Turkish government support for the Syrian president suggests it is more worried by irrelevance than unpopularity, says Gareth Jenkins Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly repeated his support for embattled Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, dismissing suggestions that Al-Assad should step down. Erdogan argued that Al-Assad should instead use what he described as the Syrian president's popularity to implement reforms. "He is a good friend," Erdogan told reporters. "I see the people's love for Bashar Al-Assad each time I visit Syria." In addition to the close personal ties between Erdogan and Al-Assad, privately Turkish government officials admit that they are worried by the social and economic repercussions for Turkey if the situation in Syria deteriorates into all-out civil war. In 2009, Syria and Turkey signed an agreement lifting visa requirements for each other's citizens. The move further boosted the already booming cross-border trade between the two countries, which has now become one of the lynchpins of the local economy in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. Turkish officials are concerned that, if the trade declines as a result of the unrest, the resultant economic hardship will increase support amongst the local Kurds for the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The Turkish authorities are also worried about a possible refugee crisis, similar to the one in April 1991 when hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds fled towards the Turkish border to try to escape a crackdown by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. At the end of last month, alarmed by the growing violence, 240 Syrians crossed into Turkey and applied for political asylum. They are currently being housed and fed by the Turkish Red Crescent. But Turkish officials fear that they will be unable to cope if the situation in Syria worsens and tens, or even hundreds of thousands of Syrians flood into Turkey. Erdogan was the first international leader to call for the resignation of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, with whom the AKP had never enjoyed a good relationship. But Erdogan refused to do the same when there was an uprising in Libya against the government of Muammar Gaddafi, with whom the AKP had very close personal and economic ties. Initially, Erdogan even threatened to prevent NATO from supporting the Libyan rebels. It was only on 3 May, when he was persuaded by his advisors that Gaddafi's regime was doomed, that Erdogan finally called on the Libyan leader to step down. Erdogan's support for authoritarian regimes in Libya and Syria has infuriated human rights activists inside Turkey, including the religious right which had previously been generally sympathetic to the AKP. As the death toll in Syria began to rise, a group of Turkish Islamist charities and NGOs came together to form what they call the Platform for Solidarity with the Syrian People (SHDP). As the situation in Syria has continued to deteriorate, the SHDP has stepped up its activities, organising protest marches, public rallies and exhibitions of photographs of the suppression of the protests in Syria. "At a time when the Baath regime in Damascus should be training its tanks and heavy weapons on Israel, which is occupying Syrian land, it is instead turning them on its people," said SHDP spokesperson Merve Koyuncuoglu. "And do you know what 'sin' these people have committed? It is that they want to live in freedom." In the longer term, what is likely to be more distressing for the AKP is not domestic or international criticism but a fear of irrelevance. In recent years, the AKP has vigorously sought to present Turkey as a new regional power and spokesperson for the Muslim masses all over the world. Privately, AKP officials were fond of predicting that Turkey was on the verge of establishing its own sphere of influence, independent of the US and the EU, in what they frequently described as the "former Ottoman hinterland". No one else, they claimed, could understand the region as well as Turkey, and no one else could be an instrument for change. "Nothing can now happen in the Middle East without Turkey's involvement," said Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in early February. "We are the key without which no problem can be solved." The Arab Spring has taken the AKP completely by surprise and tested the AKP's grasp of regional developments to the full. Critics argue that the AKP's response shows confusion and prevarication. Though Erdogan was glad to see the back of Mubarak, the Turkish reaction to events in Libya and Syria has less categorical and continues to spark criticism, especially as the death toll of protesters in Syria mounts. "We talk to them. We give them advice. But it doesn't make any difference," said a Turkish official critical of the Syrian crackdown on protesters. The AKP, however, is clearly hoping that Al-Assad will survive the intense criticism of the international community and carry through on reforms, not a popular position, but one clearly intent on maintaining Turkey's new political relevance in the region.
