Is Syria that stupid to shoot down Turkey's plane?

Early on Saturday, a statement released after a security summit headed by Turkey's prime minister said Syria shot down Turkey's fighter jet, without elaborating how and why.

Many had speculated that although Syria acted ruthless, Turkey also deserves blame in this incident.

Early on Sunday, however, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu made it clear that Syrian side knew it was a Turkish plane, the jet was hit in international air space without any warning, the act was hostile and Turkey will not remain silent. Turkey has not yet unveiled its retaliatory steps and the most you can say is that there are scattered signs that things are getting worse more slowly.

Syria's downing of Turkish warplane is not unmatched in history. There have been many similar incidents like this before. But few exemplify irrationality of these kind of attacks better than Friday's incident, which also probably killed two Turkish pilots.

Then the question comes, why did Syria shoot down Turkey's jet?

Syrian regime critics would jump to a conclusion that the attack is a manifestation of Assad's growing frustration and spillover of the domestic crisis into neighbors. This argument rests heavily on the view that Assad is a ruthless killer and he would not hesitate shooting down planes of neighboring countries.

They claim that this incident appears to be rather a remarkable example of how Assad has become a threat to the stability not only within his country but also to countries in Syria's vicinity. One could make a broader argument that it is not surprising to see Assad attacking every perceived threat after all these atrocities his army has been committing.

One of the misconceptions that muddle the debate over the shooting incident is that rulers like Assad have spinned out of control to a degree that would attack neighboring countries.

But those critics miss two fundamental truths about the situation on the ground.

In two cases states make similar, irrational military provacations like this one that is obviously not in the aggressive state's national interest.

First, states are deliberately behaving in an irrational way to signal to adversaries that it is hell-bent and ruthless in retaliation. This strategy conveys messages as if the state does not have a capacity to understand warnings and red lines.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's earlier remarks that Israel should cease to exist is an evident example of how states sometimes behave as an irrational actor to avoid military attacks.

North Korea's recent military provacations such as sinking a South Korean ship or shelling its island two years ago is a case in point. This kind of tactics are reliable with nuclear-armed states such as North Korea. Why to mess up with nuclear-armed North Korea whose leader is describing itself suicidal and irrational? The same goes with Tehran, whose leader is speaking about destroying Israel and possessing dozens of long-range missiles that could significantly damage Israeli cities. These leaders are definitely not irrational but it is benefiting to be seen this way.

This strategy seems unapplicable in Syria because it has relatively weak and increasingly divided military power, is running out of cash and exhausted by a year and half long operations against rebels across the country. It has little if any capability to do harm to countries considering intervening militarily to end the 15-month long crisis there.

Another case when states behave irrational in foreign policy is when domestic actors push decision-making process to a direction that is not in their national interests. This could be because of divided governance like in Iran or supporting overseas brethren no matter how damaging that policy could be.

Stephen M. Walt and John Mearsheimer's 2007 book on the Israeli lobby is a good read how domestic actors could derail country's foreign policy agenda.

It’s worth bearing in mind that there have been numerous claims that military commanders in Syria have often been acting beyond the administration’s control. In the shadow of potential war and violence, those surrounding Assad are not necessarily making a single, consultative decision based on country's national interests. Given the varying constraints on the power of Assad and the administration across the state bureaucracies, it is not surprising that senior army commanders and bureaucrats are pushing for policies that are not really made by the president and his close circles loyal to him. Recent leaked e-mails of Assad family depict how weak institutions the Syrian regime has.

The crisis in Syria has steered this process reasonably well and generated enormous conflict within the regime.

Syria's Foreign Ministry spokesman was overly apologetic and friendly in his Monday briefing, saying that Turks and Syrians are brothers and that Syria is not hostile to its northern neighbor. Why would a state shoot down a foreign jet in international air space and send messages of friendship afterwards?

