by Theodore Bell and ISW Iraq Team
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Monday, August 10, 2015
Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi Fights to Control Government
by: Theodore Bell, Patrick Martin, Jessica Lewis McFate, and Kimberly Kagan
Key Take-away: The government of Iraq is planning sweeping political reforms and attempting to reshuffle the cabinet. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is even calling for the elimination of the Vice President and Deputy Prime Ministers positions. These officials include former Prime Minister and current Vice President Nouri al-Maliki, a rival of Haider al-Abadi. These events mark the first anniversary of the formation of current Prime Minister (PM) Haider al-Abadi’s government. Iraq’s leading religious figure, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is actively backing the Prime Minister and thereby pressuring Shi’a political parties to comply. The Sadrist Trend and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), two of Abadi’s major, Shi’a coalition partners, have supported the reforms, which will go to Iraq’s Parliament on August 11. It remains to be seen whether they pass and whether the officials will step down.
Sistani is involved not only to reaffirm Abadi as premier, but also to protect him against removal by rivals. Qais Khazali, the leader of Asai’ab Ahl al-Haq (AAH), the Iranian-backed Shi’a militia, called for Abadi’s resignation on August 7. AAH has lately joined former media outlets favorable to former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in calling for replacing Iraq’s parliamentary system with a presidential system, in which Iraq’s leader would be selected by popular vote, rather than a vote among members of parliament. Maliki has been trying to position himself as the preferred political candidate of Shi’a militias and likely sees himself as a possible next leader of Iraq. Supporting a presidential system would thereby give Maliki a greater chance of being elected without being beholden to party deliberations over who becomes PM.
Current situation:
Massive protests began in Iraq on July 31 rejecting lack of services and government corruption: Popular demonstrations against poor services and corruption have continued since July 31 in Baghdad, Diyala, Sulaimaniya, and throughout southern Iraq. Although protests over service shortages had previously occurred in June in Basra, they did not spark demonstrations that were either continuous or broadly based through southern Iraq. Popular anger has been directed at local governments over power and water shortages and at the Electricity Minister. Central government officials from across the spectrum, including PM Abadi, have endorsed the protesters’ demands as legitimate and have simultaneously warned against politicization and escalation of security.
Ayatollah Sistani’s representative delivered a landmark sermon on August 7 supporting the Prime Minister: Ayatollah Sistani’s representative encouraged PM Abadi to implement a meaningful reform agenda as a solution to the protesters’ grievances. The sermon preceded popular demonstrations across southern Iraq planned for the Friday evening, indicating the Najaf establishment’s desire to steer the protests in a peaceful direction and foster support for PM Abadi’s government. The sermon notably did not accuse PM Abadi of poor governance. Rather, it identified systemic “administrative and financial corruption” as the source of poor public services. Ayatollah Sistani called on PM Abadi to be “more daring and courageous” in his anti-corruption campaign and to remove any public official, regardless of political rank or religious or ethnic affiliation, who obstructs reform. The sermon further encouraged the Prime Minister not to fear “rejection” by political forces because the “people will support him” in this effort. PM Abadi seized this opening provided by Ayatollah Sistani and issued a televised statement following the sermon that promised a “comprehensive reform plan” and calling on “political forces to cooperate in its implementation.”
Several major political parties are now endorsing PM Abadi’s reforms. Several major Shi’a political factions had publically supported Abadi’s reform program following Ayatollah Sistani’s Friday sermon. ISCI’s Mowatin Bloc declared its support for PM Abadi in implementing reforms on August 7 and called for an emergency session of the CoM to discuss the reforms. The Sunni Speaker of the Parliament, Salim al-Juburi, stated that protesters’ demands were legitimate and that the parliament will discuss the demands in its next session on August 11. The Sunni Etihad Bloc on August 8 affirmed the importance of anti-corruption reforms and stated that the responsibility lies with PM Abadi. The pan-Shi’a National Alliance also voiced its “full commitment” to Ayatollah Sistani’s directive and for PM Abadi in preparing reforms on August 8, as did Moqtada al-Sadr, the Sadrist Trend leader. Sadr’s response, and those of other major Iraqi Shi’a political formations such as ISCI, indicates that the major Shi’a parties are concerned that the demonstrations will undermine their positions and political power, as they hold office in many of the southern provinces. Shi’a parties are also likely attempting to keep the protests non-violent.
