What’s Behind the Turkish-Syrian Crisis?

Economic Problems, Looming Scandal, Water And the Alliance With Israel

By James M. Dorsey

Fears of a persistent campaign to undermine the credibility of the government have prompted Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz to agree to bringing forward to December early elections previously scheduled for April.

The decision, agreed to in consultation with Deputy Prime Minister and Democratic Left Party leader Bulent Ecevit, a senior partner in Yilmaz’s three-party right-left minority government and widely viewed as Turkey’s cleanest mainstream politician, could put Turkey at a crossroads.

A snap election would serve Yilmaz’s purpose, coming before dire economic predictions become reality and hit voters’ pockets. The government admitted last week it could not make its year-end annual target of holding inflation to 50 percent. But it is likely that the Islamists again will emerge as Turkey’s largest political party, just as they did in the last nationwide elections.

Turkish President Suleyman Demirel expressed support for bringing the election date forward and said earlier polls might help remove political uncertainty.

Investors, too, welcomed the chance of a swift pre-election process rather than the transition to an interim government envisaged by previous plans for polls in April 1999. The talk of early polls and a better global outlook lifted stocks in Istanbul by more than 2 percent.

However, another Islamist election victory fueled by the squabbling and apparent decay and corruption of secular political parties could provoke an even more severe political crisis given the staunchly secular military command’s determination to keep religious forces out of government.

The Islamist Virtue Party, the main opposition group with the largest representation in parliament, has endorsed suggestions for a December election, confident of doing even better than in 1995 when Islamists of the subsequently banned Welfare Party emerged as the biggest party with 21 percent.

“Turkey has been in a state of political chaos for a long time. Elections as soon as possible are the way out of political instability,” said Abdullah Gul, a senior Virtue Party official.

Yilmaz’s willingness to entertain the idea of a snap election follows a series of incidents linking members of his government and privatization deals concluded during his 15-month tenure to a right-wing criminal underground. A series of taped conversations between officials who benefitted from the privatization process and Mafia lords raises the specter of more scandals to come.

Turkey has begun an investigation into all of its pending privatization deals after the winning bidder for a state-owned bank was caught on tape talking to a Mafia boss.

Earlier, a lawmaker released tapes of a telephone conversation between Alaattin Cakici, a Mafia boss who was arrested in France in August and is accused in connection with several killings, and businessman Korkmaz Yigit, who recently acquired the Milliyet and Yeni Yuzyil daily newspapers.

On the tape, Cakici assured Yigit that he would fend off rivals wanting to take part in the bidding for Turkbank. Yigit has admitted that it was his voice on the tape, but said he was trying to keep the mob boss out of the sale.

The suspension of the sale of the bank marked the first time that a project has been halted over allegations of Mafia involvement. Turkey so far has acquired $3.2 billion from the sales of state enterprises in 1998.

At the time of his arrest, Cakici had been traveling with four false passports, including a diplomatic one—raising suspicions that for years he had been under the protection of Turkish public officials. At least one intelligence officer has been recalled to Ankara for alleged ties with Cakici. Government Minister Eyup Asik, a close aide to Yilmaz, resigned last month after a similar taped conversation between him and Cakici was released. Asik denied wrongdoing.

The Turkish-Syrian Border Crisis

A series of recent developments has reinforced the conviction of Turkey’s powerful armed forces that Damascus holds the key to solution of their Kurdish problems.

Turkey fears that a recent United States-sponsored peace agreement between rival Kurdish groups in predominantly northern Iraq, designed to strengthen Kurdish self-rule in the region, will fuel Kurdish demands in Turkey for similar rights.

The two major Iraqi Kurdish groups—the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) headed by Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani—agreed in Washington to hold parliamentary elections in northern Iraq early next year. The region, though still officially part of Iraq, has been effectively liberated from Baghdad’s control by a protective U.S.-French-British air umbrella.

The fears are fueled by the Turkish military’s conviction that it has virtually defeated the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in southeastern Turkey. The PKK has been waging a 14-year-old war in which some 30,000 people have been killed in a bid to achieve greater autonomy for Turkey’s estimated 12 million Kurds. The Turkish military maintains that foreign aid, particularly from Syria, is what still keeps the PKK alive.

Fears of an immediate confrontation appeared to have subsided with reports that Syria has quietly asked PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to leave Damascus in a bid to defuse tension with neighboring Turkey that threatened to erupt into warfare between the two countries. Syria was also said to have closed down at least some PKK camps.

Several Middle Eastern nations, including Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia, fearful of yet another conflict in the Middle East that could escalate with the Turkish-Israeli military muscle demonstrating its power, pressured Syria to address Turkish concerns. Yet, with the root of Turkish-Syrian differences unresolved, Turkish officials said they feared the Syrian moves were more cosmetic than real.

At first Turkey’s traditionally strained relations with Syria took a substantial turn for the worse in early September, when the Turkish armed forces ignored the PKK’s announcement of a unilateral cease-fire from Sept. 1, and its willingness to consider political autonomy within Turkey, thus abandoning its earlier objective of establishing an independent Kurdistan. Barely a week later Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz paid an official visit to Israel during which Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu described his country’s military links with Turkey as “the main axis of a regional security arrangement.” That statement was followed by an announcement that the two countries would conduct joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean in November.

The exercise is part of a two-year-old Israeli-Turkish military cooperation agreement that allows Israel to maintain eight warplanes permanently in Turkey in exchange for Ankara positioning an equal number of aircraft in Israel’s Negev desert.

Israeli aircraft have flown closely along the 600-kilometer Turkish-Syrian border, and Turkey has reportedly permitted Israel to establish monitoring stations in the mountains near the Syrian frontier, thus enabling Tel Aviv to eavesdrop on the Syrian military.

For centuries the colonial rulers of Syria and the Arab world, Turks today are callous about their relations with the Arabs, seeing Europe and Central Asia as far more crucial to their geopolitical and economic well-being.

“Who cares what Arabs think?” quips a senior Turkish official. Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem said that Ankara would not reshape its foreign policy just “to appease Arabs.”

Turkish nationalist fervor is especially high in Hatay, Turkey’s predominantly Arab province, which is separated from Syria by barbed wire fencing and millions of land mines. Here in this part of Turkey lies one of the roots of Turkish-Syrian tension.

Syria complains that a Turkish scheme to build a string of dams across the Euphrates River as part of its $32 billion South-East Anatolia Project is depriving Syria of water on which its agriculture so heavily depends. Damascus has been pressing Turkey to sign an agreement to share the water, but Ankara says that it releases more than enough water downstream.

The threats of war on the border between Turkey and Syria seem to confirm the worst predictions of strategists that the next conflict in the Middle East will be over water, not oil. With fast-growing populations to feed, Syria and other Middle Eastern states are looking anxiously at where they will find the water for agriculture and industry.

“The Middle East has basically run out of water. Only in the Tigris and Euphrates is there some surplus, and Turkey controls this vital resource,”says one analyst.

James M. Dorsey is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul.