Michael Young: Erdogan’s climb-down/Turkey’s moves could mean an important shift in Syria/Soner Cagaptay:Turkey’s Istanbul Attack Vengeance Will Be Like ‘Rain From Hell’

Erdogan’s climb-down/Turkey’s moves could mean an important shift in Syria
Michael Young/Now Lebanon/June 30/16

The attack against Istanbul’s airport earlier this week overshadowed a significant move by the Turkish government that highlighted the failure of its Syria policy: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan apologized to Russia for the death of a Russian pilot whose aircraft was shot down last November by Turkey.
This came as Turkey also mended ties with Israel, another step back from Erdogan’s pro-Arab posturing several years ago. This may lead to lucrative gas deals, allowing Israel to send gas to Europe via a pipeline to Turkey, once it is built. In other words the reconciliation is hardly a timorous, temporary step.
However, it was Erdogan’s efforts to patch up his relationship with Russia, Bashar al-Assad’s main backer, and to refer to the country as a “friend and strategic partner,” that represented a climb-down of major proportions. It effectively underlined that the regional coalition against Assad has disintegrated.
That’s not to say that Turkey has abandoned those fighting the Syrian regime, but rather that other priorities have now taken over in a country that has been almost entirely focused on Syria in recent years. The Turks now must turn to other pressing issues, above all the Kurdish question, but also the difficult economic situation that the rift with Russia exacerbated, and that the reopening of contacts with Israel may help allay.
Nor is Erdogan alone. The second pillar of the anti-Assad coalition, Saudi Arabia, has similarly drifted away from Syria. Prince Mohammad bin Salman is seeking to reorient the Saudi economy away from dependency on oil, and has cut spending across the board. Consequently, Riyadh’s attention to Syria has dwindled, a trend only reinforced by the stalemate in Yemen.
To many Arab countries the situation in Syria has reached a point where the prevailing interest is bringing the conflict to an end, not scoring strategic points. This mood was already visible when Egypt and Jordan soured on the conflict, shifting their attitudes toward the anti-Assad opposition. By the start of this year the Arab coalition against Assad existed only in name.
Assad and his backers can take pleasure in the fact that their destructive policies during the past five years have virtually ensured that the Syrian regime will remain in place. All those who aligned against him, whether inside the region or outside, have more or less given up the fight, even if the result is chaos.
That hardly means that the war in Syria is over, but it has reached a state of pointlessness. Assad’s future is no longer on the table, as the breakdown in the Geneva negotiations has made clear. The ISIS challenge has spawned new dynamics, leading the United States to back Kurdish forces in Syria whose successes threaten Turkey. Russian intervention, though utterly barbaric in places, has not harmed its diplomatic relations with a majority of Assad’s foes. In other words, all developments have served to reinforce the Syrian president’s position.
Assad’s only problem is that he doesn’t have the manpower to regain the territory that his regime lost. Everywhere his army is struggling, and the willingness of his Iranian-backed Shiite allies to go all the way on his behalf is not guaranteed. For instance, despite Hassan Nasrallah’s statements last week to the contrary, unconfirmed reports indicate that Hezbollah has told the Syrian regime that it refuses to spearhead the recapture of Aleppo, fearing it would lose too many men in the battle.
The silver lining in this story of bloody deadlock is that it may facilitate a solution in Syria. However, that is not likely soon since Assad’s enemies, even if they have been weakened, are not about to give up on their demands that he leave office. There are tens of thousands of armed men, probably more, in Syria who will not suddenly cease fighting the regime and go home. No one can win the war, but no side will admit it cannot.
But with Erdogan’s apology to Russia wider spaces have been created for diplomacy. The Saudis, trapped in Yemen, have an incentive to participate in a new round of talks over Syria. The challenge is to persuade them to do so with Iran in attendance, and to find a way to de-escalate the toxic Saudi-Iranian rivalry.
It’s improbable that Geneva will be formally abandoned as a framework for discussion, which is why such talks should be conducted quietly to work out an amended arrangement. Assad may be poison, but to many countries Geneva could be turning into an obstacle to an agreement. A more ambiguous framework, where Assad’s fate is left vague, may be preferable.
As Syria’s most powerful neighbor, Turkey was always the linchpin of the anti-Assad coalition. Erdogan has effectively retreated on Syria, and the Istanbul airport attack will have only persuaded him he is right in doing so. The war in Syria will continue, but with Turkey possibly neutralized, the template of the war for the past five years has been decisively changed.
***Michael Young is a writer and editor in Beirut. He tweets @BeirutCalling.

