member of NATO without the adoption of a relevant UN resolution will not openly start a war against Syria. Besides that the war will re-open the disputable issue of Alexandret. And in that case the majority of the Syrian population will go against Turkey instead Assad’s regime.
Aram SARGSYAN