Συρία , Τουρκία 8 Οκτωβρίου 2019

Η Συρία μπορεί να γίνει το Βιετνάμ της Τουρκίας

Οι τουρκικές δυνάμεις ενδέχεται να προελάσουν στη Συρία με την αλαζονεία, όπως ο Κόκκινος Στρατός εισέβαλε στο Αφγανιστάν ή οι Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες μπήκαν στο Βιετνάμ. Όπως και η Μόσχα και η Ουάσιγκτον έμαθαν, η είσοδος ήταν πολύ πιο εύκολη από την έξοδο», αναφέρει σε ανάλυσή του ο Michael Rubin του American Enterprise Institute.
Σε άρθρο του στο National Interest, εκφράζει την εκτίμηση πως ο Ερντογάν μπορεί να πιστεύει πως ένα κτύπημα κατά των Κούρδων και η κατάσχεση του πετρελαίου τους είναι μια νίκη για την Τουρκία, ωστόσο αυτό είναι λάθος. «Απλά ανοίγει την πόρτα για έναν πόλεμο καταστροφής που η Τουρκία δεν μπορεί να αντέξει και που τελικά θα μπορούσε να χάσει», αναφέρει.
«Ο Ερντογάν μπορεί να είναι αισιόδοξος, αλλά θα μπορούσε να πέσει σε μια παγίδα. Τα τουρκικά drones μπορoύν να της προσδώσουν ποιοτικό στρατιωτικό πλεονέκτημα σε βουνά και αγροτικές περιοχές, αλλά μπορεί να έχουν λιγότερη χρησιμότητα στις πόλεις της βόρειας Συρίας», αναφέρει ο Rubin, προσθέτοντας: «Οι Κούρδοι έχουν μεγάλη εμπειρία μάχης επί του εδάφους. Εν τω μεταξύ, οι πρόσφατες πολιτικές εκκαθαρίσεις του Ερντογάν από τις ένοπλες δυνάμεις κάνουν τον τουρκικό στρατό σκιά του εαυτού του. Με τους Κούρδους αντάρτες που εισέρχονται οικειοθελώς στη Συρία κατόπιν αιτήματος της Τουρκίας στο πλαίσιο της προηγούμενης ειρηνευτικής συμφωνίας, οι Κούρδοι της Συρίας απλώς δεν έχουν χώρο να μετακινηθούν. Πριν από έναν αιώνα, οι τουρκικές δυνάμεις αποδεκάτισαν τους Αρμένιους, μετακινώντας τους στην έρημο μέχρι να πεθάνουν· οι Κούρδοι αρνούνται να είναι τα επόμενα θύματα. Η τουρκική εισβολή και η εθνοκάθαρση -ο δηλωμένος σκοπός της Τουρκίας είναι να εγκατασταθούν μερικά εκατομμύρια Αράβων στην περιοχή- θα προκαλέσουν εξέγερση στη βορειοανατολική Συρία και την Τουρκία».


«Ακόμη και αν ο τουρκικός στρατός έχει αρχικά κέρδη, το μεγαλύτερο λάθος του Ερντογάν μπορεί να είναι η πεποίθησή του ότι ένας αγώνας μεταξύ Τουρκίας και Συριακών Κούρδων θα παραμείνει περιορισμένος σε αυτό το πλαίσιο», σημειώνει μεταξύ άλλων.


Syria Could be Turkey’s Vietnam 
Erdoğan may believe striking a blow
against Kurds while confiscating their oil is a win for Turkey, but
he is wrong: He is simply opening the door for a war of attrition
that Turkey cannot afford and which it ultimately might lose.

by Michael Rubin

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s is
once again threatening to invade northeastern Syria and, late Sunday
night, President Donald Trump greenlighted a Turkish operation. While
Erdogan has threatened to send troops into the Kurdish-governed area
more than a dozen times before, this time he appears serious: His
economy is teetering, he suffered a blow to his prestige when the
opposition party won Istanbul twice, and he is in desperate need of a
distraction.

Erdoğan may talk about a terror threat
emanating from northern Syria, but he has yet to prove that one
exists. Quite the contrary: Not only were Syrian Kurds the most
effective indigenous fighting force against the Islamic State, there
is also overwhelming evidence that Turkey cooperated, profited from,
and at times coordinated with Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliates and the
Islamic State.