PM Abadi’s reforms have passed the Council of Ministers and may pass the Council of Representatives. PM Abadi’s reform agenda, announced on August 9, passed unanimously by the Council of Ministers (COM). The reforms included the removal of the three deputy Prime Minister and three Vice Presidential (VP) posts, a reduction in salaries for all senior government officials, and a two-year party and sectarian limit on top appointments in government. Critically, the reforms would result in the elimination of Maliki’s VP position. But while the reforms passed in the CoM, they must also pass a CoR vote scheduled for August 11 to go into effect. A spokesperson for ISCI’s Mowatin Bloc, loyal to the cleric Ammar al-Hakim, stated that Mowatin would vote in favor of the reforms, as did al-Ahrar bloc, a component of the Sadrist Trend loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr. ISCI and Ahrar’s reactions, in this regard, are consistent with previous statements in support of PM Abadi, including Mowatin’s instructions to its ministers on August 7 to resign in order to allow PM Abadi to implement reforms via the reappointment of ministers, and the decision of Deputy PM Bahaa al-Araji, an Ahrar member, to resign shortly before PM Abadi announced the reforms.
The State of Law Alliance may split in the Council of Representatives vote on reforms because Abadi is competing with rival Prime Minister Maliki for control of their common political bloc. Abadi’s own State of Law Alliance (SLA) may not be uniformly in favor of the reforms. Abadi came to power as part of this political bloc, but he does not have its full support, as former PM Maliki remains a dominant figure within it. SLA members have contradicted one another, with one calling Abadi’s reforms “illegal” and “unconstitutional” and another praising the removal of the deputy positions. Pro-Maliki social media outlets were largely silent on the subject of the vice president and deputy positions but voiced generic support for Abadi and reforms. In addition, the head of AAH’s political bloc in the CoR, Hassan Salim, supported the reforms, but added that the other reforms were required to improve the Integrity Commission, which he claimed did not do enough to fight corruption.
The legislation may pass in the CoR even without the unanimous support from within the SLA, which is likely split between those who support PM Abadi and those who support VP Maliki. Article 59 of the Iraqi Constitution provides that all legislation requires an absolute majority of the members present in order to pass, with a quorum being reached at 164 members, or 50 percent of the CoR. As such, legislation requires between 83 and 165 votes for approval, depending on the number of MPs present for the vote. If every member of the Sadrist Trend, ISCI, Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), and major Sunni and secular party attends the vote and support the reforms, PM Abadi will have 149 votes in favor. If the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Gorran (Change) party join the KDP and vote as a single Kurdish bloc, they will bring an additional 30 votes in support of the reforms. In this scenario, SLA would be unable to block the vote even if every SLA member of parliament voted against the bill. The SLA could not block the reforms under the above conditions even if the PUK, Gorran, the SLA, Fadhila, and Islah opposed it, which would result in a 149-140 split.
PM Abadi’s government appears to be in a strong position to execute reforms immediately. Instead of leading to greater instability, protests, Shi’a politicians, and the marja’iya all seem to be empowering PM Abadi and bolstering him against rivalries and cascading challenges.
The Power Politics Behind the Reforms:
Ayatollah Sistani has used the protest movement as a platform to raise a national political reform agenda on Abadi's behalf. His sermon gave rise to an immediate, coherent, and drastic reform agenda by PM Abadi, which was received with shocking equanimity by a vast array of political actors, whose COR votes auspiciously equate to a majority - which is exceedingly hard to achieve in Iraq, especially without VP Maliki’s camp within the State of Law Alliance (SLA). This rapid coherence of a national reform agenda and potential COR majority on the heels of a sermon by Ayatollah Sistani suggests premeditation and preparation. One might therefore look to the past few weeks, or months of protests, political moves, and sermons for evidence of an alignment forming in advance of the events of August 7-10.
Prime Minister Abadi hits his first anniversary in office this week, likely prompting a review of his tenure. Iraqi politicians had likely agreed to give Abadi a year in office under the current power sharing arrangements. Sistani confirmed Abadi as Prime Minister but allowed him to alter the terms of the deal by which he came to power. Ayatollah Sistani may also have used his sermon and its influence over protesters to head off a politically de-stabilizing effort that would have undermined Abadi’s government. There is evidence that AAH tried to undermine Abadi on August 7, in events described below.
Shi’a political competition has been intensifying since January 2015. Some Shi’a political parties have answered more faithfully to Iran than to Najaf over the past year. Based on national elections, the basic internal rivalries reflect realignment with or opposition to Maliki, who had ultimately stepped down from office under intense domestic, international, and Shi’a clerical pressure. PM Abadi was chosen as a compromise candidate for PM. Abadi’s first year in office may be characterized as one in which he faced multiple existential threats to his office and to the integrity of Iraq’s central government: namely, a difficult war against ISIS and attempts by Iranian-backed Shi’a militias to subvert the control of the ISF.
Over time, PM Abadi’s vulnerabilities have likely increased, due to lack of confidence, turmoil, internal competition, and direct rivalries. For events instead to be going in Abadi’s favor, it is reasonable to hypothesize that Abadi took preemptive measures not only to reform the central government through anti-corruption and decentralization campaigns as promised, but also to execute political re-shuffles of a drastic nature to eliminate direct threats to his office and make reform possible. It seems unlikely that Abadi just got lucky. Rather, it seems more likely that Ayatollah Sistani, PM Abadi, and other political players determined to combine forces ahead of time in pursuit of national reforms.
The question is, what specific threat were they countering?
Maliki has been opposing Abadi and advocating for a presidential system.
Maliki had been trying to undermine Abadi. When he stepped down as Prime Minister, Maliki retained significant influence within the SLA, which is also Abadi’s party. He has previously attempted to position himself since January as a militia leader; and he unleashed a social media campaign against Sunni Defense Minister Khalid al-Obeidi following the fall of an Anbar military outpost in April, though Maliki himself never issued statements implicating himself in the campaign. Maliki thereafter took further steps to represent himself as a leader of the militias that were mobilizing to fight ISIS, thereby attempting to marginalize or possibly re-capture the Ministry of Defense for his agenda. Maliki was also making a play to convert Iraq from a parliamentary to a presidential system by having allies advocate for that new system. Pro-Maliki media outlets and AAH have echoed this theme for nearly a year.
Sistani has put Maliki in a bit of a twist. Since August 7, VP Maliki has been doing what he can to use the language of reform to redirect the attention at his political opponents while he has publicly declared his support for Ayatollah Sistani’s reform directive. It will remain important to monitor VP Maliki’s response to the unfolding political developments in light of PM Abadi’s initial steps to enact government reforms.
The Iranian-backed militias and their political affiliates were corporately making a move against Abadi at the behest of Qom, which Ayatollah Sistani and many nationalist Iraqi Shi’a political parties rejected. The Iranian-backed Badr Organization endorsed the peaceful protests on August 6, prior to Ayatollah Sistani’s sermon, but did not declare its intent to participate and warned against losing focus on the anti-ISIS fight. Badr issued a brief statement following the sermon in support of Sistani’s call for reform, without providing any additional details on either the sermon or the demonstrations. Amiri stated that he “added his voice” to the demonstrators, but that he could not participate because he was “busy” with the fight against ISIS, in line with Badr’s ongoing political agenda to promote itself as a capable national military force that will liberate tracts of ISIS-occupied Iraq. Kata’ib Hizbollah (KH), another Iranian-backed militia, did not issue a statement on the subject at all, despite having stated its interest on July 18 in interrogating the Electricity Minister, seeking to punish corruption, and ending the electricity crisis. The Nujaba Movement (NM), another Iranian proxy militia, had stated its intent to participate in the Friday protests but there was little indication of significant Iranian proxy participation in the largely-peaceful protests on Friday. The Iranian proxy groups’ limited public responses to the unfolding political developments are likely due their inability to rally direct opposition to Ayatollah Sistani as well as their preoccupation with anti-ISIS operations.
While AAH did not overtly participate in the demonstrations, AAH leader Qais al-Khazali, in a speech delivered on August 7, asserted that PM Abadi faced “a major historic responsibility” and that the PM should submit his resignation if he is unable to address the need for reforms. Khazali also used the speech to repeat AAH’s call for the transition to a presidential system, an initiative championed by AAH and widely regarded as a method by which to empower VP Maliki, whose relationship with AAH is well-established. In this context, Ayatollah Sistani’s sermon may be seen as an effort to empower PM Abadi against the political designs of AAH, its patrons in Qom and Tehran, and VP Maliki. AAH’s rhetoric therefore indicates the group’s political divergence from the majority of Iraq’s major Shi’a political actors and point to AAH’s intention to leverage the protests against PM Abadi to obstruct political reform by calling for the PM’s resignation and a transition to a presidential system, an initiative VP Maliki himself advocates. It will therefore remain important to monitor the development of protests in southern Iraq, where VP Maliki’s SLA is dominant, given that VP Maliki and AAH may seek to leverage the localized demonstrations against the national government.
What to watch for:
While PM Abadi’s reform initiative unanimously passed in the CoM, it must also pass in the CoR on August 11. Pro-Maliki elements within the SLA will not be supportive of attempts to curb VP Maliki’s influence by eliminating his VP position. Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has voicedsupport for the reforms, as has Osama al-Nujaifi of Mutahidun. Meanwhile the PUK and Gorran (Change), the two Kurdish parties acting as the opposition to the KDP, the majority party in the Kurdish Parliament, may not be fully supportive of the reform agenda. The PUK has voicedsupport, with the caveat that all inclusions to the reform program be “legal” and constitutional, indicating hesitation to approve unspecified components of the reform agenda.
However, SLA is unlikely to vote as a single bloc given that PM Abadi is also a member of the Dawa Party, which is a component of the SLA. Furthermore, Ayatollah Sistani’s endorsement of reforms is all but certain to garner pro-reform and anti-VP Maliki votes from within the SLA. This precedent was set in August 2014 when the major Shi’a parties voted to replace then-PM Nouri al-Maliki with Haidar al-Abadi. In this instance Ayatollah Sistani’s call for a “new prime minister who has wide national acceptance” prompted the SLA to fracture, with half of the SLA, including 38 Dawa Party members, voting against then-PM Maliki.
It is thus unlikely that the CoR will vote against a reform bill, especially given the political legitimacy that the reform initiative enjoys on account of its endorsement by Ayatollah Sistani. The likeliest method for blocking the reforms is therefore an obstruction of the vote scheduled for August 11. VP Maliki’s allies may insist that the reforms require amending the constitution, prompting a lengthy bureaucratic process. Opponents of the reforms may also seek to obstruct the process by adding amendments unpalatable to pro-reform parties. Speaker Salim al-Juburi’s introduction on August 10 of a 16-point reform paper for consideration by the CoR illustrates political parties’ intent to use the reform momentum to achieve further goals. However, the paper Juburi introduced is not attached to PM Abadi’s reform bill, and will be voted on separately, though includes caveats that would antagonize Shi’a party members. If PM Abadi’s reform agenda is brought to the CoR on August 11 in its current form, it is therefore highly likely that the CoR will vote in favor of the reforms.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Monday, August 3, 2015
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Monday, July 27, 2015
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Turkey Expands Campaign against ISIS and the PKK
The conclusion of an agreement between Turkey and the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition to open Turkish airbases for coalition aircraft conducting sorties against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) marks a major shift in Turkish policy which will provide immediate boost to U.S. efforts to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIS. At the same time, Turkey began launching airstrikes and internal crackdowns targeting members of both ISIS and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the wake of several days of violence which included an ISIS-linked SVEST attack inside Turkey and several PKK-linked assassinations of Turkish police officers. Turkey’s decision to escalate against both militant groups suggests that Turkey intends to leverage the coalition’s calls for further action against ISIS in order to assert its own strategic interest in limiting the expansion of armed Kurdish groups along the Turkish border. The government of Turkish President Recep Erdogan may also seek to utilize these security threats to increase its own political standing amidst ongoing negotiations to form a coalition government and a potential call for early elections. Over the near-term Turkey will face an expanded domestic threat from both ISIS and PKK militancy in the form of persistent violence against the Turkish state. Nonetheless, a sustained Turkish effort against ISIS’s networks in Turkey and northern Syria combined with the efforts of local anti-ISIS Syrian opposition forces has the potential to significantly disrupt the foreign fighter flows which provide ISIS with a key source of reinforcements, suicide bombers, and legitimacy as a global caliphate.
