America's "Ostrich Policy" in Syria

In the end, this happened too. Russian warplanes, under the pretext of bombing DAESH positions, began striking the training camps of the Syrian opposition. According to the reports or claims coming in, Russian planes, since they were at it anyway, under this pretext also bombed Turkmen and Arab settlements. This development undoubtedly indicates that a new phase has been entered in the Syrian crisis, which has been going on for nearly five years.

In fact, it can be said that with some of the risky steps Russia has taken in recent years, a new era has been entered not only in Syria but in international relations.

NATO and Western countries, which could not raise their voices when Russia disregarded Georgia's territorial integrity, experienced a great shock at Russia's annexation of Crimea. Yet Ukraine's future had been clear since Georgia.

In these days when the claims that Russia has seized control of radar and anti-aircraft systems in Syria, is building military bases and is trying to settle in Syria, claims which are among the foremost topics discussed lately in the transatlantic world, have been confirmed, we are also witnessing the worried statements of "some senior officials" from the Pentagon.

Turkey, which as a member of the Western alliance criticized that its Western allies were pursuing a passive and ambivalent foreign policy on Syria and that if the policies continued this way, situations that could endanger the Western alliance and, moreover, international peace and security could develop in Syria, is about to be proven right once again, unfortunately.

The truth is that the US administration has fallen into a great impasse in its Middle East policies, especially its Syria policy. On the surface it has an activity under the name of war against DAISH. But the fact that, from this hour onward, the declared visible target of everyone who is a rival of one another, or even at war with one another, is DAISH shows that DAISH has become a battlefield unseen in history. DAISH has turned into a target, an enemy, struck by adversaries who do not want to meet one another, a phenomenon that now needs to be named differently. But it is very clear for the US: war with DAISH is the name of evading responsibility in Syria. Because everyone now knows that the source of the problem in Syria is not DAISH but the Assad regime. DAISH is itself a result of this regime.

Those in the US who criticize the Obama administration's policy of avoiding taking this responsibility in the Middle East compare Obama to Gorbachev, who managed the process of the Soviet Union's dissolution.

Yet Obama's political preferences recall not so much Gorbachev as Neville Chamberlain, who served as Prime Minister of Britain right before the Second World War. Chamberlain is not remembered as a very positive profile in circles that read political history. The reason for this is that Chamberlain met the revisionist policies of Germany, which was trying to break the chains of Versailles before the Second World War, with a "Policy of Appeasement." While Chamberlain thought that by tolerating some of Germany's "naughtiness," Germany could come to a more balanced line, the Second World War broke out and Chamberlain's policy ended in fiasco.

To speak frankly, Obama's policies toward Russia resemble Chamberlain's Appeasement Policy and seem pregnant with similar results. Those in the US who criticize Obama's policies have in any case already given these policies a name similar to Chamberlain's Appeasement Policy: the Ostrich Policy.

The Obama administration keeps claiming, with its head in the sand, that there is no problem in Syria or that the problem said to exist is not as big as supposed, but thanks to Obama's "Ostrich Policy," Syria has turned into a complete ring of fire both for Syrians and for the international community. The reason for this is that the US, sticking its head in the sand at the moment of risk, with a perfectly ostrich logic feels the rest of it to be safe.

At the point reached, Russia, which for the first time in the post-Cold War period has seized so strongly the chance of being directly involved in the processes in the Middle East, appears to have built a kind of mandate regime in Syria.

Let us not pass without stating that history notes that Russia, which at one time acted with an effort to produce an anti-Western discourse, is using the international system and its institutions, which it claims have become a tool for imposing Western world's forms of domination, more mercilessly than the Western world it criticizes. In fact, Russia's effort to turn Syria into a dominion shows clearly and nicely that all macro-discourse levels in international relations conceal a desire for domination.

Iran's stance in this process is even more interesting. We follow with astonishment that Iran, which sat at the table and found common ground over the nuclear negotiations, which had become a matter of honor for itself, with the Western countries it accuses of trying to overthrow its regime, has taken an uncompromising, indeed pro-oppressor stance in Syria, which has become a matter of honor for Muslims.

If a solution and stability are wanted in Syria, it is by now clear as day that this cannot be with Assad. Despite this, insisting on Assad requires accepting a long-lasting instability of the region as well. Frankly, this insistence gives the impression that it is precisely this civil-war order that is the sustainable order desired for the region. Neither Russia nor Iran nor some of the actors in the region have any complaint about this disorder.. They have no search for the blood to stop, for stability to come and for people to find peace. They think that it has no cost for themselves on the face of it, but this is a politics whose cost in the medium and long term is very heavy for everyone.

On the other hand, the US administration, which once again stepped back in the face of the impositions of Russia and Iran and voices, even if in a low voice, the demand that Assad be brought to the negotiating table, needs to remember as soon as possible the bitter experience Chamberlain left behind, for the future of both Syria and the international community.