INTENSIFICATION OF RUSSIA-TURKEY INDIRECT MILITARY AND POLITICAL CONFRONTATION

25.02.2013

INTENSIFICATION OF RUSSIA-TURKEY INDIRECT MILITARY AND POLITICAL CONFRONTATION

Sergei Sargsyan
Deputy Head of the Center for Political Studies, “Noravank” Foundation,
Senior Expert

The relationship of Russia and Turkey in the periods when they were in the state of war resemble a game of mult-iboard military and political chess on the geographically separated boards, and each game has its logic, its intrigue, its pieces but they all are interconnected and constitute a part of the same big mosaic. Moreover, the more independent extra-alliance foreign political activity Ankara demonstrates the more often and more vividly its policy confronts the interests of Moscow.

The elements of indirect confrontation can be observed with different intensity fr om Moldova, Crimea, North and South Caucasus to Ural and Central Asia. In recent two years Syria has become a new point of collision of interests.

Russia is very interested first of all in continuing and intensification of exploitation of their naval base in Tartus and preserving the Syrian arms and military tenchnics market for the production of the their military industrial complex.

Turkey’s interests are conditioned by the fact that this country tends to stir up its foreign policy in all the directions, especially within the boarders of the former Ottoman Empire. And the goals of this country in Syria are as follows:

- not to allow using the regions of Syria tensely populated by the Kurds as rear bases for Kurdish Workers’ Party;

- not to allow the KWP somehow to receive modern arms and ammunition fr om the Syrian army depots;

- to remove fr om power the Alewi elite of the Syrian Arab Republic;

- to counter Iran thus targeting to become an ultimate leader in the region, etc.

Their main goal is not to prejudice interests of Russia; simply objectively and despite the goals of Turkey they do prejudice these interests.

Turkey’s (as well as Israel’s) logic of action is based on the conclusion of irreversibility of destabilization of domestic political situation in Syria, its transition into a state of permanent instability with a tendency of a critical growth of social-economic and political problems.

Today the opposition confronting the Bashar Assad’s regime consists of:

- Syrian Free Army,

- Militants of “Muslim Brothers” movement,

- Radicals and jihadists from “Al-Qaida”

- Independently acting small, disjointed groups.

Each of them has the support base of its own as well as established help channels from abroad. These groups generally and particularly are ready to form temporary and situational alliances on the assumption of their tactical interests. They mainly comprise of volunteers and mercenaries from mostly Sunnite countries.

In such situation without a reliably closed borders, which is almost unrealizable in case with Syria, it is still possible to reduce the activity of the radicals but the authorities of Syria can hardly achieve profound victory over them. They still have enough material, financial and human resources in order to keep “swinging” the domestic political situation in the state. Gradual accumulation of the mental fatigue from long civil war, terrorist activity of different groups of different ideological orientation, deterioration of social and economic situation will direct the ways of solution of the crisis in the way of changing the current leadership.

But even the controlled and abate Islamization of Syria (as they hope in the West) in the form of anti-Assad democratization of the country, on the pattern of both Turkey and Egypt, will inevitably bring to the worsening of the state of Alawis, Christians and Kurds in Syria. As a result, the Armenian Diaspora in Syria is interested in stabilization of situation in the country on the assumption of preserving the current ruling elite (the option Russia insists on).

The naval exercises in the water area of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, in which 20 ships and 3 submarines, including one nuclear submarine, of at once three fleets – Black Sea, Baltic Sea and North Sea (among them major anti-submarine ship of North Sea fleet “Severomorsk”, major assault landing ships of the Black Sea fleet “Azov”, “Saratov” and guards guided missile cruiser “Moskva”) – participated were a manifestation of the support of Damascus and non-admission of coercive displacement of B. Assad. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergei Lavrov said: “We are not interested in even more destabilization of the Mediterranean region and presence of our fleet there is an unconditional factor of stabilization of the situation”¹.

And in case of final destabilization and disintegration of the country, appearance of the Alawi-Christian state on the Mediterranean shore looks more preferable than final displacement of the Syrian Armenians from Syria on the model of some other Middle East countries.

Turkey, taking advantage of mortaring of its border areas from the adjacent Syrian territories, wh ere intensive fights between the government forces and militants were proceeding, did not restrict itself to artillery shelling of the positions of the Syrian army in response, (complicity of the Syrian governmental forcers to the incidents was not proved) and requested from its NATO partners assistance and deployment of antiaircraft defense facilities.

According to the official version temporally and exclusively for covering of the Southern border with Syria, totally 6 “Patriot” anti-missile defense systems were supplied to Turkey (by two from the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands), and since the late January they have come on alert.