Turkey’s Istanbul Attack Vengeance Will Be Like ‘Rain From Hell’
Soner Cagaptay/he Washington Institute/CNN/June 30/16

ISIS may be trying to sow domestic suspicion by not claiming responsibility for the airport attack, but the incident could still spur Turkey into full-scale war against the group.
The suicide bombing at Turkey’s Ataturk Airport is a symbolic attack at the heart of Istanbul. If ISIS is indeed behind this attack, as the U.S. and Turkey say, this would be a declaration of war. Turkey’s vengeance will come down like rain from hell. Thus far, Turkey has avoided engaging ISIS in full war, instead prioritizing its battle against Syria’s Assad regime as well as blocking advances by the Syrian Kurds. For Turkey, fighting ISIS as a first order battle could now be unavoidable.
SYMBOLIC TARGET
In the past, ISIS has carried out attacks in Turkey, but this attack eclipses those in scale. Previously ISIS has targeted tourists; this time they’re going for the heart of Turkey, and in a brazen attack that has claimed many more lives than previous ISIS attacks.
Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport is the main entry point for the majority of the more than 30 million people who visit Turkey every year. It’s also the hub of Turkish Airlines, the country’s only known international brand and the gateway to doing business in Istanbul. This attack is going to hurt Turkey’s tourism economy and the business community by seriously challenging the idea that Turkey is a safe place to visit and do business.
WHY IS ISIS TARGETING TURKEY?
If ISIS is the anomaly in Islam, Turkey is the norm in Islam. Turkey has a secular constitution. It’s a democratic society where you have gender equality between men and women. It’s a member of NATO and is in accession talks with the European Union. It’s a friend of the West and the United States and only yesterday agreed to restore diplomatic ties with Israel.
The question was not if, but when ISIS would carry out an attack like this. For a while now, Turkey-backed rebels have been attacking the Islamic State inside Syria, together with U.S.-backed Kurds, so the attack could also be seen as retaliation by ISIS.
BUILD UP TO WAR
For a very long time, the relationship between ISIS and Turkey looked like a Cold War, with both sides avoiding fighting each other. For instance, when ISIS surrounded the Turkish exclave in Syria in 2014, it did not run that over. And similarly, Turkey avoided joining the U.S. to fight ISIS.
Then, the relationship evolved into what looked like limited warfare as Turkey came on board in 2015 to help the U.S. combat ISIS. At that time, ISIS carried out a number of small attacks in Istanbul’s old city, killing mostly foreigners. If ISIS is indeed behind the attack today, this would represent a significant escalation towards Turkey.
TURKISH RETALIATION
Turkey will continue to crack down on ISIS, as well as increase cooperation with the U.S. and Western intelligence agencies against the group. ISIS, though, will continue to play its nefarious game of creating an environment of fog and suspicion through attacks, this time in Turkey. The group, which did not take responsibility for past attacks in Turkey, will likely also not assume responsibility for the Istanbul airport attack.
This is because ISIS wants to create an environment of suspicion in Turkish politics. Al Qaeda in Iraq, the mothership jihadi organization from which ISIS was spawned, carried out a number of suicide attacks in Iraq after 2005, and yet the group claimed responsibility for none of these attacks. This led to an environment of suspicion in which the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq blamed each other for the attacks, starting retribution-style attacks. Subsequently, Iraq descended into civil war.
By not taking responsibility for its attacks in Turkey, ISIS wants to do the same, triggering societal fault lines, this time between supporters and opponents of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leftists and rightists, Turks and Kurds, seculars and conservatives. Turks of all political persuasions and backgrounds ought to learn from Iraq and unite in the face of the ISIS threat. At the same time, the Turkish government needs to use its full force to combat the ISIS threat to prevent Turkey’s potential catastrophic descent into chaos as a result of ISIS attacks.
**Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.