In comment today
As the new alliance of Turkey, Iran and Russia emerges in Syria’s proxy war, it will not be able to solve the country’s long-term challenges, argues Alan Philps on
When Vladimir Putin heard of the assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey by an off-duty policeman, his first reaction was to dismiss the killing as a “provocation” – an underhand act to torpedo the burgeoning alliance between Ankara and Moscow. Russian commentators suggested it was the work of American-aligned Turkish generals or the CIA.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan also saw western forces and their local placemen as being behind the actions of the assassin. Turkish newspapers, now largely controlled by the government and the ruling AK Party, fingered the assassination as the work of Mr Erdogan’s former allies in the nowcrushed Gulen movement, followers of a self-exiled preacher living in the United States.
It is possible that the CIA could mastermind such a successful false-flag assassination. But it is far more likely that the truth is simpler.
As he ranted over the dead body of ambassador Andrei Karlov, the assassin said his act was in revenge for Russian bombing of Aleppo, and he quoted a few words of Arabic – a language not commonly studied by people in Turkey – while giving the sign of the Salafijihadist warrior, a raised index finger from a clenched fist. So he showed himself to the world as a man influenced by rebel factions such as the Al Qaeda franchise, Jabhat Fateh Al Sham (formery Al Nusra Front), which Turkey has supported in its attempt to unseat the Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad.
Since the failed military coup in July, Mr Erdogan has reined in his ambitions for regime change in Syria, focusing instead on domestic matters – liquidating the influence of the Gulen movement at home and hammering the Syrian Kurdish rebels whose links with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party in Turkey are seen as a threat to the state. But it is hardly surprising that the ideology of the Syria-based jihadists who have been promoted as defenders of Sunni Islam should have flowed back across the border and infected people inside Turkey.
The common desire of the Russians and Turks to use the assassination to cement their relationship has so far succeeded. The future of Syria now looks to be in the hands of three countries – Russia, Turkey and Iran.
This is a huge defeat for Washington, but hardly a surprise. The reluctance of US president Barack Obama to get militarily involved in Syria (except to fight ISIL) has now been capped by the declared intention of president-elect Donald Trump to outsource Syria policy to the Kremlin. Whether this happens or not, the mere whisper of it has killed US influence.
Given the failure of US policy in the Middle East – from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to this day – it is not surprising that another team is forcing its way in. The three countries are all former empires with the muscle memory of projecting power They have greater interests in Syria than the US, which has only its credibility to lose.
With the Americans having no boots on the ground around Aleppo, it was inevitable that the evacuation of the rebel-held enclave should be handled by countries with real influence. The evacuation has been a demonstration of the effectiveness of the three power-holders on the ground.
There have been suggestions that Russia, Turkey and Iran will form a new “tripartite alliance”, a term weighted with historical baggage from the three-way alliance of Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan in 1940. But history does not repeat. The real issue is whether it can achieve more than the evacuation of Aleppo.
The glue that binds them is weak – a common desire to flex muscles against an America which seems to be resigning from the role of regional hegemon. For Russia, this could be the kernel of a “Greater Eurasia”, an arc of countries from Turkey, Iran and Syria through Central and South Asia to China. Russia will supply the military power and China will bring the finance. Fighting an endless war in Syria is not part of the plan, however. A deal with Mr Trump which ends in the lifting of sanctions would bring more benefit than any Eurasian dream world.
For Iran, the plan is to cement its influence all the way through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean, even if this means resettling members of Syria’s minority Shia communities around the border with Leba- non. Neutralising the power of the Arab states is the goal.
For Turkey, the goals are closer to home: to prevent the formation of a new Kurdish political entity along its southern border, to which end it has a common understanding with Russia. Mr Erdogan’s goal of Turkey being a regional leader of the Sunni Muslims – as in the days of the Ottoman Empire – is temporarily off the agenda. But Turkey is unlikely to become a genuine ally, rather than just a temporary partner, of its old antagonists in Iran and Russia.
Even while the evacuation of Aleppo was in progress the fragility of this alliance was apparent. It was originally a Russian-Turkish operation, but the Iranians stepped in to insist on the evacuation of besieged Shia communities, the return of the bodies of dead fighters from the militias it has supplied and word of prisoners.
The tripartite alliance signally excludes the Arab states, as if the world had gone back a century to the age of empires. This is an intrinsically unstable arrangement. Rather than being guarantors of a peace settlement in Syria, as they proclaimed in Moscow this week, the three countries are more likely to preside over a new stage of the Syrian wars, one where the survival of the Al Assad regime seems assured in the short-term, but the fate of Syria in the longer term remains contested.