Turkey, the Kurds and Iraq: The Prize and Peril of Kirkuk

Geopolitical Weekly TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2014   

By Reva BhallaIn June 1919, aboard an Allied warship en route to Paris, sat Damat Ferid Pasha, the Grand Vizier of a crumbling Ottoman Empire. The elderly statesman, donning an iconic red fez and boasting an impeccably groomed mustache, held in his hands a memorandum that he was to present to the Allied powers at the Quai d'Orsay. The negotiations on postwar reparations started five months earlier, but the Ottoman delegation was prepared to make the most of its tardy invitation to the talks. As he journeyed across the Mediterranean that summer toward the French shore, Damat Ferid mentally rehearsed the list of demands he would make to the Allied powers during his last-ditch effort to hold the empire together.

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Reva Bhalla

Reva Bhalla is a leading expert on Middle Eastern, South Asian and Latin American affairs and plays an integral role in applying a forward-looking, strategic lens to Stratfor's coverage of global events. She oversees country assessments, monitors major geopolitical trends and ensures that all Stratfor content fits within the established analytical framework.

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He began with a message, not of reproach, but of inculpability: "Gentlemen, I should not be bold enough to come before this High Assembly if I thought that the Ottoman people had incurred any responsibility in the war that has ravaged Europe and Asia with fire and sword." His speech was followed by an even more defiant memorandum, denouncing any attempt to redistribute Ottoman land to the Kurds, Greeks and Armenians, asserting: "In Asia, the Turkish lands are bounded on the south by the provinces of Mosul and Diyarbakir, as well as a part of Aleppo as far as the Mediterranean." When Damat Ferid's demands were presented in Paris, the Allies were in awe of the gall displayed by the Ottoman delegation. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George regarded the presentation as a "good joke," while U.S. President Woodrow Wilson said he had never seen anything more "stupid." They flatly rejected Damat Ferid's apparently misguided appeal -- declaring that the Turks were unfit to rule over other races, regardless of their common Muslim identity -- and told him and his delegation to leave. The Western powers then proceeded, through their own bickering, to divide the post-Ottoman spoils.

Under far different circumstances today, Ankara is again boldly appealing to the West to follow its lead in shaping policy in Turkey's volatile Muslim backyard. And again, Western powers are looking at Turkey with incredulity, waiting for Ankara to assume responsibility for the region by tackling the immediate threat of the Islamic State with whatever resources necessary, rather than pursuing a seemingly reckless strategy of toppling the Syrian government. Turkey's behavior can be perplexing and frustrating to Western leaders, but the country's combination of reticence in action and audacity in rhetoric can be traced back to many of the same issues that confronted Istanbul in 1919, beginning with the struggle over the territory of Mosul.

The Turkish Fight for Mosul

Under the Ottoman Empire, the Mosul vilayet stretched from Zakho in southeastern Anatolia down along the Tigris River through Dohuk, Arbil, Alqosh, Kirkuk, Tuz Khormato and Sulaimaniyah before butting up against the western slopes of the Zagros Mountains, which shape the border with Iran. This stretch of land, bridging the dry Arab steppes and the fertile mountain valleys in Iraqi Kurdistan, has been a locus of violence long before the Islamic State arrived. The area has been home to an evolving mix of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Yazidis, Assyro-Chaldeans and Jews, while Turkish and Persian factions and the occasional Western power, whether operating under a flag or a corporate logo, continue to work in vain to eke out a demographic makeup that suits their interests.
At the time of the British negotiation with the Ottomans over the fate of the Mosul region, British officers touring the area wrote extensively about the ubiquity of the Turkish language, noting that "Turkish is spoken all along the high road in all localities of any importance." This fact formed part of Turkey's argument that the land should remain under Turkish sovereignty. Even after the 1923 signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, in which Turkey renounced its rights to Ottoman lands, the Turkish government still held out a claim to the Mosul region, fearful that the Brits would use Kurdish separatism to further weaken the Turkish state. Invoking the popular Wilsonian principle of self-determination, the Turkish government asserted to the League of Nations that most of the Kurds and Arabs inhabiting the area preferred to be part of Turkey anyway. The British countered by asserting that their interviews with locals revealed a prevailing preference to become part of the new British-ruled Kingdom of Iraq.The Turks, in no shape to bargain with London and mired in a deep internal debate over whether Turkey should forego these lands and focus instead on the benefits of a downsized republic, lost the argument and were forced to renounce their claims to the Mosul territory in 1925. As far as the Brits and the French were concerned, the largely Kurdish territory would serve as a vital buffer space to prevent the Turks from eventually extending their reach from Asia Minor to territories in Mesopotamia, Syria and Armenia. But the fear of Turkish expansion was not the only factor informing the European strategy to keep northern Iraq out of Turkish hands.

