Turkey’s President Erdogan has put himself in a geostrategic corner with almost no options. Having publicly railed against the US for allegedly supporting the failed coup at least tacitly, he has roused popular feeling against Turkey’s NATO alliance. His quarrels with the EU have created similar divisions. Meanwhile he has made loud overtures to the West’s rivals. Turkish media reports that Erdogan conducted several lengthy conversations with Vladimir Putin. Envoys have travelled back and forth to Iran. Officials from his AK party raised the possibility that Turkey might join the Shanghai Co-operation Organization while others floated again the prospect that Ankara would buy Russian or Chinese missiles. His efforts have yielded little for him or his country other than palpable proof of his impotence as a regional player.
Having offered himself as a kind of neo-Ottoman champion of the Sunni cause, he has been unable to help the Sunni side in the ongoing regional struggle. The retaking of Mosul involves Kurds and largely Shiite Iraqi fighters as they dislodge ISIS with little regard to Sunni sensitivities. Erdogan’s incursion across the Syria border with tanks and armored vehicles has ground to a halt after a purported November 24 airstrike by Assad’s jets near the border town of Al Bab. Unable to provide air cover for his expeditionary force, he has had to sit by and watch the Sunni resistance in Aleppo get slaughtered. Most recently, Turkmen militias trained by Ankara withdrew from Aleppo back to the border area to bolster the Turkish presence there. At the very least, Erdogan hopes to dig in and prevent Kurdish elements from uniting ultimately to create a Kurdish state along Turkey’s southern border.
