Turkish citizens pay the price of government’s faulty foreign policy

The Turkish Government of Erdogan has finally strated to taste its own-made medicine. Erdogan’s support to al-Qaeda affiliates operating in Syria has been turned into a headache for his country. Erdogan, however, has not halted all forms of logistic support to the terrorists not noly against Syria but also against the entire region. The Turkish Zaman Daily issued recently the following report to this effect:

The foreign policy choices of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) regarding countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Syria are increasingly putting Turkish citizens’ lives at risk around the world as kidnappings become more commonplace and economic costs rise.

Eighty Turkish citizens, including the Turkish consulate-general and 31 truck drivers, were taken hostage in and around the Iraqi city of Mosul in early June by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al-Qaeda affiliate. The government has imposed a media blackout on reporting about the grave situation on the ground, saying that the opposition Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) — and “their media” — are putting Turkish lives in danger by criticizing the government and pushing Turkish officials to make provocative comments against ISIL.

 “The fall of Mosul was the epitome of the failure of Turkish foreign policy over the last four years,” a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in İstanbul, Soli Özel, told The New York Times on Wednesday. “I can’t disassociate what happened in Mosul from what happened in Syria, and Turkish foreign policy toward Syria has been unrealistic, hubristic, ideological and stubborn,” added Özel, according to the daily.

The hostage crisis came despite reassurances from the AK Party, with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu tweeting a day before the attack that there was “nothing to be concerned over with regards to the safety of the diplomatic personnel in Turkey’s consulate in Mosul” and that necessary measures had been taken to ensure the safety of the Turkish consulate in Mosul. However, after the attack took place, Davutoğlu said Ankara was unable to execute an order to evacuate the Turkish consulate due to intense fighting.

As the Mosul hostage crisis deepened, CHP Deputy Chairman Faruk Loğoğlu asked Davutoğlu to resign. Speaking to journalists after a meeting with Davutoğlu, Loğoğlu said CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had also stressed that the AK Party’s Middle East policy has been entirely wrong and that it has dragged the country into a quagmire by isolating the country in the region; thus, Turkey is facing serious problems. “The chief architect of such foreign policies is the prime minister. But Davutoğlu is the architect in practice. Therefore, I told Davutoğlu that he should resign immediately,” Loğoğlu stated.

With regard to Syria’s ongoing civil war, reports in American and other media outlets have long suggested that Turkey has been turning a blind eye to radical fighters entering Syria from its territory. An al-Qaeda network based in Iran has been helping transport fighters and money to Syria via Turkey, the United States Treasury Department said in February.

Reporting from the Habur border gate between Turkey and Iraq, The New York Times wrote on Wednesday: “Once this border was wide open, as Turkey allowed rebel groups of any stripe easy access to the battlefields in Syria in an effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad. But that created fertile ground in Syria for the development of the Sunni militant group that launched a blitzkrieg in Iraq this month, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIL].”

A truck driver speaking to the newspaper stated that for three years, Turkish truck drivers have seen ISIL flags in Syria, and that “Turkey let them in.” The New York Times wrote, “Now, with the rise of ISIS [ISIL], the Turkish government is paying a steep price for the chaos it helped create.”

Foundation for Defense and Democracies Vice President for Research Jonathan Schanzer told Sunday’s Zaman in an email: “In many ways, Turkey’s ISIL crisis is one of its own making. Ankara has been supporting Sunni extremists within the Syrian opposition while turning a blind eye to or even supporting the activities of foreign jihadists on its eastern frontier. One analyst has gone as far as to say that eastern Turkey is the new Peshawar of this jihadi generation.” Peshawar is known as Pakistan’s terror capital, with many al-Qaeda affiliates operating from there.

 “Washington is not blind to this. While it has not openly chastised Ankara for these policies, it is clear that the alliance is significantly frayed,” Schanzer added.

In Libya, Turkey has evacuated hundreds of its citizens after a threat from retired Gen. Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general fighting insurgents in the east of the country, the Turkish Embassy in Tripoli said on Tuesday. The Libyan general has called on all Turks and Qataris to leave the volatile eastern part of Libya, accusing the two countries of supporting terrorism. Haftar has declared war on Islamist militants in eastern Libya, a center of growing turmoil in the oil-producing nation where the government is unable to control the armed groups that helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but which now defy state authority. Some 420 Turks were flown out from the western Libyan city of Misrata on Tuesday, Tripoli airport spokesman Mohamed Ismail said. Around 140 more were scheduled to be evacuated from the eastern Al Abraq International Airport at midnight on Tuesday.

Turkish citizens have been exposed to kidnappings for some time. Last year in August, two Turkish Airlines (THY) pilots, Murat Akpınar and Murat Ağca, were kidnapped by a group called Zuwwar Imam Ali al-Reda near Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport on the way to their hotel. The gunmen who abducted the pilots demanded the release of nine kidnapped Lebanese Shiite pilgrims abducted by Syrian opposition forces in Syria in May 2012, saying the two Turks would be freed if the Lebanese captives were freed. The two pilots were released as part of a negotiated hostage deal that included the freeing of kidnapped pilgrims as well as Syrian women in jail in Syria.

Following the abduction of the pilots, Turkey announced a series of precautions for its civilians and officials. Ankara issued a travel warning after the pilots’ abduction urging citizens to avoid travel to Lebanon and advising those already in the country to leave.

In addition to truck drivers, diplomatic staff and business executives, Turkish journalists are also becoming targets in the region. Metin Turan, a senior reporter with the state-owned Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), was detained by Egyptian authorities in 2013, and he was released in early December after spending more than three months in jail.

Turan was detained in mid-August in Cairo’s al-Fateh Mosque while covering a military crackdown on supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. He was held on charges of promoting violence, and his detention was extended several times. Following the escalation of tension between Turkey and Egypt after the coup, Egyptian security forces searched the offices of TRT, the Anadolu news agency and the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TİKA).

Turkish officials are brushing aside analyses suggesting that Turkish foreign policy, which aims to have “zero problems with neighbors,” has become more like “zero neighbors” as the country’s relationships with a number of its neighbors and allies have turned sour in the last few years. But the rise of ISIL in Iraq is another foreign policy setback for the Erdoğan government, which is being accused of facilitating the rise of extremists in the region. The government has stepped up efforts to curb the flow of extremists but experts say these efforts have come too late and Turkey has ended up with huge problems on its borders.

Source: todayszaman

M.A.