The Oil Factor

Since the days of Herodotus and Nebuchadnezzar, there have been stories of eternal flames arising from the earth of Baba Gurgur near the town of Kirkuk. German explorer and cartographer Carsten Niebuhr wrote in the 18th century: "A place called Baba Gurgur is above all remarkable because the earth is so hot that eggs and meat can be boiled here." The flames were in fact produced by the natural gas and naphtha seeping through cracks in the rocks, betraying the vast quantities of crude oil lying beneath the surface. London wasted little time in calling on geologists from Venezuela, Mexico, Romania and Indochina to study the land and recommend sites for drilling. On Oct. 14, 1927, the fate of Kirkuk was sealed: A gusher rising 43 meters (around 140 feet) erupted from the earth, dousing the surrounding land with some 95,000 barrels of crude oil for 10 days before the well could be capped. With oil now part of the equation, the political situation in Kirkuk became all the more flammable.

The British mostly imported Sunni Arab tribesmen to work the oil fields, gradually reducing the Kurdish majority and weakening the influence of the Turkmen minority in the area. The Arabization project was given new energy when the Arab Baath Socialist Party came to power through a military coup in 1968. Arabic names were given to businesses, neighborhoods, schools and streets, while laws were adjusted to pressure Kurds to leave Kirkuk and transfer ownership of their homes and lands to Arabs. Eviction tactics turned ghastly in 1988 under Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign, during which chemical weapons were employed against the Kurdish population. The Iraqi government continued with heavy-handed tactics to Arabize the territory until the collapse of the Baathist regime in 2003. Naturally, revenge was a primary goal as Kurdish factions worked quickly to repopulate the region with Kurds and drive the Arabs out.

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Even as Kirkuk, its oil-rich fields and a belt of disputed territories stretching between Diyala and Nineveh provinces have remained officially under the jurisdiction of the Iraqi central government in Baghdad, the Kurdish leadership has sought to redraw the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan. After the Iraqi Kurdish region gained de facto autonomy with the creation of a no-fly zone in 1991 and then formally coalesced into the Kurdistan Regional Government after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Kurdish influence gradually expanded in the disputed areas. Kurdish representation increased through multi-ethnic political councils, facilitated by the security protection these communities received from the Kurdish peshmerga and by the promise of energy revenues, while Baghdad remained mired in its own problems. Formally annexing Kirkuk and parts of Nineveh and Diyala, part of the larger Kurdish strategy, would come in due time. Indeed, the expectation that legalities of the annexation process would soon be completed convinced a handful of foreign energy firms to sign contracts with the Kurdish authorities -- as opposed to Baghdad -- enabling the disputed territories to finally begin realizing the region's energy potential.

Then the unexpected happened: In June, the collapse of the Iraqi army in the north under the duress of the Islamic State left the Kirkuk fields wide open, allowing the Kurdish peshmerga to finally and fully occupy them. Though the Kurds now sit nervously on the prize, Baghdad, Iran, local Arabs and Turkmen and the Islamic State are eyeing these fields with a predatory gaze. At the same time, a motley force of Iran-backed Shiite militias, Kurdish militants and Sunni tribesmen are trying to flush the Islamic State out of the region in order to return to settling the question of where to draw the line on Kurdish autonomy. The Sunnis will undoubtedly demand a stake in the oil fields that the Kurds now control as repayment for turning on the Islamic State, guaranteeing a Kurdish-Sunni confrontation that Baghdad will surely exploit.

The Turkish Dilemma

The modern Turkish government is looking at Iraq and Syria in a way similar to how Damat Ferid did almost a century ago when he sought in Paris to maintain Turkish sovereignty over the region. From Ankara's point of view, the extension of a Turkish sphere of influence into neighboring Muslim lands is the antidote to weakening Iraqi and Syrian states. Even if Turkey no longer has direct control over these lands, it hopes to at least indirectly re-establish its will through select partners, whether a group of moderate Islamist forces in Syria or, in northern Iraq, a combination of Turkmen and Sunni factions, along with a Kurdish faction such as Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party. The United States may currently be focused on the Islamic State, but Turkey is looking years ahead at the mess that will likely remain. This is why Turkey is placing conditions on its involvement in the battle against the Islamic State: It is trying to convince the United States and its Sunni Arab coalition partners that it will inevitably be the power administering this region. Therefore, according to Ankara, all players must conform to its priorities, beginning with replacing Syria's Iran-backed Alawite government with a Sunni administration that will look first to Ankara for guidance.