The Deal
Turkey significantly increased its participation in the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition in a marked shift from its previous hesitancy to directly engage the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement on July 24 confirming that Turkey and the U.S. had agreed to “further deepen their ongoing cooperation in the fight against ISIS” following a telephone conversation between U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish President Recep Erdogan on July 22. Although the exact details of the deal remain unknown, President Erdogan confirmed that the Turkish government granted the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition access to the strategic Incirlik and Diyarbakir Airbases in southern Turkey “within a certain framework” in a move long sought by the U.S. to stage operations near Syria. The opening of these bases would sharply reduce the distance that coalition aircraft must transit to strike ISIS targets in Syria, allowing for an increased rate of daily combat sorties. The Turkish government also reportedly authorized the U.S.-led coalition to utilize airbases in the southern cities of Batman and Malatya for emergency situations.
The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs also announced that Turkish warplanes will directly participate in the international anti-ISIS coalition air campaign for the first time. Turkey launched the opening salvo of this expanded role in the morning of July 24 as three Turkish F-16 fighter jets departed from Diyarbakir Airbase in south-central Turkey and conducted three airstrikes against ISIS targets in the Syrian border town of Hawar Kilis north of Aleppo City. Turkish media sources reported that the strikes comprised part of a newly-declared Turkish military operation named “Martyr Yalcin” after a Turkish non-commissioned officer killed during a gunfight with ISIS militants along the Syrian border on July 23. A second round of Turkish airstrikes on the night of July 24-25 also targeted positions of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group in northern Iraq for the first time since 2011, effectively ending a two-year ceasefire agreement between the PKK and the Turkish government. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stated that the airstrikes were not an isolated incident but rather part of an ongoing “process” to address threats along the Turkish border. Nonetheless, one Turkish government official speaking to Reuters later noted that “we can't say this is the beginning of a military campaign, but certainly the policy will be more involved, active and more engaged.” These statements imply that Turkey intends to sustain its activities against ISIS and the PKK over a long-term campaign.
Why Now?
The outlines of this agreement between the U.S. and Turkey appear to have been laid during a visit to Turkey by Gen. John Allen (ret.) and U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Christine Wormuth on July 7-8. Unconfirmed reports at the time suggested that the talks had resulted in preliminary approval for the coalition’s use of Incirlik Airbase after Turkey received assurances that the U.S. would consider Turkish proposals for a buffer zone in northern Syria and block any attempt by Syrian Kurdish forces to move into areas along the Turkish border west of the Euphrates River. These accounts suggested that Turkey had offered a major concession by dropping its long-standing insistence that the international coalition expand its air campaign against ISIS to include airstrikes against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This rebalancing suggests that recent developments may have led the Turkish government to prioritize the internal security threats posed by ISIS and the PKK over Turkey’s regional concerns regarding Iranian expansionism and the enduring presence of the Syrian regime.
The successful conclusion of these negotiations following months of talks likely came as a product of the intensifying security concerns facing the Turkish government. Turkey had previously avoided overt confrontation with ISIS and other militant groups transiting through its territory in order to apply indirect pressure to both the Syrian regime and the Syrian Kurdish YPG, which the Turkish government views as an offshoot of the PKK. This stance also enabled Turkey to limit the potential for violent terrorist attacks within its borders by providing an incentive for ISIS and other extremist groups to avoid jeopardizing their supply routes through Turkey by disrupting the status quo. Although the existence of these transit pathways represented an implicit threat to Turkey, the seizure of the border town of Tel Abyad in northern Syria from ISIS on June 15 by Kurdish YPG forces appears to have been the primary trigger which forced Turkey to reevaluate its security policies. The prospect of further gains along the Syrian-Turkish border by PKK-linked Kurdish forces directly supported by the U.S.-led coalition likely generated the impetus for Turkey to further engage with the anti-ISIS coalition in order to ensure that the coalition campaign would evolve in line with Turkey’s own strategic interests.
