In Syrian Theater, Trump Unites Whole Turkey and (America)
By: Abdullah Ayasun
Tags: Turkey, Donald Trump, Syria, ISIS, Erdogan

In Syrian Theater, Trump Unites Whole Turkey and (America)

Trump’s threat to destroy the economy of Turkey helped unite the entire country. But he also united the U.S. political elites in a unanimous stance to protect the Syrian Kurds against NATO ally.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In less than a day after White House gave its blessing for a Turkish incursion to northern Syria to create a safe zone, U.S. President Donald J. Trump displayed an unprecedented turnaround, baffling his allies and foes in a classic Trumpian act.

In a statement by the Press Secretary late on Sunday, the Trump White House acceded to the unyielding demands of the Erdogan administration for its safe zone scheme, a plan that has created fissures between two NATO allies for its complicated practicality and implications. Any Turkish operation in northern Syria, the U.S. feared, may well undo what it painstakingly tried to build there — a security architecture that mostly based on an alignment with the Syrian Kurdish militia to keep a check on the remnants of the defeated Islamic State amid signs of a resurgence of the extremist group in some areas. Ankara’s intentions toward the Syrian Democratic Forces, a multi-ethnic and diverse fighting force whose command structure dominated by anti-Turkey Kurdish militants, are no secret.

Yet, President Trump, completely bypassing the entire administration, including Pentagon and State Department, finally caved in to his Turkish counterpart’s relentless demands. The U.S. forces, the statement noted, will soon pull out of the “immediate area” of the operation of the Turkish troops, something that was in the offing for months but somehow had been put on hold due to intractable negotiations between two allies to resolve their differences. The deal became possible after a phone call between two presidents who, despite the lingering chasm that threatens to sunder two allies apart, somehow managed to form a close bond between them.

Trump’s submission ignited an impassioned debate across different quarters of the U.S. political spectrum, summoning criticism over the merits of abandoning the U.S.’s most reliable ally on the ground against the ISIS. It also, as a Politico article lucidly demonstrates, “blindsided U.S. national security leaders” over the unilateral act by the president without even bothering to consult relevant agencies responsible for crafting of key U.S. security policies.

Under pressure from his own cabinet and Congress, the U.S. president appeared to change his policy course in less than 24 hours. With his bewildering tweet, he just added more confusion and ambivalence to the U.S. policy, leaving scholars and experts groping for a clue to make sense of the entire saga. Trump threatened to completely annihilate Turkey’s economy, which already shows signs of a crisis.

“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!),” the president said.

He added: “They must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families… it is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory.”

The threat soon sent Turkish lira plunging against the U.S. dollar.

But if Trump’s tweet aimed to subdue Turkey’s leadership, he seems to have made a gross miscalculation. Rather than securing the subjugation of the Turkish leadership, his tweet created the opposite of the desired effect.

Trump Unites Turkey

Trump, whether unwittingly or not, galvanized whole Turkey and united a fragmented opposition behind President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Even the Turkish strongman’s staunch discontents were animated by Trump’s tweet and issued a strong rebuke to the American president.

Regardless of their approval or disapproval of the Erdogan government’s latest endeavor in northern Syria, opposition leaders coalesced around the country’s leader to protest Trump’s erratic and bombastic tweet.

“American President Trump’s unscrupulous and arrogant remarks once again revealed the hypocrisy of the American policies,” tweeted Felicity (Saadet) Party leader Temel Karamollaoglu.

“He is threatening us, arrogant,” wrote Leftist Ismail Saymaz.

In an unusual display of support, Yilmaz Ozdil, one of the paramount Kemalists whose fondness for Ataturk sometimes borders on surrealism and whose opposition to the current government is universally known, vowed an unswerving endorsement to Erdogan if he stands up against the American bully.

“There is no other Turkey… Stand tight, don’t bow, we are with you, Remain astute like Ecevit, eat me,” he wrote, alluding to former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit who defied U.S. threat of sanctions while sending the Turkish troops to Cyprus in 1974. That defiance made left-leaning Ecevit a national hero both on the right and the left.

Can Dundar, former editor-in-chief of Kemalist Cumhuriyet daily who lives in Germany in self-imposed exile, also rebuked Trump. “Calm down, cowboy.”

In an expression of support for the government, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) spokesman Faik Oztrak reacted to Trump’s threatening tweets.

“The Turkish Republic has not bowed to any threat and will not do so. As a sovereign and independent country, Turkey will make its own decision in any matter,” he said.

Trump Unites America

Trump’s remarks and pullout decision did not only trigger a unity in Turkey, but also succeeded to unite Republicans and Democrats against the withdrawal of the U.S. troops to make room for a looming Turkish operation.

The president’s twists and turns also laid bare the cracks within his own administration and party, prompting senators to voice strong disapproval of the latest decision. The New York Times reported on Monday that 100 to 150 U.S. troops who were deployed to the area near the Turkish border “would be pulled back in advance of the Turkish operation.”

In a split with the U.S. president, Pentagon took a different course and technically shut Turkey off from the airspace in northern Syria.

Pentagon spokeswoman Carla Gleason told press members that Turkey has been removed from the anti-ISIS coalition’s air tasking order by the Combined Air Operations Center. Turkey’s access to surveillance information has also been suspended indefinitely.

With this, the use of Turkish airpower in a crowded airspace would be an additional challenge to support ground forces.

Trump’s Syria policy has drawn a barrage of criticism from his own party, too.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said in a tweet that “if press reports are accurate this is a disaster in the making.”

Graham, a loyal Trump supporter, was not hesitant to break with the president over the pullout issue, something he saw as a sellout of the Kurds.

Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, joined the chorus and spoke against abandoning Kurds. But she went so far as to add the hashtag #TurkeyIsNotOurFriend to the end of her tweet, revealing the depth of her displeasure both with the impending Turkish military incursion and the U.S. efforts to preserve an alliance with Ankara.

Republican Senate majority leader “Senator Mitch McConnell warned against a “precipitous withdrawal” that would benefit Russia, Iran, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the Islamic State,” according to the New York Times.

The list certainly goes longer. With both his endorsements and baffling threats, with his rapidly shifting positions and reversals, the U.S. president continues to keep allies and adversaries off balance and leaves them always agonizingly gauging the true motive of his moves.

This was all the more palpable in the latest episode. Yet, he achieved to unite both countries, the U.S. and Turkey, but for different reasons. His pullout decision united his own country against him, his threatening tweet did the same in Turkey. Although he tried to recalibrate his position to soften political backlash at home front, his bizarre and undiplomatic tweets added more drama and confusion than clarity to the exact nature of his latest policy.

Was it a partial endorsement or a full-fledged threat? The riddle of Trumpian diplomacy perpetually remains unresolved, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not.