Syria puts double whammy on
Turkey By M K Bhadrakumar
The shooting down of a Turkish fighter
aircraft by Syria on Friday has become a classic
case of coercive diplomacy.
A Turkish F-4
Phantom fighter aircraft disappeared from radar
screens shortly after taking off from the Erhach
airbase in Malatya province in southeastern Turkey
and entered Syrian airspace. According to Syrian
Arab News Agency (SANA), air-defense forces shot
down the plane 1 kilometer off the coast from the
Syrian port city of Latakia. A Turkish
search-and-rescue aircraft rushed to the area of
the crash but came under Syrian fire and had to
pull out.
The Russian naval base at Tartus
is only 90 kilometers by road from Latakia. The
incident took place on a day that Syrian Foreign
Minister Walid al-Moualem was on a visit to
Russia.
It also happened within a week of
Britain staging a high-profile
publicity event to
humiliate Russia by canceling the insurance of a
ship when it was off the coast of Scotland en
route to Syria from Russia's Baltic port in
Kaliningrad. British Foreign Secretary William
Hague scrambled to take credit for that in the
House of Commons.
The shooting down of the
Turkish jet also coincides with a hardening of the
Russian position on Syria. Moscow refused to
comment on the incident when Turkish Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu telephoned his Russian
counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Sunday seeking
understanding.
Itar-Tass quoted the
Russian Foreign Ministry as saying the two
diplomats "discussed the situation around Syria,
including within the context of the incident with
a Turkish fighter jet". Plainly put, Moscow was
unwilling to treat Friday's incident in total
isolation. Nor was it prepared to censure
Damascus.
Unrealistic demand
Indeed, the Russian stance has perceptibly
hardened in the past week in response to a recent
series of provocative rhetoric by the United
States and London's stage-managed event on June 18
to smear Moscow's stance on Syria.
On
Thursday, Lavrov bluntly warned that Russia would
not countenance a replay of the Libyan scenario in
Syria: "A replication of the Libyan scenario in
Syria won't be admitted, and we [Russia] can
guarantee this." Lavrov was dismissive of Western
demands for the resignation of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, calling them "unrealistic". He
insisted that "at least 50 percent" of Syrian
people supported Assad's party in the recent
parliamentary elections.
Again, on Sunday,
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov told
Interfax: "We have no doubt that the imposition of
any kind of regime change in Damascus from
outside, and the one-sided support of the
opposition, is a straight path to plunge the
country into an abyss of full civil war."
One major reason for this hardening of the
Russian stance was Britain's publicity stunt on
June 18. Moscow hit back by deciding that the ship
carrying Russian helicopters to Syria, which was
turned back after its insurance was cut, will
resume its journey under escort from the Russian
port of Murmansk after changing its flag to the
Russian Standard.
The ship is apparently
carrying up to 15 Mil Mi-25 helicopters that were
repaired in Kaliningrad. The helicopters were
originally bought by Assad's late father and
predecessor Hafez al-Assad at the end of the
1980s. What made Moscow furious was that both
Hague and his US counterpart, Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton, tried to propagate stories
that the ship carried fresh arms supplies to
Syria. Lavrov said:
"We are not going to make any
excuses, because we did not breach anything. We
violated neither international law nor UN
Security Council resolutions nor our national
legislation on export control ... We supply
armaments under contracts, which imply
purchase by Syria of primarily anti-aircraft
means from us, which may be needed only in case
of external aggression against the Syrian
state. [Emphasis
added.]
Interestingly, Lavrov said
this on Sunday after the shooting down of the
Turkish jet.
Momentary violation
It is against the totality of this
background that the Syrian action against the
Turkish aircraft needs to be weighed. Damascus has
a reputation for "poker diplomacy". It may have
conveyed a host of signals to Turkey (and its
Western allies):
Syria's air-defense system is effective and
lethal;
There will be a price to pay if Turkey keeps
escalating its interference in Syria;
Turkey's military superiority has its limits;
The Syrian crisis can easily flare up into a
regional crisis.
Yet Syria's official
stance over Friday's incident has been very
restrained, almost apologetic. To be sure, Syria
cooperated with Turkey to locate the wreckage of
the aircraft. Damascus admitted with a straight
face that it was a regrettable incident but an
inadvertent act and said the two countries should
put it behind them. Syria meant no harm and the
incident happened only because Syrian forces were
under orders to shoot down foreign military
aircraft that violated national airspace.
Turkey, of course, is fuming, knowing full
well that Syria is a deep player. The Turkish
government went into a huddle. Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan was expected to make a
statement in parliament Tuesday. President
Abdullah Gul said, "It is not possible to cover
over a thing like this; whatever is necessary will
be done."
Foreign Minister Davutoglu,
however, has rejected the Syrian version of the
incident. He said: "Our plane was shot down in
international airspace, 13 nautical miles from
Syria ... The plane did not show any sign of
hostility toward Syria and was shot down about 15
minutes after having momentarily violated Syrian
airspace." He dismissed Syria's plea that it did
not know the plane was Turkish.
Davutoglu
claimed that Turkey had intercepted radio
communications from the Syrian side suggesting
that they knew it was a Turkish aircraft. "We have
both radar info and Syria's radio communications."
There was no warning from Syria before the attack,
he said. "The Syrians knew full well that it was a
Turkish military plane and the nature of its
mission."
