While the Israeli army has been committing carnage in Gaza since the Hamas assault on October 7, and a ground intervention has just begun, Turkey’s autocrat President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been particularly conspicuous by his presence. First as a potential “mediator” between the Israeli government and Hamas, then – as Israeli strategy seemed to take on ever more clearly genocidal contours – as a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause.
At a demonstration organized by his party on Saturday, October 28, he accused Israel of committing “war crimes” and trying to “eradicate” the Palestinians, declaring that “[Turkey would] stand by the Palestinian people against Israel’s persecution”.
This is not the first time Erdoğan has presented himself as a champion of the defense of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupier.
Yet, the timing of these statements makes them even more unwelcome. This resurgence of the Palestinian issue follows numerous Turkish attacks on the northeastern Syrian society (Rojava):
Between October 5 and 9, Turkey launched a major attack on the civilian infrastructure of Rojava. In just a few days, some 580 air and ground attacks targeted the territory’s vital infrastructure (power plants, water installations, pumping stations, clinics, schools, etc.). In all, 104 civilian infrastructure sites were destroyed, damaged or put out of service, killing 44 people and affecting 5 million.
This offensive is part of a conflict that has alternated between low-intensity and high-intensity phases for the past 5 years. Turkish attacks are a daily occurrence in the region, whether in Rojava (northern Syria) or Başur (northern Iraq), where the Turkish state does not hesitate to use chemical weapons.
They all have a precise aim: to destroy the democratic, ecological, multi-ethnic and multicultural project for society which is grounded on women’s freedom that is being carried forward by part of the region’s peoples, and which since 2013 has been in the process of being implemented in the areas under the control of the AANES (Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria, which encompasses Rojava). This, while the rest of Syria has been ravaged by both the dictatorial Assad regime and the various radical Islamist groups now supported at arm’s length by the Turkish regime.
To the north of Rojava, the Turkish army has already invaded two territories, displacing hundreds of thousands of people: the regions of Afrin (since March 2018) and Serêkaniyê (October 2019). Here, pro-Turkish groups have organized looting and ethnic cleansing: kidnappings, rapes and murders have become a daily occurrence.
So, while Erdogan doesn’t hesitate to play up Israel’s indignation over its attacks on the Palestinian people, he is pursuing exactly the same policy against the peoples of AANES.
Worse still, this policy has benefited from the many military agreements signed in the past between Turkey and Israel.
From the mid-1990s onwards, it was Israel that enabled Turkey to modernize its military equipment. In 1996, two cooperation agreements enabled Turkey to benefit from technology transfers, to sign arms contracts with Israeli firms, to take advantage of Israel’s law enforcement skills and to see the emergence of cooperation between their secret services. At a time when Western countries, under pressure from public opinion, are less inclined to sign such agreements with Turkey – human rights abuses in the Kurdish territories are beginning to be too visible – this Israeli-Turkish cooperation is a breath of fresh air. These new resources will enable it to step up its fight against the PKK and Kurdish society.
It should be noted that it was this cooperation that initiated the Turkish state’s drone development program: its first drones were Israeli-designed Herons. Today, Turkey makes extensive use of its own drones (now manufactured almost entirely in Turkey) to carry out targeted assassination and destabilization campaigns in Kurdistan.
While military cooperation between Israel and Turkey was frozen in 2010 following Israel’s violent incursion on the Turkish humanitarian ship Mavi Marmara, in which at least ten people were killed, cooperation between MIT and MOSSAD has recently officially resumed. In general, this does not prevent the State of Israel from participating directly in pan-Turkish expansion projects.
Indeed, Tel Aviv is a strong supporter of Turkey’s “natural ally”, which Erdogan has taken to referring to in “Two States, One Nation” mode: Azerbaijan.
In recent years, Azerbaijan has been able to modernize its army by relying on Turkey, and in particular on its Bayraktar TB2 drones, while Israel (40% of whose oil supply depends on Azerbaijan) has provided the bulk of the country’s arms imports.
