Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday will make a new push with Turkish leaders for more coordinated strategy for fighting the Islamic State and sealing Turkey’s border, after months of following different plans that have led to complaints from both countries.
Biden’s meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erodgan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu comes after months in which the two countries have pursued different plans for curbing the refugee flow to Turkey, and preventing Islamic State militants from using the Turkey-Syria border as a thoroughfare for Islamic State fighters, black market goods and war materials.
The differing agendas have led to complaints from Turkey that Russia is being given free reign in the region.
The two countries also have different views on how to prioritize the Islamic State and Syria. Turkey views the terrorist group as a threat, especially after one of its fighters blew himself up in a crowded public square in Istanbul earlier this month. But Ankara is far more concerned about pushing for the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, while Washington wants Turkey’s military to focus on the war against the Islamic State, most immediately to close its porous border.
Ankara also has unsuccessfully pressed the Obama administration to establish a safe zone in Syria in an attempt to curb the refugee flow to Turkey. Washington would prefer if Turkey use its massive army to help stop the flow of militants into Turkey where they can travel back to the Europe and possibly the United States.
The distrust between the two governments has been growing in recent weeks. Ahead of Biden’s visit, Davutoglu accused the U.S. of “inaction” and a “lack of strategy.”
“Effectively, Syria is under Russian occupation,” he said, according to the Daily Sabah, an English-language daily published in Turkey.
Washington pushed back this week as well. Defense Secretary Asht Carter, in a wide-ranging speech at Paris’ Ecole Militaire Friday, said the anti-Islamic State coalition could benefit from a strong effort by Turkey.
“One very important item would be greater control over their border,” Carter said. “The Turkish border has been one place where foreign fighters have gone back and forth. Logistics and supply of ISIL has been furnished. This is a long border. It’s a difficult border. But I would like to see the Turks do more, and we would be prepared to help them.”
U.S. officials this week said they are stepping up efforts to help Turkey by offering anti-tunneling technology and aerostate surveillance balloons. They also indicated they would share methods for detecting improvised explosive devices, and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced plans to visit Ankara next month to follow up.
There are other, even more thorny differences between Turkey and the United States when it comes to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party, the PYD, and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.
Turkey views the PYD and the YPG as terrorist organizations because of their ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
And although they view the Islamic State has a clear threat, in Ankara’s calculus, the Kurds warrant far more concern because clashes with them over the last three decades have resulted in the deaths of 30,000 of its citizens. In the last week, Turkey has opposed Kurdish representation in the opposition group fighting the Islamic State.
Meanwhile, the Kurds are the United States’ greatest ally in its fight against the Islamic State and the most effective group fighting the militants in Syria.
The only way to bridge the divide is through negotiation, compromise and leverage, argues Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former special assistant to President Obama and White House coordinator for Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf Region.
“Look, Turkey is still an ally and a partner and we need to have an absolutely frank conversation,” Gordon told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week. “Because we have different priorities, a tradeoff on these issues can get us on the same page.”
Ryan Crocker, dean and executive director of Texas A&M University’s George Bush School of Government and Public Service and former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, agrees, and said the two sides need to work on “developing common ground, common understanding and a common strategy.”
“Because without that, any notion of regional forces intervening in Syria against Islamic State is just fanciful,” he told the committee. “They are not going to do it.”
Key leverage points with Turkey include increased U.S. trade and Washington’s ability to secure additional agreements from countries around the world to take more Syrian refugees. Finding areas of agreement, he said, will take more engagement and a far more active Obama administration diplomacy in the region.
With the Iranians filling the power vacuum in Iraq, Secretary of State John Kerry should go “camp out” in the region, Crocker said.
“And when he needed a break, he could go to Riyadh, to Tel Aviv, to Cairo and Ankara,” he said. “We’ve got to ramp this up, because as bad as the situation is now — I’ll try to say something uplifting — we’re going to look back on this day with fondness and nostalgia because the way things are tracking, [the fight against the Islamic State and the security situation in the region] is going to be a whole lot worse in a couple of months.”