Why is Turkey surprisingly calm in crashed warplane saga

While journalists are impatient banging their head against the wall trying to find a reasonable answer to Friday’s Turkish jet crash incident eight miles off the coast of Latakia, suffice it to say that Turkey was caught off guard by the issue and the incident was definitely not a pre-planned trap to drag Syria into a war.

Shooting a Turkish fighter jet by Syrian security forces would be a potential stinging blow to Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad’s increasingly fragile regime, which is already very careful in not provoking Western countries, including its impatient northern neighbor Turkey, into aggression.

But the way Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke and kept his temper threw the world public into some apparent confusion. This is certainly not Erdoğan we know, who walked off a stage in Davos protesting Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2009 and boycotted an EU meeting in Brussels in 2004.

Initially, Erdoğan reportedly told a group of journalists in the plane that the Syria side offered a “serious apology” and acknowledged their mistake. He then rebuffed these statements during a press briefing in Ankara, noting that he is not aware of any apology.

Turkey’s reaction to Syria’s hostilities against Syrian rebels close to the Turkish border, unsurprisingly, has been one of knee-jerk condemnation and turning Assad into a punching bag. It was after pro-Assad demonstrators burned Turkish flag in front of Turkish diplomatic missions, Erdoğan unveiled a set of sanctions against Syrian regime back in 2011. Erdoğan’s cold-tempered and calm reaction to the situation stands in contrast to the relative vocal voice Turkey raised in any action of Assad Ankara considered hostile.

Erdoğan’s calmness illustrated a prevailing sense of suspicion and confusion reigned in Ankara, where officials are trying to understand which side is to blame for the incident. Both Turkey and Syria are now groping for ways to salvage their national pride in the most effective way.

Among other things, one of the reasons of Turkey’s calmness could be Turkey’s possible mistake in the entire situation. “What was Turkey’s warplane doing in Syria’s airspace,” a Turkish journalist asked furious Erdoğan in the press conference, without getting a reply.

U.S., who used every opportunity to bash the Syrian regime, also remained silent on the issue. US State Department spokeswoman said they discussed the issue with their Turkish allies but said “let Turks speak out.”

Is it possible for a state not to know for a long time who shot its plane and if its plane violated its neighbor’s airspace or not? And is it possible that U.S. remains silent when its chief ally’s warplane is shot down by a regime, which the U.S. wants to see dead?

At least good news is that Turkey and Syria won’t turn this unfortunate incident into a wider battle.

Hurray

Many thanks to Foreign Policy magazine for putting me in a list of 100 Twitter users who usually tweet about foreign policy and international politics. FP makes this list every year and yours truly is honored to be in this year’s list along with other journalists, pundits, politicians who are really an authority in their field. Here is the full list of FP Twitterati and you can start following them one by one to make sense of the blizzard of information on foreign policy every day.

Syrian rebels no heroes

Syria is heading toward a civil war something sadly no one has yet could convincingly predict. The situation on the ground remains as grim as ever with growing number of a civilian death toll reaching to alarmingly high levels.

Syria is not a country where unpopular ruler and his combat army are killing people demanding freedom in peaceful demonstrations. The bloody violence there is largely due to a ruthless battle between army of the Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad and thousands of ex-army soldiers and officers, estimated at 10,000 or so.

What makes Assad more brutal than his opponents is his army's indiscriminate shelling and ruthless pursuit of rebels without particular concern for civilian causalities. Witnesses could recount hundreds of episodes in which the regime's army had been heavily shelling and bombing highly populated areas in a bid to root out a dozen militants. Reports of international institutions, including the UN, suggested that killings of women and children are rampant and detained people have been subject to torture, some even being tortured to death.

The video I posted here clearly shows how shelling wreaks havoc a district in Syria's central province of Homs. There is no indication whether or not civilians are still living in those residences yet similar situations are true for many cities where Assad's army has kept pounding for over a year. Activists say the death toll has already reached to 13,000 and nearly half a million people have been internally displaced with some fleeing to neighboring countries such as Jordan and Turkey.

I would like to highlight another story, in which Syrian rebels sets up a British journalist and his colleagues to be killed by the regime's army in Syria near the Lebanese border. This, rebels planned, would draw international condemnation against Assad. 

