Looking at foreign policy from the downed plane

The reaction Turkey displayed in the new problem area created by the Turkish plane shot down by Syria also showed that the new Turkish diplomacy has a complexity that is not easily predictable. This complexity, it must be admitted, is one that those who run Turkey's foreign policy have recently worked with fine craftsmanship, and which lends a taste of statecraft at critical moments. More plainly, Turkey is displaying a strategic mind far from being a country whose impulsive reaction to having a plane shot down can be calculated in advance.

Instead of reacting immediately as soon as the incident occurred, the cautious statements made after meetings held hours later showed that Turkey was meeting the problem at an entirely unexpected level. Turkey's reluctance or hesitation about going to war is of course not because it thinks it lacks the power against Syria. Even to debate this is absurd. Essentially, calling for a measure to be taken against the brutality of the Syrian regime does not mean eagerly rushing into war. There are a great many things to be done before reaching the point of war, and Turkey's claim is that not even those paths have yet been tried.

First, it is quite clear that it is for the good of the whole world and the region that Syria's problem be resolved within itself and not turn into a war between countries. Second, such a war would hand Syria, on a golden platter, the chance to resolve the legitimacy problem it has fallen into because of its own internal problem, thanks to a war Turkey would plunge into impulsively from the downed plane. Third, a war Turkey enters in this way would constitute an important pretext for the countries protecting and sheltering Syria to defend Syria. Moreover, these countries are not only Russia, Iran, and China, but could include some very surprising ones among them: such as Israel, the US, and some European countries.

It is clearly seen, and expressed, that the peoples of the Arab countries have a strong expectation that Turkey be more active on Syria. However, relying on this expectation, it is not at all certain that, as a result of a move Turkey might undertake alone, especially the rulers and public opinion would maintain the same positive reaction. This is a very complex equation but a practical problem. It is not out of the question that the matter could suddenly be turned into the image of a war between Turks and Arabs.

Unfortunately, the international community is still not sufficiently convinced that the situation in Syria, which is rapidly becoming Bosnia-like, is grave enough to require intervention. It is strange, but the downed plane crisis has provided Turkey an opportunity to explain this subject to international public opinion somewhat better. The message NATO gave as a result of the meeting it held at Turkey's request, as a statement parallel to Turkey's changing its rules of engagement, relieved Turkey to a degree.

That the need to establish a transitional administration came out of the Geneva meeting the day before yesterday was also a step in this direction. But truly, from this hour on, the paths that would return the opposition and the regime in Syria to the old situation as if nothing had happened are completely closed. Diplomatic searches will do nothing but increase the regime's massacres and the resistance, even counterattack capability, of the opposition, which is finding ever more means of arming. This means a situation in which the civil war continues to escalate and more Syrian blood is shed.

Still, during these diplomatic searches it is worth remembering that Russia's standing on Assad's side is not an ideological and inflexible stance. Russia is increasingly seeing how expensive its Syria policy has cost or will cost it in the Arab world. Faced with its relations with all the Arab countries being ruined for the sake of protecting Assad, it is compelled to look for situations in which it can count whatever way it turns out of the loss as profit. That is why it may not be surprising to see, in the coming days, situations in which Russia revises its Syria policy. We can recall that not long ago, in the UN Security Council vote on Iran's nuclear program, it voted against Iran, which it had defended heavily. Moreover, in the same vote Turkey had voted in favor of Iran despite the US. It should also be considered that the defensive performance Russia displays today for Syria plays a role strengthening its hand and increasing its bargaining power in its other demands, which it holds within other equations especially in Central Asia. Truly, in such a context we can foresee that Iran's stance of tying its own policy entirely to Assad will have an effect on it that is both surprising and ultimately more hurtful.

In short, the international equation concerning Syria is increasingly beginning to change. Turkey plays an important role in this equation's changing, but even so, the situation in Syria reaching this point is not Turkey's choice from the start but an inevitable situation caused by Assad. As some say, it is not at all a plan of the Gulf countries trying to topple the Assad regime in favor of Israel or against Iran, or a wish of Israel. In the end, Assadist or Baathist Syria, despite its strategic relations with Iran and its support for Hezbollah, never had an orientation or performance that would ultimately threaten Israel.

In fact this too is a separate and long subject. Were we not to see that, looking at the role the Syrian regime has played in Lebanon, this has been entirely in line with Israel's strategic vision since 1967, we would go on naively believing the Iran-Hezbollah-Israel story on this matter.

Yet it is worth reminding again that had Assad not chosen the path of suppressing the demonstrations with harsh and bloody interventions, neither America nor any of the Gulf countries would have found a social base for the support they gave to the opposition. For today the opposition in Syria, armed and unarmed, even if it receives support from nowhere else, has gained a sociological ground that cannot maintain its old relationship with Assad. The responsible party for this is not outside but within Syria itself; let us see this at last.