Besides its military interventions into northern Syria, Turkish forces on June 17 initiated a ground operation, dubbed Claw Tiger, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where they have established a handful of outposts. In preparation, Turkey’s warplanes bombed Yazidi villages, a refugee camp, and other targets. These actions, writes Jonathan Spyer, are likely an attempt to create a buffer zone between hostile Kurdish forces and the Turkish border. But, Spyer adds, they are of apiece with Ankara’s larger program of regional interventions:
Operation Claw Tiger fits into an arc of Turkish military assertiveness currently extending from northern Iraq, across northern Syria, going down via the Mediterranean and via Israel, and reaching Libya. Turkey also has a military presence to the south and east of this area, in Qatar and Somalia. In the Mediterranean, Turkey is challenging Greece, Cyprus, France, and Israel for the gas riches beneath the water. [Moreover], Ankara is deeply engaged in support of Hamas against Israel.
In Syria and Iraq, . . . Ankara is, on the face of it, challenging its old [Kurdish] enemies. But there are additional layers. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was first to support the Syrian Sunni Arab insurgency. He has proved its last and most faithful ally. Western states, discouraged by the insurgency’s Islamist and jihadist nature, peeled away from it years ago. Turkey, untroubled by these loyalties because it shares them, has remained.
In Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, Erdogan wants to lay claim to the cause of recovering the al-Aqsa mosque from non-Muslim [control]. Covert military support to Hamas runs alongside active soft power efforts.
[This] is an independent, ambitious foreign policy, with not the slightest nod to the “pro-Western” and “pro-NATO” orientation that Turkey’s Western apologists like to recall. It has its origin in a combination of nationalist assertiveness, tinged with Ottoman-era nostalgia, and the ambitions of Muslim Brotherhood-style Sunni political Islam. This is a potent mix, which is not required to place itself before the judgment of the Turkish voter until 2023. As of now, its main impact is an arc of destabilization, stretching across land and sea from Iraq to Libya.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/turkey-erdogans-arc-of-destabilization-in-the-middle-east-633690