IS strikes as Turkey turns to Russia

For years, as an insurgency raged against the regime of Syrian President Bashar alAssad, Turkey turned a blind eye while rebels groups, including Islamic extremists, moved weapons and fighters across the Syrian-Turkish border. Jihadist groups like Islamic State established strong networks in Turkish towns to smuggle recruits and supplies into Syria.

Despite pleas from Western allies concerned about militant plots emanating from the border areas, the Turkish government felt that it could contain the jihadists and saw the toppling of Assad’s regime as its priority. But after Turkey was targeted with a series of bombings in mid-2015 linked to Islamic State, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began cracking down along the southern border and granted the United States access to military bases that would be used for air strikes against jihadist groups in Syria.

Even after the Turkish crackdown, Islamic State rarely claimed responsibility for attacks inside Turkey, which have killed more than 400 people since 2015 – unlike virtually any other country, where the group is quick to claim credit for any attack it has directed or even tangentially inspired. That changed on Jan. 2, when Islamic State claimed responsibility for the New Year’s Day assault on an Istanbul nightclub, which killed 39 people and injured dozens. The group described the nightclub gunman, who was captured on Jan. 16 after a two-week manhunt, as “a hero soldier of the caliphate.”

Islamic State’s public shift against Turkey began last summer, when the group’s leaders called on sympathizers to attack Turkish targets. In August, Erdogan’s government dispatched several hundred of its special forces troops into Syria, and launched air strikes to help Syrian rebels allied with Turkey capture territory near the border. The Turkish forces and their allies are fighting both Islamic State militants and Kurdish militias aligned with Washington.

In some ways, Islamic State is responding to the Turkish crackdown against it – Ankara’s efforts to seal its border, preventing the flow of weapons and jihadists through Turkish territory, and the Turkish military operation to clear jihadists from Syrian areas along the border.

More broadly, Islamic State is also lashing out at a new and burgeoning TurkishRussian alliance, which is one of the main factors reshaping the Syrian war today.

In late 2016, Turkey backed away from supporting Syrian rebels in Aleppo, which helped the Assad regime and its allies – including Russia, Iran and Shi’ite militias from Lebanon and Iraq – to force rebels from their strongholds in eastern Aleppo and regain full control of the city.

In mid-December, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was working with Turkish leaders to negotiate a new ceasefire between Assad and rebel groups, and to organize a fresh round of Syrian peace talks without Washington’s involvement. The talks are scheduled to start on Jan. 23 in Kazakhstan.

The Syrian conflict has turned into a proxy war that involves regional and world powers – including the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – whose interests sometimes overlap, but at other times lead to multiple conflicts. Soon after the war began in 2011, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United States started sending weapons and funds to rebel groups trying to topple Assad’s regime. More recently, Washington has shifted its focus to fighting Islamic State rather than ousting the Syrian regime. Assad’s two main backers, Russia and Iran, are mainly targeting rebel factions opposed to the regime, rather than trying to defeat Islamic State.

While Erdogan’s turn toward Russia put Turkey more firmly in the crosshairs of Islamic State, the policy also has had domestic ramifications. On Dec. 19, a 22-year-old off-duty police officer assassinated the Russian ambassador to Turkey at an art gallery in Ankara. The gunman shouted “God is great” and “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria!” during the attack, which was captured on video. The assassin was later killed in a shootout with Turkish secu- rity forces.

After the assassination, both Erdogan and Putin stressed that the murder would not impact the evolving Turkey-Russia relationship. And within days, the two leaders announced that they had brokered the latest ceasefire in Syria. Like previous ceasefires, it did not include Islamic State or other jihadist groups.

After the New Year’s Day attack on the Istanbul nightclub, Islamic State’s statement said the gunman had carried out the assault “in response to calls” from Baghdadi to target Turkey. The statement also referenced Turkey’s growing role in the Syrian war, warning: “The apostate Turkish government should know that the blood of Muslims spilled by its warplanes and artillery will ignite fire inside its own house.”

Turkish troops are trying to push Islamic State fighters from Al-Bab, a town north of Aleppo, and one of the jihadists’ last holdouts near the Turkish border. But battle is causing other complications and setting up a potential battle between Turkish-backed Syrian rebels and American- supported Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (known by its Kurdish acronym, YPG). The YPG is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of rebel groups, which is leading a ground offensive of 30,000 fighters to oust Islamic State from the city of Raqqa, capital of its self-proclaimed caliphate. The campaign is supported by U.S. air strikes and more than 500 special forces who are helping the rebels gain ground.

