With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
In the wake of the Ramadan massacre in Hama, which prompted even the Russians to sign on to a statement of condemnation at the UN Security Council, Turkish officials are properly appalled and furious. They are now using minatory language:
[Turkey and Syria] will sit down and talk for one last time … even though one should not exclude dialogue even in wartime,” another Foreign Ministry official said. “The talks will show whether the ties will be cut loose or not … If a new [Turkish] policy is to be outlined on Syria – that’s the last meeting.”
The problem--of course--is that the AKP's strategic doctrine has been "soft power" and "defanging the military," and soft power doesn't mean a damned thing to Assad. Assad is capable of reading a newspaper, and knows full well that the United States is broke and tuned-out and that twelve percent of Turkey's serving admirals and generals are in prison. He also knows the Turkish military is deeply demoralized.
This is the strategic situation: Iran has threatened to retaliate against Turkey if it interferes. It can, and everyone knows it. Quite some number of the Turkish military's senior leadership would be unlikely at this point to trust to NATO or American guarantees. How many? I don't know. But it's logical. After all, where was America, where was NATO, when their leadership was being locked up for years, without conviction, on incoherent charges of coup-plotting? Oh, yes, they were exhilarated.
The point of having a strong military is not to use it. If you have to use it, your foreign policy has been a failure. The point of a strong military is deterrence--in other words, to signal, credibly, that you might use it. In this, Turkey is obviously compromised right now.
It may be that Turkey can still exhibit some influence on this situation, but I doubt it. I hope so, but I doubt it. This is a tragic failure of Turkish and American foreign policy.
It was entirely right for the West to use its moral influence to urge that civilian control over the military be established in Turkey. But it was also right for the West to use its moral influence to note that the evidence that these men were plotting a coup, at least the evidence that anyone has seen, raises very reasonable doubts about the charges.
That so many senior military officials have been detained for years without conviction is not a joyous thing. It's a sign that Turkey still has an inscrutable, capricious, easily-politicized justice system that is no special improvement on the old one. It has not been reformed. It has been rebranded with a new manager and a new marketing department. It is, however, the same faulty product. The AKP can be applauded for not killing their political rivals, I suppose--that's progress if your expectations for Turkey are condescendingly low--but let's call that what it is: better than savagery, but hardly admirable.
The principle of "one man, one vote" is only one aspect of the kind of constitutional democracy the West celebrates itself for achieving (or at least, let's be frank, for having achieved). "Democracy" in the absence of "constitutional"--a constitution that among other things insists upon the protection of all individuals from arbitrary detention for indefinite periods without conviction, and sets reasonable standards for conviction--is also known as "mob rule." Is that truly what the West stands for?
Generally the best even the defenders of these trials can say about them, when pressed with evidence that these cases are riddled with absurd inconsistencies, is that the Turkish justice system has always been dysfunctional, so what's new; that these trials are a necessary evil; and at least the conditions of detention are humane. Usually this is accompanied by other bromides to the effect that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
Would it have been so hard for the West to say, "We are morally opposed to military interference in civilian politics and we are morally opposed to locking up high-ranking members of the military for years without a conviction?" Is that really such a hard call? Was our refusal publicly to question these trials predicated upon the lazy idea that the Turkish military is entirely comprised of scary, fascist bastards who can't be trusted, so whatever happens to them is just fine?
I don't share the view that everyone in the modern Turkish military is a scary, fascist bastard, and I don't share the view that everyone who supports these trials is a crypto-Islamist. I've met too many of both to imagine that either cliche necessarily applies.
But the AKP's foreign policy has clearly been colored by a soft-headed, Utopian sentimentality about the East--a "mildly Islamist" anti-Orientalism--that has led them to believe that soft power will literally work miracles. They're now confronted with evidence to the contrary, and their military--as everyone in the world has excitedly noted--is "defanged." That is not an unalloyed cause for joy.
The West has stood up for Turkish journalists--on occasion--and said clearly that it is not in Turkey's interest, or compatible with liberal, democratic values, that so many are in jail. I agree. But only dreamy Utopians and self-absorbed journalists believe that civilization rests upon journalists alone.
Why, I have often been asked by Turks, would the West stand up for the Turkish military when so many other people in Turkey have been victim of the justice system? After all, they are hardly the only ones who have been in jail for years on charges no one can understand.
I don't speak for the West--unfortunately. But if I did, I would say this. First, I'm standing up for everyone here--or anywhere--who has been locked up for years without a credible trial. Until Turkey's justice system is reformed and depoliticized, Turkey is swapping one form of "tutelage" for another. It is a democracy, but not one obviously more advanced than one in which the military plays a significant role in domestic politics.
Second, I'll stand up for the military because I'm a realist, and I appreciate that militaries play a particularly essential role in preserving civilization. I'm fully aware that the military coups in Turkey were deep national traumas--as were the events leading up to them, as has been the God-awful war with the PKK. But it is folly to imagine that show trials of the military will heal that past. It is also folly to believe the military serves no urgent purpose.