However, the Turkish vision of the region simply does not fit the current reality and is earning Ankara more rebuke than respect from its neighbors and the West. The Kurds, in particular, will continue to form the Achilles' heel of Turkish policymaking.

In Syria, where the Islamic State is closing in on the city of Kobani on Turkey's border, Ankara is faced with the unsavory possibility that it will be drawn into a ground fight with a well-equipped insurgent force. Moreover, Turkey would be fighting on the same side as a variety of Kurdish separatists, including members of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Ankara has every interest in neutralizing.

Turkey faces the same dilemma in Iraq, where it may unwittingly back Kurdish separatists in its fight against the Islamic State. Just as critical, Turkey cannot be comfortable with the idea that Kirkuk is in the hands of the Iraqi Kurds unless Ankara is assured exclusive rights over that energy and the ability to extinguish any oil-fueled ambitions of Kurdish independence. But Turkey has competition. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is not willing to make itself beholden to Turkey, as did Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party, while financial pressures continue to climb. Instead, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is staying close to Iran and showing a preference to work with Baghdad. Meanwhile, local Arab and Turkmen resistance to Kurdish rule is rising, a factor that Baghdad and Iran will surely exploit as they work to dilute Kurdish authority by courting local officials in Kirkuk and Nineveh with promises of energy rights and autonomy.

This is the crowded battleground that Turkey knows well. A long and elaborate game of "keep away" will be played to prevent the Kurds from consolidating control over oil-rich territory in the Kurdish-Arab borderland, while the competition between Turkey and Iran will emerge into full view. For Turkey to compete effectively in this space, it will need to come to terms with the reality that Ankara will not defy its history by resolving the Kurdish conundrum, nor will it be able to hide within its borders and avoid foreign entanglements. 

Editor's Note: Writing in George Friedman's stead this week is Reva Bhalla, vice president of Global Analysis.

Read more: Turkey, the Kurds and Iraq: The Prize and Peril of Kirkuk | Stratfor
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The heroes of Kobani - the Kurds fighting ISIS

By Daren Butler and Mariam Karouny
Kurds Vow To Fight To The Last As Islamic State Tightens Grip On Syrian Town

Smoke rises from the Syrian town of Kobani, seen from near the Mursitpinar border crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern town of Suruc, Oct. 3, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Murad Sezer)

(Reuters) - Outgunned Kurdish fighters vowed on Monday not to abandon their increasingly desperate efforts to defend the Syrian border town of Kobani from Islamic State militants pressing in from three sides and pounding them with heavy artillery.

The radical Al Qaeda offshoot has been battling for more than two weeks to seize the predominantly Kurdish town, driving 180,000 people into neighboring Turkey.

Air strikes by American and Gulf state warplanes have failed to halt the advance of the Islamists, who moved to the outskirts of the town over the weekend and were battling to secure a strategic hilltop in the face of fierce resistance.

Despite the heavy fighting, which has seen mortars rain down on residential areas in Kobani and stray fire hit Turkish territory, a Reuters reporter saw around 30 people cross over from Turkey, apparently to help with defense of the town.

"Fighting continues, they are also firing mortars at the heart of the town. We have light weapons only," Esmat al-Sheikh, head of the Kobani Defence Authority, said by telephone.

"If they enter Kobani, it will be a graveyard for us and for them. We will not let them enter Kobani as long as we live. We either win or die. We will resist to the end," Sheikh said as heavy and light weapons fire echoed from the eastern side of town.

Ismail Eskin, a journalist in the town, said morale was still high "because the people are protecting their own soil".

"They will not allow (Islamic State) to occupy Kobani," he said.



VILLAGES EMPTIED

Islamic State wants to take Kobani to consolidate a dramatic sweep across northern Iraq and Syria, in the name of an absolutist version of Sunni Islam, that has sent shock waves through the Middle East.

Beheadings, mass killings and torture have spread fear of the group across the region, with villages emptying at the approach of pick-up trucks flying Islamic State's black flag.

One female Kurdish fighter near Kobani blew herself up on Sunday after running out of ammunition, rather than be captured by IS, a monitoring group and local sources said.

"They have ammunition, but it is so little," said Pawer Mohammed Ali, a translator for the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) inside Kobani. "The PYD are just appealing to foreign forces for ammunition because (Islamic State) is using heavy weapons, tanks and mortars."

On Sunday, Islamic State released a video apparently showing its fighters in control of radio masts on top of Mistanour hill, which looks out over the town and would offer valuable high ground. Reuters was not able to independently verify the contents of the video.

Ali said fighting for control of Mistanour hill was continuing, and denied reports that IS fighters were in the streets of Kobani. He said Kurdish forces were holding them back but the situation in the town, where water and power had been cut off, was increasingly desperate.

Turkish hospitals have been treating a steady stream of wounded Kurdish fighters being brought across the frontier. Witnesses who had fled Kobani said that old women were being given grenades to throw, and young women with no fighting experience were being armed and sent into battle.



LITTLE HELP

Kobani's Kurds have so far received little help from elsewhere. Turkey has given shelter to the bulk of the area's refugees, and its doctors have treated the wounded, but it has given no suggestion that it could join the fight against Islamic State, beyond gestures of self-defense.

Over the weekend, President Tayyip Erdogan vowed to retaliate if Islamic State attacked Turkish forces, and on Monday Turkish tanks deployed along the border for the second time in a week, some with guns pointing towards Syria, apparently in response to stray fire crossing the frontier.

Still, Islamic State's release last month of 46 Turkish hostages, and a parliamentary motion last week renewing a mandate allowing Turkish troops to cross into Syria and Iraq, have raised expectations that Ankara may be planning a more active role.

Its calculations are complex, however.

For three decades, Ankara has fought an armed insurgency by its own Kurdish PKK militants demanding greater autonomy in Turkey's southeast.

Analysts say it is now wary of helping Syrian Kurdish forces near Kobani as they have strong links with the PKK and have maintained ambiguous relations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to whom Turkey is implacably opposed.

Against that are warnings from the leaders of Turkey's Kurds that allowing Syria's Kurds to be driven from Kobani would spell the end of Erdogan's delicately poised drive to negotiate an end to his own Kurdish insurgency and permanently disarm the PKK.

The truth about Turkey and Islamic State oil ("a matter not just of terrorism, but also of the local economy")

A group of men smuggle diesel fuel from Syria to Turkey, May 26, 2013.  (photo by REUTERS/Muzaffar Salman)

The (semi) official view of how Turkey is justifying permitting the smuggling of oil that sustains financially the IS.

The Sept. 20 
release of 49 Turks held by the Islamic State (IS) for 101 days came as a great relief for Turkey. They were the diplomats and other consulate personnel (along with their families, including two infants) taken hostage in June when IS captured Mosul. Since then, the Turkish government had argued, reasonably enough, that its hands were tied in not joining the US-led coalition against IS. Now, however, with the end of the hostage crisis, Ankara might begin to think more actively about the threat just across its southern border.

Where exactly does Turkey stand on IS? This has become a matter of controversy in the country and in the West. The Turkish government has been criticized on three main points: that it has not done enough to close its borders to the flow of foreign fighters joining IS; that it has not done enough to curb radical groups at home that recruit for IS; and that IS makes money by selling oil via Turkey.

In response, one could note on the first point that Turkey’s southern border is indeed too porous, but this is because of its length, some 750 miles, the tough terrain and Ankara’s “open border” policy, which has saved 1.5 million refugees since the beginning of the Syrian civil war.

On the second point, regarding IS recruits, Ankara certainly needs to be more cautious, but it is also worth reminding that the number of recruits from France, the United Kingdom and Russia exceed those from Turkey. 

The third point, the matter of the oil sales, also deserves fair assessment. This trade has been discussed recently by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and also brought into focus by The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek and a report in Al-Monitor by Fehim Tastekin. As Tastekin explains, the issue is not about official trading, but smuggling, mostly through “small-diameter plastic pipes normally used for irrigation.”

To understand why and how this happens, one should know that smuggling is a well-established tradition across Turkey’s southeastern borders with Iraq and Syria. Oil is expensive in most of Turkey, but cheap in the south. This has created an illegal but widespread south-north trade route. The smuggling economy is not just about oil, however, but also includes other popular items and commodities, such as tea. (If one orders tea in southeastern Turkey, the servers often ask, “Do you want normal tea or smuggled tea?”)