Thus, what may have enabled Azerbaijan to gain the upper hand over Armenia in 2020 was not so much Turkey’s dispatch of Syrian mercenaries (the same ones who perpetrated massacres in Afrin and Serêkaniyê) and use of its Bayraktar TB2 drones as the numerous Israeli armaments sold in recent years to this country (69% of Azeri armaments were supplied by Israel for the period 2016-2020).
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s dictator, are both heirs to Panturkism, a racist, segregationist and anti-communist ideology. First developed by the Young Turks in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, this ideology aimed to create a “Turanian state” unifying the Turkic peoples from the Balkans to China within a single state – with Armenians and Kurds standing in the way of this project.
The liquidation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the creation of the so-called Zangezur corridor on Armenian territory will give Turkey a direct link with Azebaijan and open up the Central Asian route. Erdoğan’s ambition to make Turkey an essential regional power seems to be coming true.
Add to this Turkey’s interventionism in Libya and the eastern Mediterranean, as well as its unsatisfied claims to Aleppo and Mosul (which it cannot enforce due to the presence of Kurdish forces), and you have an overall panorama that rivals the claims of the “Greater Israel” advocated by the neoconservatives in Israel.
It would thus be disastrous to take Erdoğan’s gesticulations about Palestine seriously. Turkey’s expansionist policy ties him much more to the policy of Benjamin Netanyaou, which is also a major partner, than to the Palestinian people. It would be ridiculous to think that Turkey could propose anything emancipatory for the peoples of the region, as proposed, for example, by the political project of democratic confederalism, currently being experimented with in northeastern Syria.
Such rhetoric can only serve to reinforce Erdogan’s soft power in the Arab world and beyond, by presenting himself as the protector of the oppressed. But beneath the hypocritical veneer, it’s well-understood interests and the same nationalist, supremacist and expansionist policies that are being defended here and there.
And in Israel, Turkey and elsewhere, it’s never a good idea to let nation-states realize their expansionist ambitions.
#Riseup4Rojava
While the Israeli army has been committing carnage in Gaza since the Hamas assault on October 7, and a ground intervention has just begun, Turkey’s autocrat President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been particularly conspicuous by his presence. First as a potential “mediator” between the Israeli government and Hamas, then – as Israeli strategy seemed to take on ever more clearly genocidal contours – as a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause.
At a demonstration organized by his party on Saturday, October 28, he accused Israel of committing “war crimes” and trying to “eradicate” the Palestinians, declaring that “[Turkey would] stand by the Palestinian people against Israel’s persecution”.
This is not the first time Erdoğan has presented himself as a champion of the defense of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupier.
Yet, the timing of these statements makes them even more unwelcome. This resurgence of the Palestinian issue follows numerous Turkish attacks on the northeastern Syrian society (Rojava):
Between October 5 and 9, Turkey launched a major attack on the civilian infrastructure of Rojava. In just a few days, some 580 air and ground attacks targeted the territory’s vital infrastructure (power plants, water installations, pumping stations, clinics, schools, etc.). In all, 104 civilian infrastructure sites were destroyed, damaged or put out of service, killing 44 people and affecting 5 million.
This offensive is part of a conflict that has alternated between low-intensity and high-intensity phases for the past 5 years. Turkish attacks are a daily occurrence in the region, whether in Rojava (northern Syria) or Başur (northern Iraq), where the Turkish state does not hesitate to use chemical weapons.
They all have a precise aim: to destroy the democratic, ecological, multi-ethnic and multicultural project for society which is grounded on women’s freedom that is being carried forward by part of the region’s peoples, and which since 2013 has been in the process of being implemented in the areas under the control of the AANES (Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria, which encompasses Rojava). This, while the rest of Syria has been ravaged by both the dictatorial Assad regime and the various radical Islamist groups now supported at arm’s length by the Turkish regime.
To the north of Rojava, the Turkish army has already invaded two territories, displacing hundreds of thousands of people: the regions of Afrin (since March 2018) and Serêkaniyê (October 2019). Here, pro-Turkish groups have organized looting and ethnic cleansing: kidnappings, rapes and murders have become a daily occurrence.
