Turkey: A victim of imperial overreach

Lale Kemal

There are, on the one hand, the Turkish security forces and judiciary, and on the other, the government and the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), who are engaged in a bitter power struggle in front of the public over the search and seizure of trucks destined for neighboring Syria, which has been engulfed in a civil war for nearly three years. The government says the Syria-bound trucks contain humanitarian goods, while the opposition parties say they contain arms carried secretly to Syrian extremist groups such as the al-Nusra Front.

Public prosecutors in the southern region close to Syria who order the police and gendarmerie to intercept and conduct searches on these trucks are punished by the government by being reassigned to other posts.

The controversy over the interception and contents of the trucks is a reflection of a serious power struggle taking place between the government and the Hizmet movement, headed by respected Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, who are former-allies-turned-enemies, with the former accusing the latter of undermining its 11-year rule in collaboration with what it describes as dark international circles.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) believes that many police and judicial staff are connected to the Hizmet movement, who it claims are intercepting the trucks in order to embarrass the government.

The government has purged thousands of police and scores of judges and prosecutors removing them from their current positions after the breaking of a corruption and bribery scandal that implicated close allies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Dec. 17 of last year.

It is common knowledge within the intelligence community that nations will conduct clandestine activities when necessary if they believe these will serve the national interest of the country. And such activities will be kept highly secret within the secret services, military, police and judiciary.

But in Turkey, the incidents of truck interceptions and seizures have also marked -- in addition to a power struggle between the government and the Hizmet movement -- a long-term divergence of opinion within Turkish government institutions over the country's policy on Syria. This is because the government has assigned MİT personnel to escort the trucks, which it says contain humanitarian assistance for Syrian war victims, while the police and gendarmerie, acting upon orders given by prosecutors, are intercepting the trucks and carrying out searches on them. Instead, such operations could have been kept secret.

It is also bizarre that MİT personnel would escort trucks said to be carrying humanitarian goods to Syria and that the government would say they should not be stopped and searched.

The opposition parties challenge the government by saying that trucks carrying humanitarian goods should not be kept secret and that MİT has nothing to do with such shipments. Hence, they say the trucks must be carrying guns for the opposition.

Erdoğan sees the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as an enemy, and his government has allegedly been allowing Syrian opposition fighters to operate on Turkish soil while turning a blind eye to the shipment of arms via its territory to Syrian rebel groups, including extremist Islamic groups such as the al-Nusra Front, which have grown in strength and are now fighting not only against the Damascus regime but also against the moderate opposition rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Ankara, on the other hand, denies that it has been supplying arms to the Jihadists in Syria.

According to an Ankara-based Western military analyst, the government realizes that its Syria policy is unpopular, and this is perhaps the reason why it cannot use traditional means in its Syria policy.

“Traditional means include going to Parliament, which will provide or not provide the necessary support for the government's policy. A vote will take place, and the government will act in line with Parliament's decision or not, depending on the strength of its party's majority,” he stated.

Since the traditional means are not being applied for the Syria policy, the military does not appear to be helping the government in its highly controversial Syria policy.

In fact, the Turkish military said in a recent statement that it had nothing to do with the truck seizures. In short, the military says the truck controversy is a government matter.

It should be noted that the military statement that it had nothing to do with the truck seizures is also an example of the military's interference in politics, since the military does not have a duty to make such public statements and instead should talk to its government privately about such matters.

Nevertheless, the government appears to have opted for non-traditional means in its Syria policy due to its unpopularity, such as allegedly sending arms to opposition groups.

At the end of the day, Turkey has overestimated its strength and become a victim of its imperial overreach in Syria.

Published on Today's Zaman, 30 January 2014, Thursday