I do not at all dismiss soft power, ideas and diplomacy. Of course not: I'm a writer, not a soldier; obviously I believe that ideas count. But they don't count much with Assad, do they? That Assad is a predator is no Orientalist myth. He is not afraid of anyone's God. It is a shame that he is not, at least, so afraid of Turkey, the United States, and every other civilized nation that he would not dream of laughing off the insistence that he stop slaughtering his people.
In a perfect world, we will all live in harmony and our militaries will dissolve and there will be no more borders and the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. Until that world comes--and none among us has the power to bring it--only fools celebrate "defanging the military" as they lie down with leopards.
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Dec '10
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
Claire Berlinski, Ed.:
I do not at all dismiss soft power, ideas and diplomacy. Of course not: I'm a writer, not a soldier; obviously I believe that ideas count. But they don't count much with Assad, do they? That Assad is a predator is no Orientalist myth. He is not afraid of anyone's God. It is a shame that he is not, at least, so afraid of Turkey, the United States, and every other civilized nation that he would not dream of laughing off the insistence that he stop slaughtering his people.
In the words of Verbal Kint: "Keaton always said, 'I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him.' Well I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze."
Assad is afraid of one thing: Iran. Iran is the only power that can make threats against Assad that he must take seriously.
Mar '11
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
Unfortunately, the US Democrats, and our beloved President, are also fo..., um, proponents of soft power - it's cheaper. And moral.
Edited on Aug 8, 2011 at 1:26amFeb '11
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
IIRC, one of the things that convinced Hitler that he could successfully invade the Soviet Union was the fact that Stalin had shot and exiled so many of his own generals and other officers, and the Soviet military was consequently in considerable disarray.
Feb '11
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
Apr '11
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
"Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu will fly to Damascus tomorrow (9 August) to deliver the message that Ankara’s patience with the situation is running out and that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad risks losing Turkey’s support, the daily Hurriyet reported."
“Those who sent scores of Muslims to the gallows are not up on their feet now and look where they are going on a stretcher … Those who do not learn a lesson will suffer,” Erdoğan said.
http://www.euractiv.com/en/global-europe/turkey-delivers-final-warning-syria-news-506931
Aug '10
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
After reading this, the new road to Damascus is beginning to resemble railroad tracks traversing hell. What are the coordinates of the impending attack, Secretary Clinton ?
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
David Williamson
Unfortunately, the US Democrats, and our beloved President, are also fo..., um, proponents of soft power - it's cheaper. And moral. · Aug 8 at 12:48am
Edited on Aug 08 at 01:26 am
I might be alone on this one, but I'm half expecting a U.S. military expedition in Syria sometime just before next year's presidential election. Overly cynical? Perhaps. But beyond the stretch of the imagination?
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
Flownoever, why this account and not the thousands upon thousands before it?
Aug '10
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
Heck I'm just hoping one of the thousands gets some press somewhere other than the echo chambers we inhabit on the internet. This account felt more visceral than Vogue's description of Assad's wife's wardrobe.
( and where in Hades is Ms Power and R2P ?)
Edited on Aug 8, 2011 at 9:54amMar '11
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
I should think that Turkey's formidable army, both in terms of numbers as well as materiel, should prove no match for the Syrian army, whose primary responsibility has been firing at unarmed protesters. What better way then for Turkey's new AKP-friendly military leaders to establish their war-waging credentials than a quick victory in Syria.
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
Quick victory?
With Syrian and Iranian missiles that will land on my apartment, Turkey crawling with Iranian and Syrian intelligence operatives, a restless PKK and my friends drafted into the army?
Assad won't go down without trying to take us all with him. I'd sure feel better about it if I thought Turkey's best generals were planning this in close coordination with adults in the White House. The former are in jail and the latter haven't been seen in years.
Edited on Aug 8, 2011 at 8:32pmMar '11
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
Well, you know best and you live there, but I doubt very much that Iran would be willing to give any pretext for NATO to (counter)attack. The fact remains that if a NATO member were attacked the alliance would have to respond, however reluctantly. Syria, yes, it is possible it will fire its missiles, although I don't believe it has any with enough range to reach Istanbul. Besides, this would deprive Assad of any possibility of saving his own skin; Turkey might let him slip away if he offered just token resistance, although I doubt that he and is wife would find the Islamic Republic of Iran much to their liking. But I think that the Assad regime will collapse once a determined Turkish force moves in. Of course all this could be facilitated much more easily and coordinated much more effectively with competent US leaderships. But sadly, as you note, we lack such.
Re: With Whose Generals Does Turkey Plan to Threaten Assad?
To the second question: Yes, it does. To the first: If you were a reckless or desperate Iranian planner--never rule out recklessness and desperation--might you not be looking at the constellation of world events and the Obama presidency and thinking, "This is the moment, we will never have a better chance to teach those secular Sunni dogs never to mess with us again, and what are they going to do, especially if we leave an ambiguous footprint?"