By Roberto Pucciano CEO Anchorage Group Global
Turkey appears to be putting the seal on a new zone of influence in its ‘near abroad’ after Turkish forces and allied Syrian militia groups seized the high ground around the Islamic State (IS) stronghold of al-Bab and advanced into the strategic town’s outskirts. The city, which is also being approached from the south by the Syrian army, is a major target for a Turkish offensive launched in August against Islamic State. Ankara’s aim is to push IS away from the Syrian-Turkish border while preventing any further territorial gains by the US-backed People’s Protection Units (YPG) which could lead to a future contiguous Kurdish statelet emerging on Turkey’s southern border.
The fall of al-Bab would deepen Turkish influence in a part of Syria where it already has a de facto buffer zone and has boosted the confidence of the Turkish government about its new Syria policy. The Turkish foreign minister has already announced that the next target for Turkey after the fall of the city would be Islamic State’s Syrian capital at Raqqa. Furthermore, when al-Bab falls it appears that Turkey will be the occupying power in control of it rather than Damascus. The agreement that Turkey will be able to carve out a sphere of influence inside Syria that thwarts local Kurdish ambitions for the same territory appears to be a quid pro quo worked out with Moscow in exchange for allowing Damascus to retake eastern Aleppo late last year.
With the arrival of President Trump in office Ankara does not appear to anticipate US objections to its recent policy of cooperation with Russia inside Syria. The Turkish government has also apparently coordinated its recent military actions with Russian ally Bashar al-Assad enough that a Syrian regime attack cut off the final way into the city last week and allowed the Turks and their allies to complete its encirclement. Al-Bab is just 20 miles from the Turkish border but the Syrian army’s offensive seems aimed in part at limiting further loss of territory and in part at protecting its recent gains in Aleppo, which lies just 30 miles to the southwest of al-Bab. Damascus does not appear to be in a position yet to demand that Turkey withdraws from its territory.
Turkish expansion into Syria cements its abandonment of the anti-Assad coalition for now, but does not mean the end of Turkish intervention in its Arab neighbours. Instead the Turkish move into Syria mirrors a similar infiltration into the territory of its Iraqi neighbour. Based at a camp in the town of Bashiqa in northern Iraq Turkish troops have been training local fighters from Hashd al-Watani, a Sunni Arab militia founded by Atheel al-Nujaifi, the former governor of Ninevah province and an influential pro-Turkish political figure in the area. Turkey’s military presence in Iraqi territory has enraged the Shia dominated government in Baghdad but has been tolerated by the Kurdish authorities in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). When setting up the camp in 2015, Turkey did not even ask Baghdad for permission to station men in what is still legally Iraqi territory, but chose to negotiate with the KRG for military access instead.
Despite the defeat of its anti-Assad policy Turkey still nurses ambitions in the region, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan having made a number of provocative speeches on the subject of Turkey’s territorial claims on its neighbours’ land in the recent past. But while this was probably for electoral consumption at home Turkey’s ambitions have not entirely gone away, with Ankara appearing to envisage working through local proxies to construct a sphere of influence that will survive the present conflict in Iraq and Syria with IS. While it has been unable to unseat the Alawite-dominated regime in Damascus, Ankara still hopes to use local Sunni Arab and Turkmen communities to dabble in the politics of a fragmented neighbour whose government is merely the most powerful faction of many. It is also determined to provide a Sunni counter-weight for Iranian influence in Syria.
It is a similar story in nearby Iraq where Turkey hopes that Sunni Arabs will look to Ankara for a patron instead of inwards to Baghdad. The former governor of Mosul, Atheel al-Nujaifi, has previously suggested that his home province of Ninevah should become autonomous from Baghdad in a similar fashion to the Turkish-friendly KRG. Were this to happen then a Turkish backed Sunni Arab entity would spring up in north-western Iraq which cement Iraqi decentralisation for the foreseeable future and act as a buffer between the Iraqi and Syrian portion of Kurdish territory. Turkey may not be aiming for the readjustment of international borders but together with Iran, with whom it competes for influence, Ankara has been a key regional player in exploiting ethnic and sectarian cleavages in Iraq and Syria to try and advance its own agenda.
Therefore, Ankara may not mind in the slightest if its neighbours’ central governments prove unable to be exert their authority over strategic border areas of their respective countries, so long as it and its proxies are the ones to take advantage of the fact. It is widely understood in the West that Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq has expanded considerably in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent civil wars there. What has been masked by the failure to remove Assad is the extent to which Turkish tentacles have also spread deeply into the power structures of both countries, particularly in areas where Turkey can pose as the regional champion of Sunni communities in a way that distant Saudi Arabia is unable to, by virtual of geography and its inability to project military power far beyond its own borders. Unfortunately for them, Iraq and Syria may not have seen the last of Turkish empire-building.