For decades, successive Turkish governments have tolerated this illegal trafficking based on some strategic logic. The 30-year war between the state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) impoverished the southeastern region, diminishing revenues from agriculture and husbandry. Smuggling remained the only source of income for some villages. “Pro-state” (anti-PKK) villages especially benefited from the government’s benign neglect, which was a form of compensation for their loyalty. The December 2011 accidental bombing of 34 smugglers from Roboski village by the Turkish armed forces was a horrific tragedy that exposed this tradition. Villagers revealed to the press that until that day, the soldiers always looked the other way when they “went out to smuggle.”

In other words, the reported smuggling of IS oil across the Turkish border is a problem that Turkey needs to confront. As Tastekin reported, “The state began to intervene after the international media started to question … whether IS oil was being sold in Turkey.” It is, however, a problem that is more complicated than it seems at first sight. It is a matter not just of terrorism, but also of the local economy.

Smugglers on the Turkish side of the border often do not know whether they are buying oil from IS sources. As Tolga Tanis, a Washington-based Turkish journalist, noted, “Oil changes hands so quickly that buyers do not know that they are getting oil that originates from IS.” In addition, as Tastekin reported, smugglers in Hacipasa, a Turkish village near the Syrian border, “prefer to think of the Free Syrian Army, not IS, as benefiting from the trade.”

The key question is how much of an illegal trade is there? The New York Times cited experts who placed the figure “at $1 million to $2 million a day.” Speaking to Al-Monitor, a presidential adviser who preferred to remain anonymous dismissed this claim. He said, “This is impossible. A barrel of oil would be sold for about $50 on the black market. This means 400,000 barrels of oil a day passing illegally from Iraq or Syria to Turkey. Yet, such an amount is impossible to carry by any of the smuggling methods, such as hoses, trucks or mules. There is indeed smuggling on the Turkey-Iraq and Turkey-Syria borders, but certainly not at these levels.”

The official also noted that such large amounts of oil could only be in the form of crude oil, but none of the two refineries in Turkey, at Tupras and Aliaga, could process smuggled oil. Concerning the broader picture, he said that the rise of IS confirmed Turkey’s earlier warnings to the West: The Free Syrian Army did not get the support it deserved in the earlier phase of the conflict, and this mistake paved the way for the rise of more militant groups, such as IS.

The bottom line is that while IS oil sales via the Turkish border is a real problem, it is not something condoned by the Turkish government, as emphatically noted by Energy Minister Taner Yildiz in a press conference. Turkey’s Western allies would be wise to approach Ankara with an understanding of the nuances involved and aim for more cooperation, rather than blaming Ankara for things that are beyond its full control.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/turkey-iraq-syria-krg-isis-oil-hostages.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=9179ba8ea5-September_23_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-9179ba8ea5-93086189#ixzz3EA2frN5X

Turkey faces threat from returning jihadists

Under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has lost its proxy war in Syria after being recklessly dragged into it by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Had Turkey emerged victorious — in other words, had the Damascus regime been toppled and replaced by the rule of Syrian Islamists — Sunni Turkey would have been the primary beneficiary. It would have led the building of a new Syria, reaping economic and political gains and consolidating its status as the Middle East’s new regional power and playmaker. It would have basked in the strategic feat of dealing a blow to its Shiite rival Iran’s clout and influence in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The AKP’s Turkey based its game in Syria on a big gamble, a feature typical of the foreign policy adventures commanded by Erdogan and Davutoglu. Now that it has lost the war, it should be prepared to live — possibly for a long time — in a turbulent environment of crisis and threats.

Turkey’s two southern neighbors, Syria and Iraq, are now “failed states.” Turkey holds a direct responsibility for Syria becoming such a state due to its regime-change policy. In Iraq, the Islamic State — the al-Qaeda offshoot formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham — would have been unable to grow strong enough to capture a number of Sunni Arab cities if not for the Syrian turmoil. Hence, Turkey also bears an indirect responsibility through its Syria policyfor Iraq's troubles.

The combined length of Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq is 1,208 km (750 miles), including 10 border crossings — nine with Syria and one with Iraq. Only two of those crossings — Kessab (facing Yayladag in Turkey) on the western end of the Syrian border and Qamishli on the eastern end — are currently controlled by a state whose sovereignty and status is internationally recognized, and it is a failed state. Syria’s Baath regime wields only limited and isolated control in areas along the Turkish border. The actual control is in the hands of non-state actors: Syrian Islamist militants, the Islamic State and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, the Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

On the Iraqi border, Turkey neighbors the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which can be described as a “proto-state” at best. The KRG territory is home to the PKK’s main command base and armed units. At the time this article was penned, the Islamic State’s (IS, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS) capture of Mosul and its ensuing storming of the Turkish consulate in the city was an event 28 days old, and 48 Turks, among them Consul-General Ozturk Yilmaz, are still being held hostage. Commenting on the hostage crisis and the situation in general, Davutoglu said June 28, “A big crisis is currently at our doorstep and we, as neighbors, are being affected. … Iraq and Syria have become intricately entangled with each other.”

