Why did the West abandon Erdogan’s Turkey?

Hossam al-Haddad

The sound of fire being exchanged between the Turkish army and its terrorist militias (represented by the remnants of ISIS and other terrorist groups) on the one hand and the Syrian army on the other hand has calmed down as a result of a ceasefire agreement held in Moscow on Thursday, March 5. But Turkish media has made sharp and bitter criticism against the United States and the West for abandoning support for Ankara during its recent struggle against Damascus and its ally Moscow. However, researchers and political analysts in Washington have found many reasons why the United States does not care much about Turkey’s request to supply it with Patriot missiles or to support Ankara politically or militarily. What are these reasons behind this, and why did Europe take a similar stance as the US even though Turkey is an active member of NATO?

Tarek al-Shami, a specialist in US and Arab affairs, answered these questions in his latest reports published on the Independent website. With the lives of more than 30 Turkish soldiers claimed, Ankara is in a state of panic because of the clear lack of interest from the West in general and the United States in particular about what Turkey is going through.

Despite NATO’s words of support for Ankara, Turkey’s insistence on requesting that it be supplied with Patriot missile defense systems went unheeded.

With the exchange of strikes between Ankara and Damascus, a campaign of anger from Turkey’s top political commentators has escalated to a new level. Turkish analyst Sinan Ülgen, a former diplomat, called on the West to support Ankara and not to abandon their Turkish ally, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman Fahrettin Altun went on to criticize the West’s response, describing it as frustrating.

Turkish media picked up the thread and launched a campaign to reprimand and condemn the US and European positions.

Shami confirmed in his report that this fierce campaign reverberated in the West but was a waste of time and effort. Researchers and political analysts in the United States consider Turkey, not the West, responsible for what happened many years ago, as Ankara sought for nearly a decade to undermine and obstruct US foreign policy, engaged in hostile rhetoric against Washington, and threatened and arrested a number of Americans, which had not occurred before between the United States and Turkey.

Erdogan not a US partner

Steven Cook, a Middle East researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said Erdogan was not a partner of the United States in the past, so why should Washington risk getting involved in the Syrian conflict in order to help his country? Rather, the Turks should not have expected more from the United States other than good wishes.

It is true that the United States has distinct military capabilities that enable it to lend a hand to Turkey, but the Turks are not in urgent need, as their losses were not severe during the limited battles with the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Problem in Turkish politics

While the same applies to Europe, in terms of Erdogan’s actions aimed at harming European countries by encouraging refugees to cross the borders, it has become surprising that Erdogan expects any European military aid from underfunded countries.

The American magazine Foreign Policy pointed out that Turkey’s problem is not related to its military competence against the weak Assad forces, which Russia intervened to save in 2015, but the real problem relates to Turkey’s policy in Syria, where Turkish officials have no idea how to end the conflict there. They are also unable to ease the seemingly endless suffering of the Syrians. But that does not make the Turks different from their American and British counterparts.

No help for Turkey

The scorched earth strategy has produced a humanitarian catastrophe whose dimensions and scale are still unknown. About a million people now find themselves trapped between three armies. With the increased possibility of millions of desperate Syrians entering Turkey to escape war and destruction, Erdogan found himself forced to reinforce the Turkish military presence in Idlib, which led to the outbreak of a war within a war. The United States does not want to be a party to this, because it is not a high priority for them.

With the ceasefire agreement signed between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 5, Turkey no longer needs Washington in the short term. But in the long term, Ankara is facing a possible crisis of caring for millions of refugees, whose presence could destabilize the Turkish interior.

However, the United States is not expected to start helping Turkey with its crisis, despite the root causes of the emergency generated by the continued bloodshed in Syria. It is also not expected that EU countries will pay billions more annually to Turkey in order to stop the flow of Syrian and non-Syrian refugees to Europe across the Turkish borders.