What existing ideology, religion or culture would condone such a deplorable act and a killing of innocent civilians to make an unfair and certainly immoral gain against your opponent. This is not to say that all Syrian rebels are heartless as those militants but this is only one small part of many "not-so-good stories" we have heard about them.

Western nations, activists and the media had also glorified rebels in Libya and we all had witnessed how they eventually treated with late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

While the world has fixed its gaze to see how the battle turns out in upcoming weeks in Syria and if the rebels have a chance to pick up a momentum out of this deadly stalemate to unseat Assad and his brutal regime, my concern is how many more civilians will be killed in the course of fighting for a palace in Damascus. 

Instead of working hell-bent to oust Assad, which is a desirable yet no easy task, major powers including Turkey and Qatar, should focus to secure the ceasefire and work out a political solution that works best for the both sides. Plan proposed by the UN mediator Kofi Annan was the best one but neither Russia nor Turkey were successful, even eager, in urging Assad and the rebels to stop fighting.

How to push Turkey to recognize Armenian genocide?

In years, April 24 of 2012 has been one of the calmest anniversary day of World War I-era killings of Armenians in 1915, which Armenians call genocide.

In sharp contrast to previous years, where Turkey invested much diplomatic effort in Western countries to push politicians to avoid uttering the word "genocide" while marking the 1915 tragedy, April 24 this year is silent. In previous years, Armenians worldwide were pushing the issue forward while Turkey was defiant, wasting too much of its energy and time for this. But no doubt Armenians are working tooth and nail to make a massive push in 2015, in the 100th anniversary of the tragedy, that will become a huge headache for Turkey and its allies. 

Armenian genocide is not a certified, proved and commonly accepted axiom like Holocaust or Rwandan genocide. It is also different from deliberate and open genocides such as Chinese mass killings by Japan in 1930s, Nazi Holocaust in Poland or French atrocities in Algeria. In all of these cases, a foreign invading army deliberately and systematically killed their enemies, regardless of their gender or age. 1915 tragedy is different and more light needs to be shed on this particular event to fully understand this piece of history. The primary reason why 1915 tragedy is not openly debated or discussed in public is both Armenia’s and Turkey’s refusal to do so. Turkey instead urges historians, researchers to investigate the matter and pledges to open its archives for such an initiative. It earlier said it is ready to accept whatever historians, also from Armenia, come up with as a result of the research.

Armenia says researching this matter will dilute the issue of genocide and will hurt feelings of relatives of victims. This is astonishing. What about feelings of Khojaly survivors, who have seen men, women and children killed in front of their eyes just only 20 years ago by Armenian forces in Western Azerbaijan? Why do Armenians today deny that such a tragedy even took place? Do Azerbaijanis feelings count when Armenians question one of the worst massacres in the post-Cold War period?

The matter is largely have to do with national pride of both states, much less what really happened in 1915 in eastern Turkey. It is simply unacceptable for Turkey to spin stories it has taught its students about the heroic struggle of its nationals during the War of Independence. Domestic politics also played a key role in blocking the discussion of such a sensitive issue and most nationalist political groups in Turkey are exploiting Azerbaijan’s war with Armenia to block such debates. But what to do?

The road map is simple: Turkey will be more open and compromising if Armenia decides to withdraw its troops from occupied Azerbaijani territories. It will create an unprecedented opportunity for Turkey and Armenia to bury a century-long hostilities and eventually openly debate what happened in 1915. In this case, Turkey won’t face nationalist backlash at home and pressure from Azerbaijan to compromise on this issue.

Turks and Azerbaijanis point to atrocities committed by Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh in early 1990s while they are trying to counter Armenian genocide claims. Occupation in Karabakh remains the biggest obstacle to solve this thorny genocide issue peacefully and rapidly. It should also be remembered that Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process in 2009, which also included the establishing of a commission made up of historians tasked with investigating the tragedy, collapsed due to the brewing nature of Armenian occupation of some 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory.

