Suleiman Shah and Turkey’s Election Invasion of Syria

The Turkish opponents of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his beleaguered government have claimed that a distressed Erdogan may try to start a conflict with Syria and even invade Syrian territory. According to Erdogan’s opponents, the aim of a Turkish invasion of Syria by Erdogan is to invoke patriotic sentiments domestically. The aim of this is to manipulate the Turkish population into supporting Prime Minister Erdogan’s declining Justice and Development Party (AKP) during the Turkish municipal elections that are slated for March 30, 2014.

There is a series of events that are giving increasing credence to these arguments and accusations against the AKP leadership. The first starts with Ankara’s claims that it was concerned about a historic relic inside Syrian territory known as the Tomb of Suleiman Shah. As a result of the purported and questionable threats by the Syrian anti-government forces against the Tomb of Suleiman Shah, Turkey authorized its troops on March 16, 2014 to enter Syrian territory to protect the historic site. On the basis of an agreement signed by France and Turkey in 1921, before Syria became an independent republic, Suleiman Shah’s grave is considered Turkish territory even through it is inside the borders of Syria. Turkish troops have been stationed there since to protect the historic site.

Following Ankara’s proclamation that it would defend the Tomb of Suleiman Shah, Turkey downed a Syrian military jet on March 23, 2014. This was followed by a political scandal tied to YouTube. The conversations of Turkish officials discussing how to manufacture a pretext to invade Syria were leaked through YouTube on March 27, 2014. The YouTube videos are analogous to the US State Department’s Victoria Nuland’s Ukrainian regime change conversation. The leaked conversations also fit into the patterns of an internal struggle inside Turkey under which the conversations of Erdogan and Turkish officials had been leaked earlier.

If the claims of Erdogan’s Turkish opponents are factual, what do they disclose about the shooting of a Syrian military jet by the Turkish military in late-March 2014? Ankara originally claimed that the Syrian aircraft had violated its airspace alongside another Syrian warplane that withdrew. The Turkish government also claims that it gave four warnings to the Syrian military jet before shooting it down, but the Syrian government says that Ankara is categorically lying and that the Syrian jet was on a combat mission inside Syrian airspace.

The General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces released a statement about the incident near the Syrian-Turkish border. Putting a shadow of doubt on Ankara’s claims that its airspace was violated, the Turkish military affirmed that the Syrian warplane crashed 1.2 kilometres inside Syrian territory. The statement of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces says that the Syrian aircraft went down at «1,200 meters to the south of the border on the Syrian territory in Kasab region.»

The geography of Kasab is important. It is a predominately-Armenian northern town near the Turkish border that is situated in the Governate of Latakia and its constituent Latakia District. Although Latakia Governate is mostly known for being the Syrian province with a high concentration of Alawites, its northern part is inhabited by many Christian Armenians. Towns like Esguran and Karadash are populated by ethnic Armenian. Kasab is also a name to remember; it will be mentioned again by other sources. The reports around the Syrian town paint the picture of some type of Turkish operation in the area.

It is also worth noting what the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said about the downing of the Syrian jet by Turkey. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is no friend of the Syrian government. It has supported regime change in Syria and has been caught fabricating vast amounts of information about the Syrian conflict just to promote the anti-government militias and ideas promoting regime change in Damascus. Despite its anti-government position, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said that the Turkish military «targeted a Syrian fighter bomber as it struck areas of the northern province of Latakia» while the Syrian military plane was engaged in an attack on the anti-government insurgents.

Regardless of the facts, Prime Minister Erdogan and his government have threatened a «heavy response» against the Syrians. Days after the Syrian aircraft was shot down by the Turkish military, Ankara started a rhetorical campaign to portray a picture of itself as a party that was only reacting to provocation. The Turkish government claimed that Turkish warplanes were scrambled previously to prevent a Syrian aircraft from violating Turkish airspace and that the Syrian military had been continuously harassing Turkish military jets patrolling their own Turkish airspace by putting a radar lock on the Turks for targeting or firing purposes. Two points should be clarified about the latter Turkish grieve about the radar lock: it has no legal bearing nor does it signal any aggression against Turkey by the Syrians. Unlike frequency jamming, locking onto a target with a radar tracking system is not an act of aggression or a violation of sovereignty.