The Turkish government soon moved to link its concerns regarding the Kurds to the security threat posed by ISIS in a likely attempt to attract buy-in from the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition for the imposition of limits on further Kurdish expansion. President Erdogan called security meetings with senior Turkish government and military officials on June 17-18 which established “red lines” for further Kurdish expansion in Syria. The Turkish National Security Council held additional meetings to address the threat posed by ISIS, and on June 29 an advisor to Prime Minister Davutoglu stated that the meetings would likely result in a change to the Turkish military’s rules of engagement that would authorize attacks against ISIS fighters inside Syria near the Turkish border. Over subsequent weeks Turkey reinforced its border with largenumbers of soldiers, armored vehicles, and artillery units, placing a particular concentration in Kilis and Gaziantep Provinces opposite ISIS-held areas of Aleppo Province in Syria. By July 22, Turkish media reported that half of Turkey’s border security personnel and armored cars as well as 90% of Turkey’s drones had been deployed to the Syrian border. Meanwhile, Turkey also began a crackdown against suspected ISIS members or sympathizers inside Turkey. President Erdogan noted on July 10 that nearly 1,300 foreigners had been arrested and deported on suspicion of involvement with ISIS.
These security concerns dramatically escalated on July 20 after a suspected ISIS member conducted a spectacular SVEST attack against a group of pro-Kurdish student activists in the southern Turkish town of Suruc on July 20, killing at least thirty-one individuals and wounding over one hundred others. Kurdish activists linked the bombing to a similar double IED attack against a Kurdish political rally in Diyarbakir on June 6 which killed four individuals and wounded at least 400 others, raising the prospect of an incipient ISIS campaign to target Kurds inside of Turkey. This message was reinforced with the release of the second issue of ISIS’s Turkish-language Constantinople magazine on July 21 which contained a warning that Kurds fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria “may fight in Turkey in a similar way in the not too distant future.” In response, Kurdish militants engaged in their own campaign of targeted violence against alleged ISIS “collaborators”, triggering a major amplification of violence within Turkey. The PKK claimed responsibility for the execution of two Turkish police officers with a claimed association to ISIS in the border town of Ceylanpinar on July 22. Suspected PKK members also killed another Turkish police officer in an ambush in Diyarbakir, while members of the PKK youth wing executed an alleged ISIS member in Istanbul. Turkish security forces also discovered IEDs in front of two offices of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Erdogan in the Turkish capital of Ankara and the southwestern Turkish province of Hatay. Kurds and Turkish opposition parties held large streetprotests in Istanbul, Ankara, and several other Turkish cities which in some cases devolved into violence.
The timing of the start of combat operations against both ISIS and the PKK may also have been driven by domestic Turkish political concerns. President Erdogan and his ruling AKP Party have come under heavy criticism from domestic opponents for their foreign policy towards Syria, which included a permissive attitude towards ISIS, JN, and other extremist groups fighting the Assad regime in Syria. These mounting criticisms came to a head during the Turkish general elections on June 7 in which the AKP lost their overall majority in the Turkish Parliament amidst historic gains for the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP). This development raised the potential for a shift in Turkish policy towards the Syrian Civil War as Turkish opposition parties pressed the AKP to reduce its hostility towards Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, limit its support to Syrian opposition factions, and establish positive relations with Syrian Kurds. Nonetheless, ongoing negotiations between the AKP and rival Turkish political parties to form a coalition government do not appear to be gaining traction and a call for early elections in Turkey appears likely. Expanded Turkish participation in the anti-ISIS coalition may thus serve a political goal for President Erdogan and the AKP by undercutting criticism of government policy towards ISIS and rallying the Turkish populace in the face of domestic security threats. The increase in violence attributed to the PKK and other Kurdish militant groups will also likely erode the position of the HDP to the benefit of the AKP. If early elections are called, these effects could improve the AKP’s vote share sufficiently to allow the AKP to regain its outright parliamentary majority and advance its Syria policy unhindered.
