Turkey's troubles with Syria: Answer requires men, not missiles
by Lt. Andrew Self*

It is true that the Assad regime has made threats to the Turkish state and has used missiles on rebels near the Turkish border, even on occasion causing indirect damage to Turkish border towns such as Ceylanpınar. However, the realistic threat of the Assad regime using missiles against Turkey is small, and the real military answer to Turkey's growing problem with its neighbor to the south will require significant ground combat troops and not defensive missile systems.

The Assad regime faces an insurgent rebel force, that while factional, is making steady gains vis-à-vis the Assad regime in terms of territory, personnel and military equipment. The Syrian military is occupied with their current problem at hand; a cross-border missile attack against Turkey would only exacerbate their problem and bring the possibility of overt foreign intervention by a NATO-backed regional power. From a military and political standpoint, this makes the possibility of a Syrian attack on Turkey impractical, unlikely and strategically unsound.

Turkey's more pressing security concern is what will come in the wake of the Syrian revolution. Whether Assad falls completely from power or not, Syria will remain geographically and politically divided between Sunni-aligned rebels to the south and west, Alawite and Shi'a Assad loyalists and Iranian-backed populations around Damascus, and well-equipped Kurdish rebel groups to the north. To Turkey's direct south, Kurdish rebel groups including the Democratic Union Party (PYD) hold the cities of Efrin, Al-Darbasiyah, Al-Jawadiyah, Al-Ma'bada, Al-Malikiyah, Al-Qahtaniyah, Ali Kuz, Ashrafiyeh, Amida, Ayn al-Arab, Ain Diwar, Jindres, Ras al-Ayn, and Tall Tamroutright. These groups rejected the Syrian National Council's (SNC) attempts at unity, walking out of a conference in July in İstanbul, feeling that the Arabs did not adequately address Syrian Kurdish autonomy. These groups will not be willing to give up their territories in any post-Assad scenario. More likely, they will be key contenders in the sectarian power struggle that ensues.

This presents a profound problem for Turkey. Ankara has already made attempts to deal with the likely reality of a viable Syrian Kurdish entity, by exploiting a nascent but close relationship with the ever more autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraqi Kurdistan. Recent relations between Ankara and the KRG in Arbil have made serious improvements, based largely upon Ankara's troubles with an Iranian-backed Shi'a government in Baghdad and important oil interests associated with the Kirkuk-Ceylan oil pipeline.

In this new dynamic, Ankara and Arbil's interests seem to be symbiotic both politically and economically. What remains to be seen is to what extent Ankara can utilize Arbil to curb Kurdish autonomy, which may spill over into Turkey. Arbil has good relations with Syria's Kurds and has even provided military assistance and training to them. However, it is too soon to tell what Arbil's assistance will translate to in terms of political leverage favorable to Ankara. Most troubling to Ankara is the Syrian Kurdish PYD's significant ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the Kurdish terrorist group that has long defined Turkey's “Kurdish problem.”

Until now, Turkey has dealt with the PKK using counter-terrorism tactics and limited counter-insurgency military operations. In a post-Assad Syria, or even one in which the regime survives as a hobbled political entity, Turkey must be prepared for the prospect of a larger Kurdish insurgency than they have experienced to date. An armed and independent Syrian Kurdish faction to its south, coupled with an already well-established PKK network and a politically frustrated Kurdish population within Turkey, is the necessary recipe for an insurgency. This is Turkey's greatest threat, and this threat cannot be dealt with by the use of Patriot missiles.

Instead, Turkey needs to prepare for a prolonged counter-insurgency that will require significantly more infantry and combat arms personnel than are currently present in Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Urfa, Siirt and Mardin provinces. Turkey must take note of America's successes and failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. There, “boots on the ground” personnel spearheaded by an aggressive infantry and supported by an expansive intelligence apparatus engaging in political and social counter-insurgency activity, rather than explicitly military kinetic operations, proved most successful.

Expensive traditional military hardware such as Patriot missiles will only play a marginal role in this. True, the threat of Assad's missile arsenal getting into the hands of rebels is a possibility and one that Damascus has indeed contemplated. However, one mustn't forget that the most common and most lethal weapons in any insurgency are small arms. The Assad and Gaddafi regimes were relatively modernized and well equipped; however, they faced significant losses from a rebel force armed primarily with small arms. Turkey must improve its counter-insurgency capabilities, and the key to that will be men, not missiles.

Andrew Self, 2LT US Army, is a research intern at the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.