The Kurdish administered regions of
Syria are the most secure and tolerant within the country. Erdoğan’s
desire to conquer them has far less to do with supposed terrorism,
and more to do with a desire to expand Turkey’s borders, eradicate
the precedent of any Kurdish self-governance not subordinate to
Turkish dictates, and to grab local oil wells. Turkey occupied over
one-third of Cyprus more than forty-five years ago and now seeks to
loot its natural resources. It has ethnically cleansed Syria’s
Afrin district, and has opened civilian Turkish post offices in
Jarabulus, Syria, as it increasingly treats conquered territories as
its own. In Bashiqa and elsewhere, Turkey occupies outposts in Iraq
from which it refuses to leave. Erdoğan has spoken about reclaiming
territory from Greece and Bulgaria, and Turkish maps increasingly
include large chunks of territory belonging to Turkey’s neighbors.

Erdoğan believes conquest will be
easy. Trump has little desire to fight another Middle Eastern war
and, like Obama before him, tends to believe the assurances of
Erdoğan over evidence and the advice of his aides. Senior Trump
administration officials say privately the logic which Special Envoy
Jim Jeffrey operates under is that with withdrawal inevitable, any
promise he can solicit from Ankara is gaining something for nothing.
But even if Jeffrey does not give Turkey diplomatic cover, he is
correct that U.S. forces may evaporate in the face of a Turkish
onslaught.

Erdoğan may be cocky, but he could be
falling into a trap. Turkey’s drones may give it a qualitative
military edge in mountains and rural regions but may be of
substantially less utility in the northern Syrian cities if limiting
collateral damage is any concerns. The Kurds have extensive
experience fighting on the ground. Meanwhile, recent political purges
of the Turkish military make the Turkish Army a shell of its former
self. With Kurdish insurgents voluntarily going into Syria at
Turkey’s request as part of the previous peace agreement, Syrian
Kurds simply have no place to go. A century ago, Turkish forces
slaughtered the Armenians by marching them into the desert to their
deaths; the Kurds refuse to be the sequel. Turkish invasion and
ethnic cleansing—Turkey’s stated purpose is to settle a couple
million Arabs in the region—will spark insurgency in northeastern
Syria and across Turkey.

Even if the Turkish military makes
initial gains, Erdoğan’s greatest mistake may be his belief that a
fight between Turkey and Syrian Kurds will remain limited to that.
Turkey has engaged in proxy warfare in the Gaza Strip, Libya, and
political warfare against Saudi Arabia. Erdoğan may champion press
freedom in the Washington Post but, in reality, he is its greatest
opponent. While Saudi Arabia’s murder of Jamal Khashoggi is
abhorrent, Erdoğan’s interest has only been using the episode as a
means to delegitimize Saudi Arabia in his quest to acquire the prime
leadership role the Islamic world and, ultimately, stake claim to
internationalization under the Organization of Islamic Cooperation of
Mecca and Medina.

On my last visit to northeastern Syria,
I was surprised by the presence of Saudi defense and intelligence
officials. As proxy warfare spreads across the region, it is
reasonable to guess that Saudi authorities might provide weaponry and
intelligence to Syrian Kurds to bleed Turkey, if not destabilize the
country internally. As Erdoğan and Turkish intelligence proxies like
the private contractor firm SADAT have supported Hamas, Israeli
authorities, too, might believe that they have an interest in
supporting Turkey’s Kurds militarily. So, too, might Greece and the
Assad regime in Syria, both of which helped and supported Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan in the past for much the
same realpolitik reasons. Syrian Kurds have suffered at the hands of
both Assad and Turkey but say that if forced to choose between the
two, then they would choose Assad over Erdoğan any day.

Turkish forces might march into Syria
with the arrogance that the Red Army invaded Afghanistan, or the
United States entered Vietnam. As both Moscow and Washington both
learned, getting in was far easier than getting out.

Erdoğan may believe striking a blow
against Kurds while confiscating their oil is a win for Turkey, but
he is wrong. He is simply opening the door for a war of attrition
Turkey cannot afford and which it ultimately might lose.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at
the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Reuters

ΠΗΓΗ:  nationalinterest.org