The crisis, in fact, is not at Turkey’s doorstep but inside its house. But because it is still in an early stage, not all segments of society are able to directly grasp its dramatic impact. Government censorship has also been instrumental in this regard, particularly the ban on reporting and commenting about the hostage crisis.

The crises in Syria and Iraq seem to be taunting Davutoglu. Those who have attended the lengthy lectures Davutoglu once enjoyed giving to columnists are well aware that the minister is not at ease with the existence of nation-states in the Middle East and the legitimacy of their borders. During one such gathering in Ankara in July 2012, Turkey’s foreign minister talked about how borders in the Middle East were wrong and artificial. He said, “Qamishli and Mosul are separated from one another. Erroneously erected walls have determined those borders. We have to respect them, but we need to render them insignificant, as the borders in Europe are. Economic and cultural borders should take their natural forms. We should draw the Middle East puzzle in a way that will allow us to integrate on larger scales rather than splitting up on smaller scales.”

Ironically, only two years later, the "artificial borders" between Syria and Iraq are being rendered insignificant. This process, however, is not taking place peacefully under the guidance of a public authority, but in a brutal, bloody manner by the hand of an al-Qaeda offshoot. The Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate for itself, is “entangling” Iraq and Syria just as Davutoglu said, taking control of a Sunni Arab axis stretching from Iraq along the Euphrates basin into Syria, then moving northwest up to the Jarablus border crossing that faces Karkamis on the Turkish side.

Davutoglu’s regional utopia, which seems to be the product of Ottoman nostalgia and overexposure to Sunni Islamist romanticism, is now in the hands of barbarians with Salafist al-Qaeda ideology, devolving into a cruel dystopia for anyone but the jihadists who espouse it.

And is the Iraqi-Syrian border the only one that has been rendered insignificant? Let’s recall that the Turkish-Syrian border was the first to blur. As part of military efforts to topple the Baath regime, everything that comes to mind minus the regular Turkish army — logistical support, weapons and jihadists — have crossed in large numbers from Turkey to Syria since 2011. Today, this is a simple and universally known fact.

A large part of the Turkish public believes that only jihadists from Western countries are crossing the border to join the war in Syria, since Turkey’s traditional media do not — cannot — report the whole story. Similarly, a large part of the Turkish public thinks that only Western countries are facing the threat of jihadists returning home from Syria.

A simple Google search with the keywords “Syria," "martyr" and "mujahedeen” in Turkish suggests that many Turks have crossed to Syria to fight the regime and some have been killed there. The names of 29 Turkish jihadists “martyred” in Syria can be counted in a single video on YouTube.

Only the intelligence services can know the actual number of Turks fighting in the ranks of jihadist groups in Syria. The figure is likely to be in the hundreds. Given that the trend of jihadists going to and returning from Syria has been underway since 2011, the total figure may well be in the thousands.

Regardless of whether they maintain their links to al-Qaeda, thousands of people who have taken part in bloodshed in the ranks of al-Qaeda-linked groups should be, no doubt, seen as a potential threat to Turkey’s internal peace. Given the climate of hatred created in Turkey as a result of polarizing policies and constant incitement against the country’s Alevi community and secular segments, the presence of thousands of people who have mastered and internalized killing may have the effect of a powder keg meeting with fire. Preventing this threat from materializing is up to the AKP government, which holds the primary responsibility for the creation of the problem.

Some terrorism experts, meanwhile, draw attention to still other aspects of the problem. The Turkish nationals fighting in jihadist ranks in Syria also include Kurdish Islamists, while some Turks have joined the armed factions of Turkmen Islamists. Arab Alawite youths, on the other hand, are said to have gone to fight in pro-regime militias.

Even if the AKP had succeeded in toppling the Syrian regime, the Turks who went to fight there would have still posed an internal threat upon their return home. But the chaos simmering across Turkey’s southern borders today has greatly amplified the threat of the boomerang.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/gursel-jihadists-turkey-syria-iraq-isis-nusra-returning.html#ixzz37XO8CaMy