(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Since the botched coup attempt of July 2016, a widespread skepticism of the U.S. has pushed Turkish policy makers to conceptualize a world order where Ankara would carve out a sizeable degree of strategic autonomy from the West—despite Turkey’s membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This line of thinking has led to a burgeoning relationship with Russia, crowned by the purchase of the S-400 missile-defense system.
But the escalating conflict over Idlib, where Turkey is seeking to protect its zone of influence against the advance of the Russian-backed Syrian army, has put the feasibility of this vision to the severest of tests.
The hard clash with reality came with the shocking loss of 34 Turkish soldiers to a joint attack by a Syrian and Russian squadron. Ankara’s reaction has been to seek the political solidarity of its NATO allies. A few hours after this incident, Turkey called for consultations under the Article 4 of the treaty. Timely Western support was important for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of his meeting today with Russian President Vladimir Putin, to discuss the fate of Idlib.
But even beyond the political context, the struggle for Idlib has demonstrated in many other ways the benefits to Turkey’s NATO membership. The success of the counteroffensive carried out by Turkish forces after the air strikes against its troops is closely related to a NATO-enabled military posture and Ankara’s participation in the Euro-Atlantic defense ecosystem.
One key example is the way the Turkish army has capitalized on network-centric warfare assets against standalone Syrian army units. A single Turkish F-16 was able to down two Syrian Su-24 jets, not in a dogfight but beyond visual range. An airborne early-warning and control (AWAC) aircraft acquired the targets, relayed the location and other critical information in real time to the F-16 through the NATO standard Datalink. This information was then relayed to the F-16’s air-to-air AMRAAM missiles as they headed toward their targets.
This level of interoperability, coupled with the ability to take full advantage of the network-centric features of strike assets, has given the Turkish army a clear advantage over rival forces in northwest Syria. Turkey’s battlefield advantage even extended against Syria’s modern Pantsir air-defense systems, supplied by Russia. Turkish armed drones have been able to take out these assets with the help of advanced electronic warfare systems.
The next phase of the conflict over Idlib will be shaped by the sustainability of any ceasefire emerging from the Erdogan-Putin meeting in Moscow today. But in reality, there is little likelihood that a ceasefire will turn into a permanent peace. Turkish and Russian goals in Idlib are irreconcilable. Moscow wants to hand over the control of the territory to the Syrian regime; Ankara wants maintain its presence there, to prevent the aggravation of a humanitarian disaster, but also as a leverage for the eventual negotiations over a political settlement in Syria.
Complicating the equation is the issue of Turkey’s proxy groups, some of them linked to jihadi entities, which are considered by Russia and Syrian regime as terrorists. Idlib’s future will be shaped by these ongoing disagreements, and the Turkey-Russia dispute will remain prone to new conflicts.
As a result, Turkish policy makers may be forced to review their position on Turkey’s fast expanding military cooperation with Russia. Of key importance will be the fate of the S-400. It is difficult to imagine that Ankara would fully operationalize this system, triggering U.S. sanctions, at a time when the relationship with Russia has entered a conflictual phase, at least over Syria.
But whether Turkey will take the next step and mothball this strategic weapons system to totally eliminate the threat of sanctions is still unclear. More certain is the emerging appreciation in Ankara of the risks of half-baked attempts at strategic autonomy in a region where the threat environment militates for Turkey’s stronger attachment to the institutions of transatlantic security.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bobby Ghosh at aghosh73@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Sinan Ulgen is the executive chairman of Istanbul-based think tank EDAM and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels.
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