Turkey is drowning in opportunity

But domestic constraints will limit Ankara’s ability to capitalise

In nearly every direction, Turkey’s strategic environment is presenting opportunities for Ankara. The Turks particularly stand to benefit from the parallel crises facing Russia and Iran.

That said, the state of Turkey’s own political economy is a serious constraint. This means there are limits to how much in the immediate term Turkey will be able to take advantage of the shifts underway in the Black Sea basin and the country’s southern flank with the Middle East.

Room to Grow

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a November 23 speech in parliament said Turkey’s air operations against Syrian Kurdish forces in northern Syria were just the start of a much wider land offensive that Ankara would launch when convenient.

Erdogan said his country was more determined than ever to secure its southern border by expanding its existing “security corridor” inside Syrian territory.

A day earlier, Reuters reported that Turkey’s warplanes crossed into Russian- and U.S.-controlled airspace over Syria for the first time to attack Syrian Kurdish separatist positions in retaliation for a November 13 bombing in Istanbul. An unnamed senior Turkish official said the Turks coordinated the F-16 bombing runs with U.S. and Russian authorities.

Since 2016, Turkey has been engaged in different military operations in northern Syria with the primary goal of containing Syrian Kurdish separatism. The separatists gained ground because the U.S. backed them as the front line in the war against the Islamic State group.

Ankara has also been supporting a variety of Syrian rebel forces opposed to the Assad regime. Turkish efforts were hampered by efforts from Moscow and Tehran to prop up President Bashar Assad. 2022 has been a game-changer of sorts. Russia’s war in Ukraine has seriously undermined Moscow’s domestic and foreign policy position, while Iran is facing a growing general uprising at home.

Therefore, neither Russia nor Iran has the same bandwidth to deal with Syria that it has had in years past. This unfolding situation creates the conditions for Turkey to try to take advantage of the opening and to make serious inroads on its southern flank.

It is still too early to predict with any degree of certainty how much leeway Turkey has, but without substantial support from its Russian and Iranian allies, the Assad regime will likely see a resurgence of rebel forces whom Turkey has a major interest in supporting.

The broader Middle East is not the only arena where Turkey is playing a lead role. Ankara has also been a key player in the war in Ukraine. It maintains close ties to Russia while supplying Ukrainian forces with drones.

The degree to which the Turks enjoy influence in this battlespace can be gauged by the grain deal reached back in July, which Ankara brokered between Moscow and Kyiv. Turkish efforts enabled the Ukrainians to resume exports of food commodities that had been disrupted by the war and contain growing global food insecurity.

In the past few weeks, the Russians twice threatened to nix the agreement, but the Turks were able to persuade them to stick with it. Turkey has used its position in the Black Sea basin to appear like it is negotiating with both Russia and NATO, which benefits Erdogan considering the image he wants to have internally. It also benefits Turkey as it looks like it is growing into a regional player.

The United States has for years struggled with how to deal with Erdogan’s Turkey, which, while being a NATO ally, has increasingly engaged in unilateral foreign policies that conflict with U.S. interests.

However, Turkey’s role in the Ukraine war has proved helpful to Washington, which would explain how the Turks were able to get U.S. cooperation for their latest airstrikes against Kurdish separatists. Even if the U.S. didn’t look the other way, it is not doing anything to deter Turkey.

Likewise, Turkey’s influence with an internationally isolated Russia meant that it did not have to worry about the Russians creating problems for the Turkish airstrikes.

Syria and Beyond

Sending in ground forces is going to be much more complicated, however, because that is where the Turks will likely run into the Iranians – more specifically, Iranian-led militias.

The overseas operations arm of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, has done the heavy lifting to ensure that the Assad regime does not collapse against a rebellion waged by largely Sunni Islamist militias. The Quds Force mobilized, trained and supported several tens of thousands of militiamen who, years after helping the Assad regime put down the insurrection, remain deployed and not far from the northern Syrian regions where the Turks seek to expand their presence.

Turkish military forces will first have to neutralize the Syrian Kurds and then reenergize Sunni forces to be able to take advantage of the Iranians being distracted by a popular domestic uprising.