Unless Armenia ends its occupation of Western Azerbaijan, there is little hope, if any, Armenians and Turks will frankly discuss what happened a century ago and face their truly painful history where everyone suffered to a certain degree.

Why can't Turkey rescue its missing journalists in Syria?

It would definitely be unfair to level criticisms against the Turkish government for failing to spot the whereabouts of two missing Turkish journalists from Turkey's Milat daily and Gerçek Hayat magazine. But Turkey's refusal to talk to Syrian authorities may partially explain why the journalists are still missing.

The journalists went missing a month ago and many rumors surfaced regarding the fate of these journalists. Turkey's state news agency then claimed the journalists were handed down to the Syrian intelligence by Shabiha militias in Idlib. It was not confirmed by the Turkish government. 

It was not smart on the side of journalists to travel to Syria. One of my colleagues told me that one of the missing journalists are known as popular critic of Assad and has been an activist both in Syria and in Turkey for years. It is not surprising that Assad regime categorized him and jailed when they had a chance.

Although Turkish diplomats said 25 days ago that they have contacted their Syrian counterparts regarding the journalists, there have not been any statements in this respect almost for weeks.

Part of the problem -- and I underline the word "part" here -- is Turkey's quick dumping of Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad. It is not surprising that Assad is a liar and very good at deceiving his counterparts and making virtuoso maneuvers that would favor his regime in the face of a 13-month bloody uprising in his country.

But is it really the reason of not talking to him? Is being honest in negotiations an essential and necessary part of diplomatic talks? Diplomacy is itself an art of manipulation and an overture through a range of ways, including deception, to gain a favorable outcome. This is what Assad has been doing all along. Turkey was expecting a different treatment and was offended when Assad didn't honor his promises to Turkey. Instead of blaming itself for being too naive and trusting, Turkey accused Assad of being dishonest.

There is a good saying in Turkey: We are Muslims, we could be fooled but we are never fooling. But should it be applicable to state-to-state relations where a single mistake could lead to a war? Should not be diplomats, with all the intelligence at their disposal, be calculating pragmatists?

Ironically, Turkey even talked to Tehran to spot the missing journalists in Syria.  

In the heyday of conflict in Libya last year, Turkey secured the release of four The New York Times journalists, including late Anthony Shadid who told me he is very thankful for Turkey's help in his release. Another journalist Turkey could rescue from Libya was Guardian reporter Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. Abdul-Ahad told me Turkish government was more than helpful and directly involved in the process of his release. Turkey's help was also key in rescuing two German journalists and an American hiker jailed in Iran. It was all possible thanks to Turkey's ability to talk to everybody.

Many in Turkey have started raising serious doubts about Turkey's policies regarding Syria and Turkish diplomats are fiercely countering criticisms, labeling critics as "extensions of Baath regime" in Turkey.

When I inquire government proponents what the essential part of Turkey's Syria policy is, most of the answers include Turkey's shift of policy from standing by Assad to abandoning him. But is it really an effective policy in the case of Syrian regime who is turning a blind eye to sanctions leave alone the diplomatic isolation? This is a survivor regime for four decades that has gone through thick and thin of war, domestic rebellion and international pressure. Defying international community is what it is best at.

In the absence of alternative policies, the most effective way of handling Assad regime would be maintaining dialogue and urging him, no matter what, to stop violence and immediately implement reforms. Turkey is a country which was about to help Israel and Syria strike a historic deal regarding the Golan Heights. All of a sudden, these two countries are now Turkey's enemies. That was of course not Turkey's choice. But Turkey must understand that states may be morally correct in condemning domestic violence but it serves no purpose but severing ties and being unable to help tackle the issue. 

Talking to Syria was Turkey's single most effective and strong weapon and leverage. Turkey used it by throwing it away. 

At least we should be cheerful that the missing journalists are safe and healthy.

Peace in Syria goes through Assad not his departure

What should we do now? This is the most frequently asked question among diplomats who suck at diplomacy are dealing with a-year long violence in Syria that claimed lives of nearly 10,000 people. 