So, while Erdogan doesn’t hesitate to play up Israel’s indignation over its attacks on the Palestinian people, he is pursuing exactly the same policy against the peoples of AANES.
Worse still, this policy has benefited from the many military agreements signed in the past between Turkey and Israel.
From the mid-1990s onwards, it was Israel that enabled Turkey to modernize its military equipment. In 1996, two cooperation agreements enabled Turkey to benefit from technology transfers, to sign arms contracts with Israeli firms, to take advantage of Israel’s law enforcement skills and to see the emergence of cooperation between their secret services. At a time when Western countries, under pressure from public opinion, are less inclined to sign such agreements with Turkey – human rights abuses in the Kurdish territories are beginning to be too visible – this Israeli-Turkish cooperation is a breath of fresh air. These new resources will enable it to step up its fight against the PKK and Kurdish society.
It should be noted that it was this cooperation that initiated the Turkish state’s drone development program: its first drones were Israeli-designed Herons. Today, Turkey makes extensive use of its own drones (now manufactured almost entirely in Turkey) to carry out targeted assassination and destabilization campaigns in Kurdistan.
While military cooperation between Israel and Turkey was frozen in 2010 following Israel’s violent incursion on the Turkish humanitarian ship Mavi Marmara, in which at least ten people were killed, cooperation between MIT and MOSSAD has recently officially resumed. In general, this does not prevent the State of Israel from participating directly in pan-Turkish expansion projects.
Indeed, Tel Aviv is a strong supporter of Turkey’s “natural ally”, which Erdogan has taken to referring to in “Two States, One Nation” mode: Azerbaijan.
In recent years, Azerbaijan has been able to modernize its army by relying on Turkey, and in particular on its Bayraktar TB2 drones, while Israel (40% of whose oil supply depends on Azerbaijan) has provided the bulk of the country’s arms imports.
Thus, what may have enabled Azerbaijan to gain the upper hand over Armenia in 2020 was not so much Turkey’s dispatch of Syrian mercenaries (the same ones who perpetrated massacres in Afrin and Serêkaniyê) and use of its Bayraktar TB2 drones as the numerous Israeli armaments sold in recent years to this country (69% of Azeri armaments were supplied by Israel for the period 2016-2020).
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s dictator, are both heirs to Panturkism, a racist, segregationist and anti-communist ideology. First developed by the Young Turks in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, this ideology aimed to create a “Turanian state” unifying the Turkic peoples from the Balkans to China within a single state – with Armenians and Kurds standing in the way of this project.
The liquidation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the creation of the so-called Zangezur corridor on Armenian territory will give Turkey a direct link with Azebaijan and open up the Central Asian route. Erdoğan’s ambition to make Turkey an essential regional power seems to be coming true.
Add to this Turkey’s interventionism in Libya and the eastern Mediterranean, as well as its unsatisfied claims to Aleppo and Mosul (which it cannot enforce due to the presence of Kurdish forces), and you have an overall panorama that rivals the claims of the “Greater Israel” advocated by the neoconservatives in Israel.
It would thus be disastrous to take Erdoğan’s gesticulations about Palestine seriously. Turkey’s expansionist policy ties him much more to the policy of Benjamin Netanyaou, which is also a major partner, than to the Palestinian people. It would be ridiculous to think that Turkey could propose anything emancipatory for the peoples of the region, as proposed, for example, by the political project of democratic confederalism, currently being experimented with in northeastern Syria.
Such rhetoric can only serve to reinforce Erdogan’s soft power in the Arab world and beyond, by presenting himself as the protector of the oppressed. But beneath the hypocritical veneer, it’s well-understood interests and the same nationalist, supremacist and expansionist policies that are being defended here and there.
And in Israel, Turkey and elsewhere, it’s never a good idea to let nation-states realize their expansionist ambitions.
#Riseup4Rojava
Article in FRENCH