Ankara’s grievance was purely rhetorical and contrary to the facts about defensive military procedures. The units that are the target of a radar lock may become aware they are being monitored by a defensive tracking system that could fire on it, but this is not an offensive move. It is clearly a defensive stance on the part of Damascus.

What Syrian units were doing with the Turkish jets signals that Syria does not trust the Turkish government whatsoever and that the Syrian military monitors Turkish warplanes inside Turkish airspace as a security precaution. The reasons for this are that the Syrians believe that Turkish warplanes could violate Syrian airspace or conduct some type of mission against Syria at any given moment.

Focus must turn to the Tomb of Suleiman Shah now. This mausoleum is located in the northern part of the Aleppo Governate of Syria. Before the downing of the Syrian military jet, Prime Minister’ Erdogan’s AKP government had repeatedly said that it was worried about the safety of the historic crypt.

Suleiman Shah was a Central Asian tribal chieftain from Merv, which is located in modern-day Turkmenistan. What makes him significant is that he was the grandfather of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. This is why Suleiman’s tomb has historical importance to Turkish history and to Turks.

Despite the three years of fighting, the Turkish-guarded historic site was never threatened by either the government or insurgent camps inside Syria. Ankara, however, begun claimed that it was afraid that its own insurgent allies in Syria would attack the historic site. Thus an alarm was sounded by the AKP about the safety of the mausoleum. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu even held a conference from Van to address his governments concerns.

Foreign Minister Davutoglu, however, went beyond the airing of concerns from Turkish authorities. Davutoglu vowed that Turkey would retaliate without the slightest hesitation to any attack on the Tomb of Suleiman Shah. He also clarified that Turkey had made preparations to intervene if the site and the Turkish guard unit stationed there should come under any attack. Vatan, a Turkish newspaper, quickly outlined that what Davutoglu meant was that Turkey was preparing to send troops across the Syrian border into Aleppo.

Threats in the form of a video against the historic site were uploaded on YouTube days later. In the video anti-government insurgents fighting in Syria warned the Turkish government that it had a few days to surrender the historic site or they would destroy it. The video was uploaded on March 21, 2014.

In the same timeframe as the downing of the Syrian military jet, it was also reported by Turkish sources with varying degrees of emphasis that the Turkish Armed Forces had sent military ground units into the Syrian town of Kasab and its environs. Some sources said that the Turkish units were illegally escorting anti-government insurgents into Syrian territory, that wounded insurgents were also being taken back to Turkish military field hospitals (similar to the ones that Tel Aviv has setup in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights for the insurgents), and that the Turkish military was getting involved in expanding the combat zone in Syria.

What is clear is that Turkey has militarily helped the insurgents in their armed offensive on Kasab and Latakia District against the Syrian military. The downing of the Syrian aircraft was part of the Turkish support for this operation against Syria. The anti-government forces inside Syria would claim that they captured and secured Kasab during this time period too.

In the United States, the Armenian Bar Association would send a letter of distress to the US government on March 25, 2014. The group would demand that the Obama Administration condemn the Turkish military incursion into Kasab. Members of the Armenian community would blast Turkey as being legally responsible for the violence in Syria and for the hardships and deaths of ethnic Armenians in Kasab and the Governate of Latakia.

A bombshell of revelations was made shortly after. Leaked conversations between Turkish officials about the upcoming elections and their plans in Syria were released. The leaks were made through two YouTube videos that were uploaded on March 27, 2014. One video was a little over seven minutes long, while the other was about nine minutes long.

Erdogan has been facing a steady stream of leaks exposing his government’s backdoor dealings and activities. The AKP has blamed the Gulenists, an influential international movement run by a US-based Turkish preacher, for the previous leaks. Although the latest leaks could possibly be part of the internal conflict between in Turkey. They could also be the work of a foreign intelligence agency.

