Europe is likely to shoulder the brunt of the fallout of a
rapidly escalating crisis over Ukraine. Middle Eastern states could prove to be
a close second.
اضافة اعلان
That is no truer than for Turkey and Israel, whose
management of the Ukraine crisis could determine their ability to protect
perceived core national interests.
Indeed, for NATO-member Turkey, the stakes could not be
higher. Its 2,000-kilometer-long Black Sea coastline stretching from the
Bulgarian border in the West to Georgia in the East is the longest of any of
the littoral states, including Russia and Ukraine.
The Black Sea ranks on par with Turkey’s determination to
prevent at any cost a permanent autonomous, let alone independent, Kurdish
presence on Syrian soil.
“Ukraine is like a dam that stops further Russian influence
and pressure in the region. If Ukraine falls, it will have direct implications
on Turkey,” warned a Turkish official.
Turkey’s stakes are magnified by last year’s discovery of a
natural gas field in its Black Sea territorial waters that, according to Energy
Minister Fatih Donmez, could, by 2027, provide nearly a third of Turkey’s
domestic needs.
As the crisis in Ukraine escalates, Turkey could discover
that protecting these two interests may no longer allow it to perform its
virtuoso balancing act.
Turkey has been maintaining a fragile partnership with
Russia, sustained by careful management of differences, while remaining a
Western ally committed to the defense of the Western alliance.
Turkish economic and military support of Ukraine and Crimean
Tatars and its refusal to recognize the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea fit
well with Turkey’s tightrope act and was aligned with the NATO policy.
Russia’s February 21 recognition of the breakaway Ukrainian
republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and the moving of Russian troops into those
regions threatens to throw Turkey off its tightrope and create a Catch-22 for
Ankara.
The imposition of US and European sanctions against Russia
is likely to be the straw that breaks the balance of the Turkish tightrope act.
“Syria remains Turkey’s soft spot. For that matter, Russia
is likely to put pressure on Turkey through Syria,” said Turkey scholar Galip
Dalay.
“At a broader level, Russia and Turkey have cooperated and
competed with each other through the conflict spots in the Middle East and
North Africa. However, Moscow has been less open to repeating this experience
with Turkey in the ex-Soviet area,” he added.
Days before the recognition of the Ukrainian regions,
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Bogdanov fired a shot across Turkey’s
bow. He declared that Syrian Kurdish participation in diplomatic efforts to
negotiate a post-war settlement in Syria was necessary to prevent Kurdish
secession and ensure the unification of the war-ravaged country.
Speaking to the state-controlled Russian RT television,
Bogdanov noted that the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) controls large areas
east of the Euphrates River. The region is pockmarked by a patchwork of
military forces from Turkey, Russia, the United States, Syria, the Kurds, and
various militant and jihadist groups.
US’ cooperation with the Kurds in the fight against Daesh
has been an irritant in relations between Ankara and Washington because of
Turkish assertions that the SDC is linked to the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK).
Designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and
Europe, the PKK has waged a low-intensity war in southeastern Turkey for almost
four decades that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to fend off a
potential further Turkish incursion by agreeing to joint Russian-Turkish
patrols in a region where Turkey has already built a chain of outposts as a
buffer with Russian and Syrian regime forces. However, Turkey accuses Russia of
failing to fulfill its pledge to disarm Kurdish fighters in a 30-kilometer area
along the Syrian-Turkish border.
Israel does not share physical land or maritime borders with
either Russia or Ukraine. Still, it is discovering that its ability to
militarily counter Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, in Syria may depend
on its approach to the Ukraine crisis.
Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova condemned Israeli strikes against targets in Syria as “a crude
violation of Syria’s sovereignty”. She warned that such strikes “may trigger a
sharp escalation of tensions”, adding that “such actions pose serious risks to
international passenger flights”.
The Russian warning came weeks after Russia announced that
joint Russian-Syrian air patrols had become routine. The announcement came
after one of the first patrols flew along the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights
that divide Israel and Syria.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz defiantly insisted, in
response, that “we will continue to prevent the Iranian entrenchment that is
eating Syria up from the inside. This is a supreme interest for the Syrian
people and the regime: to stabilize, to remove Iranian forces from their
territory and allow the country to be rehabilitated”.
At the same time, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid acknowledged
that “we have a kind of border with Russia” given the Russian military presence
in Syria in support of President Bashar Al-Assad.
Lapid further noted that Israel has sizeable Russian and
Ukrainian Jewish communities and that a significant number of Jews are
residents in the two feuding countries. As a result, Israel, caught in a bind
similar to Turkey’s, scrambled to avoid further provoking Russia’s ire. It
announced that it was banning Baltic States from transferring weapons with
Israeli components to Ukraine.
In contrast to Turkey, that may feel has greater
maneuverability in its relations with Russia, China, and the US, Israel feels
that its options, like in the case of China, are more limited when it comes to
Russia. It cannot afford to put its relations with Washington at risk.
Said Israeli Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli hours
before the Ukraine crisis came to a head: “There is no question that the
special relationship that Israel has with the United States, that this
government is working to rehabilitate and rebuild, is not the same relationship
that Israel has with Russia.”
The writer is an award-winning journalist and scholar and a
senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.
Read more Opinion and Analysis
.jpg)
.jpg)