This is what a perfect conundrum looks like. Turkey, the most powerful state in the region critical of Syrian regime, unable to act except harboring Free Syrian Army leadership in southern Turkey, bordering with its former ally Syria. Arab states, worried over Iran’s rising influence in Syria and possible instability spilling over their countries, are uncertain whether or not to arm opposition fighters. The West, without any major stakes in Syria, understands the necessity to act to stop the violence in the country but doesn’t know how this could be realized. While Turkey, Arab nations and the West were counting Assad’s days of tenure last year, they have already abandoned the idea of post-Assad era anytime soon.

No need to blame Russia or China for blocking UN resolutions on Syria in the UN Security Council. Time will show that their malicious act in fact would benefit both Syria and its neighbors.

The chief culprit in this deadlock are states who misread the situation on the ground, underestimated Assad’s power and gave false hopes to the embattled Syrian opposition.

It was clear from the beginning that Assad will wield its army, one of the most powerful one in the region, to crush the uprising. Defeating Syrian army is virtually impossible no matter how well-armed Syrian rebels are and it could only be possible either through foreign military intervention or mass defections from the army. Defections happen when prospective defecting soldiers believe that they will be harbored and supported. But what they faced was undelivered promises and Syria’s killing machine that was turning more merciless every day.

States then claimed Assad’s days are numbered, building on a hope that defections will continue and he will resign under the heat of growing pressure. They definitely could not recall neighboring Iraq’s experience with Saddam. No neighbor, including Iran, gave hand to Saddam’s Iraq and he was defiant until his death. Why would not this be the case in Syria when there are countries ready to help it survive such as Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Russia?

Turkey was the most important actor that could help Syria handle the situation but failed to do so. Turkey blames Assad for not living up to his promises of withdrawing troops from cities. But Assad and Turkey never agreed that he will withdraw troops and end violence. He told Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who spent 6 hours with him on Aug. 9 last year, that he will end military operations once the security in cities are restored. Davutoğlu balked at this idea and said reforms and maintaining security must go hand in hand. Turkey then realized that Assad’s killing machine continued despite 6-hour marathon talks and Turkish leaders were felt betrayed. Turkey behaved prematurely in swiftly abandoning Assad and lost its most important leverage.

Another unfair accusation was when Turkey and Western nations accused Assad of being slow in reforms. But this was not the issue; the discussion should have centered on how to deal with the situation while the killings continue on both sides. Turkey is unable to change its coup-era constitution for almost 30 years and it could only this week bring coup leaders before court. Reforms take time and in the face of violence across the country, it is naivete to expect them to yield any tangible results. And let’s be honest, Assad made many reforms.

Instead of tantalizing armed opposition against Assad, Turkey and world powers could have drafted a road map for Syria and ensure Assad that they will help Syria in its peaceful transition to democracy. By encouraging Syria’s armed opposition, world made a strategic error and basically sent a lamb to fight against a wolf while it repeatedly said it won't intervene. 

But what to do now?

Syria is now under Iran’s influence. This is not because it is an evil regime but because only Iran is backing the Assad regime. Staying engaged with Assad throughout the entire process could have made Syria more cooperative and put it out of Iran’s orbit.

There is still an ample opportunity today to stop violence and push Assad to make sweeping reforms, implement them immediately with real, tangible steps and avoid raging fighting across the country that sits atop sectarian fault lines. UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s plan is promising. If Syria lives up to its promise to cease fighting by April 12, states must rush to Syria’s help in securing peaceful transition to a different political era that will benefit both Syrian authorities and the opposition.

Military intervention should be shelved permanently. Intervening into a country to stop possible civil war is damaging more. War’s death toll is usually more than most of civil wars. Diplomacy is the only viable path to peace in Syria -- and it doesn't include arming rebels or encouraging them to display "brave fighting for dignity." If peace is ever possible in Syria, it will be through talking to Assad not demanding his departure.