Leaks of US and European Union officials have proven the increasing efficiency that divulging the secret conversations of governments has on exposing underlying agendas. The leak of US Assistant-Secretary Victoria Nuland and US diplomat Geoffrey Pyatt illustrated how the goal of Washington in Ukraine has been regime change and installing Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister. A later leak involving Catherine Ashton being told by Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet that the head doctor for the Euromaidan protester expressed views that Yatsenyuk and lead opposition politicians could have been involved with the killing of civilians also put into serious question the narrative being peddled by the US, Canada, and the European Union about the protests in Kiev.

The Turkish leaks illustrate that Turkish authorities have been planning on manufacturing an incident with Syria on the basis of political motivations aimed at securing an AKP victory in the municipal election being held at the end of March. During a conversation, Foreign Minister Davutoglu tells Hakan Fidan, the chief of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT), that «Prime Minister said that in the current conjuncture of time, this attack [on the Tomb of Suleiman Shah] must be seen as an opportunity for us.» Davutoglu is positing the use of an incident at the historical mausoleum as a pretext for a Turkish incursion into Syria.

Fidan’s response, however, goes further. He responds to Davutoglu with the following plan: «I will send four men from inside Syria, if that is what it will take. I will make up a reason for war by ordering a missile attack on Turkey. We can also prepare a direct attack on the Tomb of Suleiman Shah if necessary.»

The reaction of the Turkish government to the leaks was quick. AKP authorities have said that the leaks are manipulated to contextualize the dialogue in a malicious way and called the leaks a serious threat to Turkish national security. As a result the Turkish government quickly blocked all YouTube use and access inside Turkey. This was done so that the Turkish population could not get access to the leaked conversations.

The unraveling events bring new life to the «neo-Ottoman» failures of Prime Minister Erdogan and Foreign Minister Davutoglu. Their visions of Turkey as an imperialist power have crumbled and the final nails are being hammered into its coffin. Some would argue that their neo-Ottomanism was really pseudo-Ottomanism the whole time. The two and the AKP have been slowly digging their own political graves through their Syria policy.

Turkish history may in conceptual terms start at the Tomb of Suleiman Shah, but Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s seems like it may start its ending there. There is a lot of grumbling in the lower ranks of the AKP about him. The municipal elections are a litmus test for him and his party. If the AKP does badly, Erdogan and his close associates will face an internal revolt in the AKP. This is why the municipal elections are so important for them.

The Eurasian chessboard is in motion. The events in Syria and Turkey should not be viewed in a vacuum from other events in the broader world like they are unrelated to one another. The pieces are moving on the geopolitical chessboard. Some type of confrontation between Turkey and Syria could very well be an answer to the events in Ukraine and Crimean reunification with Russia.

This entire scandal, however, is more than a Turkish-style case of «Wag the Dog.» The consequences are unpredictable and could lead to escalation. They also come at a time where there is a US and NATO buildup on the western borders of Russia and Belarus in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea.

Additionally, the leaks further expose the involvement of the Turkish government in supporting the insurgency in Syria. Deputy Chief of Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces Lieutenant-General Yasar Guler is also in the leaks. Lieutenant-General Guler describes that what was being discussed between the Turkish officials was the ignition of a war between Turkey and Syria. In context of what was being discussed, he recommends that Turkey increase its combat support for the insurgents inside Syria by making additional deliveries of weapons and ammunition to their fighters.

Before these leaks a scandal was caused when Turkish police stopped a MIT truck heading to Syria that was filled with weapons for the insurgent fighters. As a result of the increasing global public cognizance about the role of the Turkish government in destabilizing Syria, Turkey’s own collaborators and allies are publicly distance themselves from Prime Minister Erdogan and the AKP. Ankara should take note: there are now reports with unnamed officials from places allied to Turkey that are washing their hands clean of the actions of Turkey.