Implications
The expansion of Turkey’s role in the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition will almost certainly generate an immediate reaction in the form of retaliatory attacks from ISIS or ISIS sympathizers operating inside of Turkey. Thousands of foreign fighters have utilized Turkey and its porous border with Syria as a pathway to join with ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq, including an estimated 1,000 Turkish citizens. The members of these covert ISIS networks represent a key threat to Turkey’s internal security, and ISIS will likely seek to activate these cells in order to punish the Turkish government. ISIS fighters and supporters began circulating violent rhetoric against the Turkey within hours of the Turkish airstrikes on July 24. At the same time, Turkey also faces expanded internal turmoil in its southeastern Kurdish-majority provinces due to the resumption of hostilities with the PKK and other Kurdish militant groups. These two simultaneous threat streams will likely interact to prompt further attacks inside of Turkey in coming weeks targeting the Turkish government, Turkish military forces, or vital Turkish interests such as the tourism industry.
Turkish intervention in Aleppo Province could also prompt a response from Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) and JN-aligned Salafi-jihadist groups operating along the Turkish border. Unverified Turkish sources identified both ISIS and JN as targets for Turkish and U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. JN later claimed on July 24 that aircraft from the “Arab-Crusader alliance” had conducted airstrikes against JN positions in the town of Baraghitah in northern Aleppo Province. Baraghitah is located directly adjacent to the announced location of Turkish airstrikes in the town of Hawar Kilis, suggesting that Turkish aircraft may have also conducted strikes against JN. Although JN remains unlikely to directly escalate against Turkey due to its own reliance on supply lines running through the Turkish border, sustained targeting of JN could ultimately drive the group to conduct attacks against Turkey or Turkish-sponsored rebel groups operating in Aleppo and Idlib Provinces.
Meanwhile, Turkish military action against ISIS forces in northern Syria could produce significant ramifications for the current balance of power between ISIS, Syrian rebels, and the Syrian regime in Aleppo Province. A sustained campaign of Turkish airstrikes and artillery shelling designed to force ISIS away from the Turkish border would likely open exploitable opportunities for rebel forces to advance against ISIS in the northern countryside of Aleppo City, reversing ISIS’s recent gains in the region and reducing the threat posed to the key rebel supply line moving from Turkey through the Syrian border town of Azaz. Over the long-term, ISIS’s position could be sufficiently weakened to enable advances by both rebel and regime forces east of Aleppo City, which could ultimately threaten ISIS’s control over the key urban centers of al-Bab, Manbij, and Jarabulus. Turkey will also likely seek to leverage these rebel advances as a means to block further Syrian Kurdish advances in Aleppo Province along the Turkish border. On a wider scale, the campaign of mass arrests and invigorated border security efforts undertaken by the Turkish government could result in a significant disruption of the foreign fighter flows which provide ISIS with a key source of reinforcements, suicide bombers, and legitimacy as a global caliphate. The intersection of these effects with potential losses of terrain in Aleppo Province would likely inflict significant damage to ISIS’s operations within both Iraq and Syria. ISIS may thus attempt to reduce its overall risk profile by setting conditions over the near-term to secure additional border access, particularly in the opposition-held province of Idlib in northwestern Syria which has seen a series of recent ISIS-attributed assassinations and bombings.
The increase in Turkish support to the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition through expanded border security, airstrikes, and airbase access will deliver an immediate boost to U.S. efforts to degrade and defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Nonetheless, Turkey’s decision to escalate against both ISIS and the PKK will also produce a number of challenges for the U.S. and its coalition allies in the near-term. The high likelihood of retaliatory attacks in Turkey directed by both Salafi-jihadist and Kurdish militants suggests that the U.S. will witness persistent violence in a major NATO ally. U.S.-led coalition personnel stationed at newly-opened airbases in Turkey may come under particular risk of attack due to the heavy presence of ISIS networks in the country. The U.S.-led coalition could also face pushback or reduced cooperation from the Syrian Kurdish forces that have formed the core U.S. ground partner in Syria as a result of renewed hostilities between the Turkish government and the PKK. Over the long-term, however, the expansion of the Turkish role against ISIS will likely mark a major positive development for the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition and its efforts to dismantle the Islamic State.
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