While the Iranians have the Turks checkmated in the Levant, the reverse has developed in the South Caucasus over the past two years. With Turkish military assistance, especially the supply of Bayraktar drones, Azerbaijan in late 2020 was able to reverse the balance of power in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where Armenia since 1994 held the upper hand.

Having gained a great deal of territory, Azerbaijan now has a much longer border with rival Iran. The Iranians, who are allies of the Armenians, have been alarmed at this development since the 2020 war but are even more alarmed now, as domestic unrest has spread to the ethnic Azeri parts of northwestern Iran close to the border with Azerbaijan.

The situation prompted Iran to conduct large-scale military exercises last month close to the Azerbaijani border. While Iran is on the defensive, Turkey is hoping to benefit from Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia.

Turkey has negotiated a corridor that would directly link it to Azerbaijan via Baku’s exclave of Nakhchivan and through Armenian territory, giving Turkey the ability to tap into energy resources of the trans-Caspian region and beyond to Central Asia.

Critically, this region has been a Russian sphere of influence, and the Turks made their inroads into the South Caucasus well before Russia’s weakening in the war in Ukraine.

The Balkans is another old Turkish stomping ground where the Turks would like to revive their influence. The 1995 Dayton Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia, created a complex political arrangement among its Bosniak, Serb and Croat populations.

The Dayton Accords have been under growing strain, especially given efforts by the semiautonomous ethnic Serb

republic to secede from the Bosnian federation. The Russians are allies of the Serbs, and Moscow has long been upset with the Western intervention in Kosovo.

Russian President Vladimir Putin even justified the war in Ukraine by drawing an analogy with NATO’s bombing of Serbia and support of Kosovo’s independence.

The Serbs are likely watching the weakening of their patron Russia with great trepidation and wondering what it means for their future in the Western Balkans.

Whether Russia tries to ignite conflict in this region as a way to counter its losses in Ukraine or is unable to help its Serbian allies who have been challenging the Dayton Accords, the Western Balkans could plunge into conflict. That would create an opening for Turkey to come to the aid of its Bosnian allies in a much more robust manner than it did in the 1990s, especially with Turkey today aggressively pursuing great-power status and with the declining fortunes of Russia.

The Erdoganomics Constraint

In spite of the geopolitical vacuums forming around it, Ankara’s domestic constraints will force the Turks to pick their battles and prioritize their efforts accordingly. The future of the Erdogan regime, after nearly 20 years in power, is in question, with the president facing elections next year. 2023 also marks the centenary of the modern Turkish republic.

Erdogan initially presided over a decade of economic revival as prime minister, but the Turkish economy took a turn for the worse in 2013 when protests broke out against Erdogan – a year before he assumed control of the presidency and steered the country toward authoritarianism.

Since then, the country’s currency has lost 75% of its value and inflation is at 85%, while Erdogan continues to resist raising interest rates. Turkey’s financial situation has forced a reversal of Erdogan’s policies toward the Middle East.

Not long ago, Turkey was sparring with all major players in the Middle East by backing Muslim Brotherhood forces in the wake of the Arab Spring uprising. A decade later, Erdogan has been on a spree to improve ties with Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and, more recently, Egypt.

Just last week, Turkey and Saudi Arabia were reportedly in talks for a $5 billion Saudi deposit in the Turkish central bank. Turkey’s central bank has swap deals in local currencies with several of its counterparts worth a total of $28 billion.

The Turks signed a deal with South Korea for close to $1 billion, China for $6 billion, Qatar for $15 billion and the Emirates for nearly $5 billion.

This borrowing splurge is driven by Erdogan’s need to try to shore up the economic situation as much as possible ahead of next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections, which are slated for June 18.

Six opposition parties, with at least two led by former top associates of Erdogan, have come together to field a joint candidate against Erdogan and restore parliamentary democracy in the country.

Approval ratings for Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party have plunged given the worsening economic conditions.

There is also the question of whether the vote will be free and fair. Regardless of the outcome, the domestic political and economic situations will continue to constrain Turkey’s ability to take advantage of the many geopolitical opportunities emerging around Eurasia.