House of Kurds: ISIS-Kurdish Fighting Threatens Turkey’s Stability

Intense fighting between ISIS and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters over the past month for control of the strategic city of Kobani on the Turkish-Syrian border threatens not only domestic stability within Turkey, but also the peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 

The Ones the World Forgot: The Syrian Refugee Crisis

The following is an adaptation of a presentation I gave on April 12, 2014 at the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies conference:

Since last writing on this topic in February, the news emanating from the Syrian refugee crisis has only gotten worse. There are now close to 2.7 million refugees who have fled the Syrian conflict, the majority of whom have settled in Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. There are almost 14 million people who are in need of aid in the region as a result of the conflict, and funds from the international community have hardly been forthcoming: the UNHCR’s appeal for 4.2 billion dollars is only 14% funded, while UNICEF’s 222 million dollar appeal is less than 12% funded. Without these desperately needed resources, UN agencies as well as over one hundred other humanitarian agencies can do little to mitigate the devastating effects of the Syrian conflict on the region.

The effects of the crisis on Syria’s neighbors are becoming more acute, and more violent. In Lebanon, clashes not only in the north of the country but also in Beirut have led to scores of casualties and deaths. A Syrian refugee mother recently set herself on fire in front of a UN building in Tripoli because she was unable to feed her four children on the small amount that aid agencies and the government are currently struggling to provide. Lebanon also passed the “devastating milestone” of one million Syrian refugees this month, and refugees now make up a quarter of the population, the largest per capita concentration of refugees in the world.

The Importance of Being Erdogan

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a lot to be smiling about this April Fool’s Day. As if being the political leader of Turkey – a rising developing power, the bridge between Asia and Europe, and an EU hopeful – wasn’t enough, his Justice and Development Party (AKP) just swept the country’s municipal elections. Though he wasn’t on the ballot when Turkish voters went to the polls last month, his party’s victory was a “referendum” on his rule nonetheless. With 44% of the vote, the AKP increased its share of the vote over the 39% it received in the last elections. In the afterglow of victory, Erdogan has responded by promising to make his political enemies “pay the price,” after having called them “terrorists” on the campaign trail.

It’s been a tough year overall for Erdogan’s government. Massive anti-government protests in 2013 gave way to headlines centering on his censorship of social media giants like Twitter and YouTube in the run-up to the election. A Turkish prosecutor’s special report on corruption (likely leaked by the opposition) also revealed an illegal scheme that placed Turkey at the center of money laundering for Iran through intermediaries in China and Dubai; the report also revealed Turkish musings over starting a war with neighboring Syria. While it may not have done much to damage the AKP in the recent elections, the report does raise questions of how Erdogan’s policies will affect relations with the West.

Protests Are Apparently Super "In" Right Now (and Spreading Like Wildfire!)

In 2011, the world was stunned as protests spread from Tunisia to Egypt to eventually nearly every country in the Middle East. In the most severe cases, such as Tunisia and Egypt, those protests quickly morphed into violent battles between citizens disillusioned with their government and the military desperately propping that government up. Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have all undergone a transition to a new government after the old ones fell - in Syria, the final outcome of the "Arab Spring" remains to be seen. However, it was a transformational period not just for the region, but for the entire world.

Now, in two countries on two different continents are undergoing some of the biggest and potentially most violent protests the world has seen since 2011 (not including the ongoing crisis in Syria). Turkey is in the midst of its third week of dealing with outraged citizens. The tensions appear to be escalating, with the Turkish deputy Prime Minister announcing this week that the Turkish army may have to step in to end the riots for good. The gravity of the situation, as I wrote last week, is severe. Turkey may be losing out for good on their bid to join the E.U., and Prime Minister Erdogan's reputation as being a beacon of hope for the possibility of secularism across the Middle East is waning rapidly.

Piercing the Veneer in Turkey

The past two weeks or so have seen an interesting shift in the perception of Turkey as a country, and Prime Minister Erdogan as a leader. As I wrote back in March, Turkey seemed on the brink of major success, what with the unprecedented peace negotiations with the infamous Kurdistan group the PKK, potentially ending a 30-year war that claimed 40,000 lives. Furthermore, thanks to a strong economy, large army and incessant pestering, it appeared that Turkey was closer than ever to joining the European Union once and for all. The significance of this would have stretched past Turkey itself - joining the E.U. would have sent a signal to the Middle East that Turkey, a bastion of secularization and democracy, was worth emulating in many regards. Prime Minister Erdogan has been applauded around the globe for being a democratically elected Muslim leader who has brought his country to this level of achievement in just over a decade.

The Truce of the Year

In a moment reminiscent of Ireland in 1994, or Spain in 2011, the nation of Turkey made a giant leap forward yesterday when the leader of the Kurdistan Worker's Party, or the PKK, announced from prison his intentions to establish a ceasefire between his ethnic rebellious group and the Turkish authorities. Calling on his fighters to abandon their weapons and begin participating on the political battleground instead, Abdullah Ocalan effectively initiated the end of conflict that has lasted for nearly 30 years and claimed over 40,000 lives. The implications this will have for Turkey, and the region overall, are virtually immeasurable; furthermore, if the ceasefire is legitimate and remains unbroken, Ocalan's announcement yesterday marks the beginning of a new chapter of history for Turkey, one that is remarkably promising.

The scene yesterday in Turkey