In late December, Turkish leaders complained that Washington was not providing similar air support to help Turkish troops advance in Al-Bab. Within days, Russia began coordinating with the Turkish military and carrying out air strikes in the area.

In flirting with Russia, Erdogan’s government is sending a message to the incoming Donald Trump administration that Ankara has other options if the United States continues its support of Syrian Kurdish factions. But as it gets closer to Russia and more deeply involved in fighting Islamic State, Turkey risks incurring the group’s wrath. A large number of sceptics have been wondering whether Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, would be able to meet the challenges the world’s topmost superpower faces. His conspicuous absence of experience in government and his pronounced arrogance are among various reasons cited as impediments in his path to success. However, it is not fair to either judge him prematurely or be pessimistic about his tenure.

Trump has been duly elected by the people of his country through a legitimate and acceptable electoral process and he thus certainly deserves to be seen in a positive light. The majority of his detractors are supporters of Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidential race, though many media polls gave her the edge till the very end. These supporters not only find it difficult to accept the verdict, but are determined to make things both unpleasant and difficult for the President, who definitely gives the impression of being a demagogue.

Trump’s greatest plus point is that he may have known powerful people in the past, but he has never been a part of the influential Washington lobby. Therefore, he would view things with a fresh mind and not through the prism of power brokers in DC. The existing mindsets need to be altered in order to actually bring about a change in the political arena, both inside and outside the United States. For most Washington based politicians, Russia is considered to be the biggest enemy of their country other than the ultras in West Asia. However, the Trump administration could effectively look at more serious threats posed by an emerging China and its allies. In this context, if the US needs to counter China’s growing influence, it requires fresh allies, Russia included. This is where the country’s foreign policy could undergo a vital change.

The 45th President is not a traditional politician, so has the proclivity of blurting out his thoughts freely, without coating his intentions in diplomatic language. He, in fact, represents the real America where people like to speak out their minds, without attaching much attention to the manner of their speech. The coarse verbal approach is truly American and politicians over the past several decades have been concealing it by presenting a contrary picture to the rest of the world as well as to their own nation. Trump is not Barack Obama, whose grand eloquence and colossal vocabulary may have propelled many of his countrymen to purchase dictionaries because the average American has linguistic paucity, which is echoed by the overuse of “great, awesome, fun, super etc”.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated sitting President Jimmy Carter, doubts about his ability were raised by the Washington lobby, which considered him as a successful Governor of California, but a person with no knowledge of DC. As things turned out, Reagan is regarded as one of the finest Presidents in the post World War II era. Many also consider Richard Nixon as the most competent head of government, but his undoing followed the infamous Watergate scandal.

The Kennedy brothers were thought of as extremely charismatic, but fell to assassins’ bullets much before they could prove their mettle. In that sense, Obama has been one of the most eminent Democratic Party Presidents, though towards the end he came under a lot of fire from Trump and company, despite the fact that America’s most wanted Osama Bin Laden was traced and eliminated during his tenure.

In order to understand Trump, one needs to also comprehend the trajectory of his campaign. The vote for Trump was driven by an immensely strong anti Muslim, anti China and anti African-American feeling in the United States. He was able to galvanise support, much to the total surprise of his fellow Republicans, who at every stage attempted to sabotage his chances by reckless statements and denouncements. He survived all the onslaughts from his own party, as well as Hillary’s supporters, primarily because his campaign identified itself with the common people, as also their concerns, real or imaginary. There are many among Washington based groups that have been funded directly or indirectly by affluent sheikhs from West Asia. Trump’s ascent to the top is a major worry for them, since he is bound to review many decisions which were a result of quid pro quo between US politicians and the moneyed class of West Asia. The US economy has been stagnating and China seems to have heavily infiltrated the American market. In fact, for Christmas and Halloween, as also other festivals, the goods that have flooded the stores are generally made in China. The concept of neo colonialism, which the US practised in the past, particularly in South America and a large number of developing countries, has returned to haunt it through the influx of Chinese made goods.

Trump is not bound by any political past and is thus free to experiment and implement new ideas. He is neither a prisoner of his party, where strong lobbies have influenced past Presidents. He is his own man. A man committed to “make America Great again”. He does not carry the burden of huge expectations and therefore can carry out his policies smoothly. Trump is not a novice. He is capable of proving his adversaries wrong. He is the man for the moment. He is likely to be the new age President. Between us.