Conceivably, Syria wanted Turkey
to know that its decision to shoot down the jet
was deliberate. An exacerbation of Turkish-Syrian
tensions is in the cards. Turkey has since invoked
Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization's charter, which says: "The Parties
[member countries] will consult together whenever,
in the opinion of any of them, the territorial
integrity, political independence or security of
any of the Parties is threatened." A meeting of
NATO ambassadors has been scheduled for Tuesday in
Brussels.
Turkey is calibrating a strong
response to the Syrian act. But a challenging time
lies ahead for Erdogan. First and foremost, his
interventionist policy in Syria does not enjoy the
support of Turkey's opposition parties.
An obscure fracas Knowing
Erdogan's ability to whip up nationalistic
sentiments, the opposition parties quickly
concurred that Turkey must respond to incident.
But they point out that Erdogan needlessly
provoked Damascus and has destroyed Turkey's
friendly ties with Syria.
The leader of
the main opposition Republican People's Party
(CHP), Kemal Kilicdarglu, pointedly asked on
Sunday after meeting with Erdogan: "Why have
Turkey and Syria come to the brink of war?" The
CHP's deputy head Faruk Logoglu, who is a
distinguished former diplomat (ex-head of the
Foreign Ministry and former ambassador to the US),
said:
"We are very critical of the way AKP
[Erdogan's Justice and Development Party] is
handling the situation. There should be no
outside intervention of any sort and any
intervention must be mandated by a resolution of
the UN Security Council. In the absence of such
a resolution, any intervention would be
unlawful."
In short, the Turkish
opposition will be free to dissociate from any
response that Erdogan decides on, especially if
things go haywire downstream.
Second,
aside from an enthusiastic statement of support of
Turkey and condemnation of Syria by British
Foreign Secretary Hague, the permanent members of
the United Nations Security Council have refrained
from taking sides, although Davutoglu spoke to
them personally. Everyone is counseling Ankara to
show restraint, including UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon.
Third, Article 4 of the NATO
treaty stops short of the explicit mention of
possible armed responses cited in Article 5. The
NATO countries would know that Turkish aircraft
have been repeatedly violating Syrian airspace in
the recent weeks and Damascus has now retaliated.
The reaction by German Foreign Minister
Guido Westerwelle was that he was "greatly
worried" by the incident and would urge a
"thorough investigation"; he then welcomed
Turkey's "cool-headed reaction".
But the
point is, even within Turkey, there is skepticism
about what really happened. The veteran Turkish
editor Yousuf Kanli wrote:
"Did the plane violate Syrian
airspace? ... On the other hand, why was the
Turkish reconnaissance plane flying so low, in
an area close to a Russian base, and why did it
keep on going in and out of Syrian airspace so
many times in the 15-minute period before it was
downed? Was it testing the air-defense
capabilities of Syria (or the Russian base)
before an intervention which might come later
this year?"
Not many NATO member
countries would want to get involved in the
obscure fracas. At best, Turkey can expect
statements of solidarity, but equally, Damascus
would also have estimated carefully that the
probability of any concerted NATO action on the
ground is low.
Fourth, the painful reality
is that Turkey's most ardent allies in the present
situation, who have encouraged Ankara on the path
of intervention in Syria, are of absolutely no use
today - Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They are nowhere
in a position to engage Syria militarily. Turkey,
in short, is left all by itself to hit back at
Syria.
Fifth, any Turkish military steps
against Syria would be a highly controversial move
regionally. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari
(who, interestingly, visited Moscow recently for
consultations over Syria) voiced the widely held
regional opinion when he warned of a "spillover
the crisis into neighboring countries", including
Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey itself.
Finally, the UN has announced the holding
of an international conference on Syria next
Saturday in Geneva. Besides, Clinton is due to
visit Russia early this week and Syria is likely
to figure in her talks with Lavrov. Ankara cannot
afford to take precipitate steps on the eve of the
conference. At any rate, Russia has warned against
any foreign intervention in Syria - and that
precludes any military move by Turkey.
War by other means The Syrian
Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Sunday: "Syria
was merely exercising its right and sovereign duty
and defense. There is no enmity between Syria and
Turkey, but political tension [exists] between the
two countries. What happened was an accident and
not an assault as some like to say, because the
plane was shot while it was in Syrian airspace and
flew over Syrian territorial waters."
The
taunt is a bitter pill to swallow for a sultan.
Ankara now claims it has radio intercepts to show
that the order to shoot down the aircraft came
from Damascus knowing fully well it had a Turkish
flag while on a "a routine training flight and
undertaking a national radar-system test in
respect of national security over recent
developments on the Mediterranean coast".
Erdogan has had time before Tuesday's
meeting to finesse some vaziyeti kurtaran
bahane (which translates from Turkish as
"face-saving excuse") to maintain his dignity and
prestige in front of the parliament and the
nation. But then, this is a shame he brought down
on himself, since all protagonists would know that
the Turkish jet was undertaking a risky mission
off the Russian naval base of Tartus.
The
influential Turkish commentator Murat Yetkin wrote
on Monday, "It is clear that the incident will
result in increased pressure on Syria and its
supporters, mainly Russia. But what Bashar
al-Assad cares for seems to be keeping his chair
and the Russian naval base in Tartus strong,
whatever the cost, also knowing that neither the
Turkish government, nor the opposition and people,
want war."
Yetkin was sure that "Turkey
will do everything to make Syria pay for the
attack", but "payment doesn't mean war, there are
other options".
In reality, Damascus has
put a double whammy on Turkey. It not only lost a
Phantom and its two pilots but is now under
compulsion to take the loss calmly, exercising
self-restraint.
Ambassador M K
Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included
the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and
Turkey.
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