Turkey in troubled relations with Kurds: Analyst
Press TV has conducted an interview with James Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore about Turkish airstrikes carried out inside Syria.
The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: What do you make of Turkey’s sudden change in policy? We had first seen Turkey support the ISIL in one way or another – be it through smuggling weapons into Syria or allowing the free flow of militants back and forth across the border. Why now do you think Turkey has decided to shift its policy? Was the bombing in Suruc the deciding factor?
Dorsey: I think there are two reasons. One is that the threat to Turkey increasingly is not primarily or not first of all the war in Syria itself and the regime of Bashar al-Assad but increasingly it is the presence of the Islamic State within Turkey and that is more importantly certainly since the bombing in Suruc but also since last year’s battle about Kobani, increasingly troubling relations between the Turkish government and the Kurds, who constitute about 20 percent of the population.
Press TV: So it seems Turkey is stuck between a rock and a hard place, where it wants to see the government of President Bashar al-Assad toppled, yet, that would risk having groups like ISIL gain more power right at its border and; at the same time it wants to control the Kurdish question. How do you see Turkey moving forward?
Dorsey: Well, I am not sure it is caught between a rock and a hard place. I think we need to separate the issues. One is that Syria as a nation state probably already is history and that poses a whole bunch of problems for Syria, including the possibility that a Kurdish entity within Syria would exist.
The second problem it has is the Islamic State, which is a threat to Turkey but it is a threat to other countries in the region.
And the third issue is that Turkey has embarked for quite some time now on a peace process with the Turkish Kurds, the PKK, and it is stuck in a row between what nationalists in Turkey want – who do not want a peace process with the Kurds – and the need for the peace process; and obviously that has shaped for example its approach last year to the battle in Kobani; but with the attack this week on Suruc, it really has no choices anymore.
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