All-Eyes On Russia and Ukraine

BUT INDIA, TURKIYE and SOUTH AFRICA

MIND THEIR NATIONAL INTEREST

BY ERBIL GUNASTI

#6 @

All-Eyes On Russia and Ukraine

All-Eyes On Russia and Ukraine: However, life hasn’t stopped elsewhere with global powers circling over civil wars still raging in the Middle East. Life hasn’t stopped just because NATO and Moscow are locked in conflict. And it should be no surprise that a range of middle-ranking powers, including India, Turkey and South Africa have refused to take sides.

Turkiye Minds National Interest

Strategically placed between east and west, Turkey has been particularly active. It now seems clear, for example, that, while America concentrates on Russia, Ankara will use the power vacuum to achieve its ambitions on its own borders with Syria.

In particular, Turkey will make a final military incursion into northern Syria and to drive out the Kurdish separatists and militias in the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), the PYD (Democratic Union Party) and the YPG (People’s Defence Units), all of which have a strong presence there.

And don’t imagine that ISIS has gone away – another force which Turkey is determined to banish from its borders.

America No Longer A Factor

Until now, American support and protection for the Kurds in northern Syria has frustrated such moves. America has seen the Kurdish militias as important allies against ISIS.

However, the West and Russia now dependent on Turkish cooperation for fuel and distribution of essential supplies. As a result, we are in a new world.

Turkey, a NATO member, has already blocked applications to join the bloc from Finland and Sweden. It attempts to extract additional concessions from its allies in the West.

Such is its strategic importance! Some have suggested Turkey might even play a role in future peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

In the near term, Turkey wants to create a 30-mile deep buffer zone in northern Syria. It wishes to clear the area of armed separatists (who want a Kurdish homeland). That would include significant parts of Turkish territory. this is so that four million Syrian refugees in Turkey can return there and live under Turkish protection.

But Ankara’s wider aim is to get rid of American involvement in Syria and to reassert itself as a leader of the region – a role it long had under the Ottomans, of course.

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