Jerusalem Post
[While Turkey frequently spreads misinformation via its state media,
imprisons journalists and dissidents and bashes the US, it is growing
closer to Russia.]
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
JANUARY 2, 2021
Turkey and Russia are increasingly becoming strategic partners in an
effort to work with Iran and remove the US from the Middle East. This
is Turkey’s overall goal, and the recent conflicts and chaos that it
has spread from Syria to Libya, the Mediterranean and Caucasus are
designed to partition these areas into Russian and Turkish spheres of
influence.
Turkey has encouraged its lobbyists in the US to claim that Ankara is
doing “geopolitics” designed to be a “bulwark” against Russia, using
Cold War-era terminology to encourage Westerners to believe that
Ankara is on the side of Washington against Moscow. The reality,
however, is that Turkey’s goal is to work with Russia and Iran to
reduce US influence.
This has been the result in every area that Ankara has invaded and
involved itself. Turkey worked with Russia to partition parts of
northern Syria, removing US forces and spreading extremism. In Libya,
a conflict that the US was once involved in has now become a
playground for Turkish-backed militias. The recent war between
Azerbaijan and Armenia was likewise designed to bring Turkey and
Russia into direct contact in the southern Caucasus, remove US
influence and partition the area.
Evidence for this can be found in the agreement to end the war that
saw Russian peacekeepers and soldiers increase their role in
Nagorna-Karabakh, an autonomous Armenian region in Azerbaijan. Turkey
prodded Baku into war against Armenians there, causing massive damage
and forcing 50,000 to flee.
For Turkey, the attacks on Armenian civilians were a success,
replicating Turkish-backed ethnic-cleansing in Afrin where Kurds were
expelled in January 2018. The model was the same in Nagorna-Karabakh.
Turkey sent extremists, accused of beheading people, to ransack
churches and force Armenians out. A hundred years after the Armenian
genocide carried out by the Ottoman regime in 2015, Turkey wanted to
continue the process. Much as in 1915, the goal would in the end would
bring renewed Russian involvement in the Caucasus.
RUSSIAN RESCUE workers have now reconstructed more than 2,150
buildings in Nagorna-Karabakh, according to Russia’s TASS media. "As
many as 251 buildings have been reconstructed so far, including an
apartment building, 245 private houses, two government buildings, an
infrastructure facility and two social facilities," the statement
reads.
Some 2,600 more buildings damaged in the war may now receive Russian
support. Russia views this as a kind of police action, going in to
stop squabbling by former Soviet socialist republics. This is how
Ankara views the region as well: from the Ottoman empire's point of
view. That is why Turkey keeps talking about rewriting the Lausanne
Treaty and other agreements made after the First World War. Ankara’s
invasion of Syria and setting up a dozen bases in northern Iraq, as
well as involvement in Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean, is part of
this.
Turkey sells its involvement with different public relations campaigns
in different places. In Washington it sells this as “geopolitics,”
pretending to be a US ally. In fact, Turkey is rapidly buying Russian
arms.
Turkey and Russia met in the Russian resort city of Sochi last week to
talk strategy. Turkey’s state media says “the top Turkish and Russian
diplomats met Tuesday to discuss international issues and help prepare
for a meeting of the two countries’ presidents. Turkish foreign
minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met with his Russian counterpart Sergey
Lavrov in Sochi, ahead of a planned meeting of the high-level
Russian-Turkish Cooperation Council, set to be co-chaired by their
presidents.”
WHILE TURKEY frequently spreads misinformation via its state media,
imprisons journalists and dissidents and bashes the US, it is growing
closer to Russia. It is now four years since Russia’s ambassador to
Turkey was assassinated. That incident has been quietly pushed aside
in favor of the new alliance.
Turkey, Russia and Iran see this as a pragmatic working relationship,
growing out of the Astana process of 2016 that was supposed to carve
up Syria into areas of influence and remove the US from eastern Syria.
The end goal is the same: Remove the US and give each member of this
new alliance their respective area of control.
Turkey has tried to hint to Israel, as well as the US, that it wants
“reconciliation.” However when Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan
speaks, he continues his militarist drive. His sycophants despise the
US and Europe. They use the term “reconciliation” only because they
think gullible Western media will buy them time and perhaps an in with
the new US administration to continue their work with Russia and Iran.
The US once had a wider role in the Caucasus. Georgia expected
American support in 2008 when it wandered into a war with Russia over
disputed areas. When Georgia was defeated, the US and European role
there declined. Later in 2014, Ukraine expected more US support but
saw Russia annex Crimea.
The war that Turkey prodded Azerbaijan into in September last year was
the final end of US involvement in the Caucasus. While Turkey sold the
war as being needed to confront Iran and Russia, Ankara was in fact
working with Tehran and Moscow.
The goal was to bring Russia into the southern Caucasus as
peacekeepers and to remove any Western influence. This is because
Armenia had been seeking to drift away from the Russia orbit. Nikol
Pashinyan wanted to seek closer ties to the West. To break this,
Moscow allowed Turkish-backed Azerbaijan to launch a war to weaken him
in the summer and fall of 2019. Weakened and defeated, he sued for
peace – and Russia and Turkey moved into disputed areas with Baku’s
acquiescence.
Now Armenia is totally hostage to Moscow and Ankara. Turkey
wants this. Azerbaijan, which sought for decades to grow closer to the
US and also to Israel as a strategic partner, has now also seen itself
cornered by Ankara. The end result is more Iranian, Russian and
Turkish control, and a weakening of independent southern Caucasus
states.
WESTERN MEDIA is fed stories about how the Turkish-Iranian-Russian
triangle is destined to clash because of historic Ottoman, Persian and
Russian imperial goals, or because they are Sunni, Shi’ite and
Christian countries. This is a misreading of history. They are more
likely to work together against their common enemies in the West, and
to further their joint authoritarian and military agendas.
They share much in common as rising powers in the world, seeking to
end the unipolar world of US hegemony that grew out of the Cold War.
Those in Washington who see Turkey through a Cold War lens are wrong
about Turkey’s overall agenda. The agenda of Ankara is always to
weaken and reduce the US role in the Middle East and to increase the
Russian and Iranian role. In every invasion Ankara has performed so
far, it has sought to increase Russia and Iran’s power – and to not
only weaken America, but to also weaken any groups that want democracy
or a more free press, and to bring in extremists and authoritarians.
John F. Kennedy in 1960 argued that the world was not just divided
into a Soviet and American camp, but rather those countries that were
“free” as opposed to those who aren't. He understood that
authoritarians prefer to work together; that is what is happening in
the Caucasus.