Syriaous Trouble

Readers here might well remember a discussion of Japan's need to replace its long-serving F-4EJ kai  Phantom II jet fighters, and how in comments it was pointed out that they lacked survivability against any reasonably modern surface-to-air-missile defenses...

Well, the Turks just got a lesson about just such a problem. Crew still unaccounted for. Ouch.

This is also further evidence, unfortunately, that the regime in Syria thinks they are going to get away with whatever they do in the course of prosecuting their little Civil War, er, irregular revolutionary uprising.

Somehow, I suspect the Turks will have something to say about that...

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Important note for those concerned about how this fits in with the obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) to support member-state Turkey. The short form is: the Middle East south of Turkey is out-of-region, so any Article 5 claim by Turkey would be based on Syrian attacks into Turkey... which haven't clearly happened yet. But, if I recall correctly, Article 4 calls for mutual assistance and that may well be coming Turkey's way upon request, and lots of it.

PKK a Syrian tool?

That's what the Turks are claiming. Shades of 1998... although Assad-the-elder sold out the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) that time to avoid a war with Turkey.

Some notes:

The PKK are a former Soviet tool and the worst of the bunch in the category of Kurdish nationalist movements. The more main-line parties in Iraqi Kurdistan realize they are disaster magnets and generally avoid even the appearance of cooperation with them.

The Turks are currently seeking a casus belli to justify intervention into Syrian territory... because they'd rather keep the Syrian rebel and refugee problems off Turkish soil (as much as possible) and they want to dictate the nature of the next Syrian government(s).

The Assad regime in Syria has a history of using national minorities as pawns.

The Kurdish 'nation' would, given the chance, love to have Eastern Syria... or Western Kurdistan... with 2 million Kurdish residents to be united with Iraqi Kurdistan in the pursuit of a viable nation-state.

The anti-Assad Syrian National Council has not cooperated with Kurdish anti-Assad organizers, apparently at the demands of the Turks.

Which seems to mean:

The Turkish fear of Kurdish national aspirations not only prevents them from raising a viable second front against the Assad regime in the Syrian Civil War, but may actually invite pushing the Syrian Kurds further into the arms of the regime to justify an intervention that has little to do with the eventual fate of the Kurds.

If, on the other hand, an obviously non-PKK faction could be raised in Eastern Syria and supported from Iraqi Kurdistan, the fall of the Assad regime could be greatly accelerated. But to do that involves Iraq and plays with nationalist fire.

Would either result better the situation? Tough call...

Talking Turkey

I've been more than a little busy, but that hasn't meant overlooking things entirely... for example, this just came across:

Totten and Berlinski on modern Turkey.

What the recent changes mean to the region and the world; why the AKP is doing what it is doing; A very good look at how this could all end very badly.

By the way, supporting Michael Totten's reporting and doing the same for Claire Berlinski's Ricochet work are two of the best things one can do if one really believes in "the new media". I don't rattle a tip jar here, but I'm more than happy to point out that these worthy efforts do. Both have superb books in print right now as well.

Mass arrests in the Ergenekon case

The Government of Turkey has been moving against what it considers an "arch-rightist plot" against the elected administration, and this weekend they made another series of arrests, detaining 40 more accused conspirators.

Where this is likely going to run into problems, as was discussed here back in January, is over the criterion being used to determine the nature of the conspiracy. Is it really a plot, with active hands in the military preparing to act? Or are these arrests targeting a purely political opposition? If it is the latter, and clearly seen as a threat to the integrity of the Kemalist state, might that not inspire a coup d'etat where none exists now?

Closing the cracks before things slip through

Even with the new management in D.C., the chaps at the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) are keeping at the task assigned.

Recent listings under E.O. 13224 have both been valuable moves:

Last week, they hung a bell on the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), freezing their assets in the U.S. and more importantly banning U.S. nationals from any transaction with them.

This matters a lot because the legitimate Kurdish political parties are trying very hard to clamp down on the PKK, who are the Soviet-era relic that keeps trying to kill Turks in the name of Kurdish independence. The PJAK was nothing more than a PKK front group.

Then, today, OFAC pulled out a real winner; a successful linking of various LTTE front-organizations operating in the U.S. (and world wide), and the listing of the supposedly "clean" fronts as well as the extant listing of the known "dirty" ones.

With the LTTE on the ropes in Sri Lanka, cutting off the supply of funds in places outside South Asia is an important part of preventing funds from reaching LTTE leadership on the run. Again, both assets were frozen and U.S. nationals are banned from any transaction with the group.

Turkish counter-coup arrests continue.

The Government of the Republic of Turkey has been clamping down on what was claimed to be an extra-legal conspiracy to remove the AK party government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan from power. Eighty six people, predominantly linked to or members of the military, are already under charges, and 30 more people were just arrested.

Some background: Coup d'etat used to be jokingly considered 'the national sport' of Turkey by European observers, and there certainly is a history of them happening regularly.

The issue, to be blunt, is that in tradition and in some readings of the Turkish Constitution, the Military is the defender of the constitutional order and the Kemalist (secular state) reforms, and is thus correct to assume the government if a popularly elected administration strays toward unacceptable policy. Communism and Islamism are both on the unacceptable list.

The most recent constitution, as amended in 2004 is not definitive on a "right" of the military to assume the government, but it does continue to place military officers as peers to the President on the National Security Council, (MGK, from the Turkish) the absolute authority of policy for the state. This rather undermines the basic constitutional point that the military reports to the President as Commander-in-Chief, but again not definitively.

There is a meeting planned for today (Thursday, local time) between the Prime Minister and the Chief of the Armed Forces "in an effort to decrease tensions" between the civil administration and the military (and judicial) sectors.

The questions remain, however: Was there really a coup plot; and was it subscribed to by the current military leadership?