The places of their deployment are remarkable – near the cities of Adana (about 120km from the Syrian border), Kahramanmaras (about 90km) and Gaziantep (about 45km). Taking into consideration the range of engagement which does not go beyond 80km, it can be assumed that the priority mission of “Patriot” anti-missile defense systems will be rather covering protection of the NATO military objects and in particular “Incirlik” air base than the near-border population centers of country.

But the prospects of delivering a massive strike to the territory of Turkey by Syria, especially under the ongoing domestic political military conflict, are practically equal to zero and it is nothing but a suicide for B. Assad. But the attempts by the Syrian militants and the powers which support them in order to provoke Turkey and NATO into taking counter measures against the Syrian government forces cannot be excluded either. This is especially remarkable against the background of information of a Syrian “Al-Vatan” newspaper about an attempt of a covert penetration of four Turkish fighter-pilots² with the assistance of a group of armed militants to the “Koerc” military airport (Aleppo province), which was denied by the Turkish General Staff on the same day³ and as it seems even without checking this information.

Besides Syria, the changing of the place of the second panel session of the High Level Strategic Partnership Council from Baku to Ghabala became an unpleasant demarche for Russia on behalf of Turkey and Azerbaijan. The meeting wh ere the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and the prime-minister of Turkey Recep Tayiip Erdogan were present resulted in “singing of seven documents which, by their importance, did not correspond to the high level of the meeting”⁴. Those were documents on metrology, TV companies, cargo transportation, rescue services and seed industry.

Against the background of setting forth unacceptable for Russia conditions by Azerbaijan on continuing exploitation of Ghabala Radar Station and initiation of evacuation of the military staff and operational personnel and their families, it has become not only a pinnacle to Moscow but also a vivid manifestation of final shift of foreign policy priorities by Baku.

One of the sounded reasons of suspending cooperation with Russia in terms of Ghabala Radar has become the fact that it covers mainly Muslim and brotherly states to Azerbaijan, including Turkey. Meanwhile Turkey signed on September 14, 2011 a memorandum with the US on the deployment of AN/TPY-2 Radar System (old name - FBR-T - Forward Based Radar –Transportable) intended for detecting ballistic missiles early in their flight, identifying and tracking them. It is meant to provide the tracking information to the U.S. Navy ships which are equipped with «Aegis» missile-defense systems and which will realize its direct interception. Not long after that the radar was deployed in the region of Kuluncak of Turkish Malatya province. But in the opinion of Russian experts one of the main goals of this radar which can detect and identify objects at the distance of 2000km is the control of the air space of South Caucasus, part of Central Asia as well as the Southern part of Russia, thus tracking the experimental launches of the Russian missiles from the test fields.

One way or another, deployment of the U.S. anti-missile defense radar and “Patriot” missiles in Turkey will become a handy excuse for Russia to equip its 102nd military base, deployed on the territory of Armenia, by the forces and facilities of both electronic and fire suppression of the anti-aircraft defense and anti-missile defense systems.

During the visit of the Minister of Defense of Russia S. Shoygu in late January 2013, once again the parties confirmed their aspiration to strengthen joint security, as well as military-political and military-technical partnership directed among other aims to not allowing the military ways of resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The proposal made by the Russian Naval Chief Command on the strengthening of the 25th separate missile battalion of the 11th separate coast missile-artillery brigade (Utash population center, near the city of Anapa, Krasnodar Region, RF) by the forth squadron of “Bastion” mobile coastal missile systems which will enter service in 2014, fitly works with the asymmetric response of Russia.

The system is capable of hitting naval surface ships and vessels of all the types and classes, both separate targets and amphibian, carrier and strike groups under the fire and electronic countermeasures. “Bastion” is capable of hitting the targets at the distance of 300km⁵ by “Onix” anti-ship missiles and to cover from the amphibian operations of the enemy 600km of coast.

This will adjust the balance of naval forces which was changed not in Russia’s favour after the division of the Black Sea Fleet and economic difficulties of the last two decades. Besides the NATO ships which periodically put in the Black Sea water area (except of coarse the Navies of Bulgaria and Romania), there are no more potential targets for “Bastion” than the ships of the Turkish navy.

* * *

At the same time available and deepening indirect discrepancies in military and political sphere, in due form of Eastern diplomacy, are accompanied by direct political and diplomatic activity and development of mutually beneficial economic cooperation. A number of measures directed to starting construction of the offshore part of “South Stream” gas pipeline are taken; the negotiations on increasing natural gas supply to Turkey up to 3 billion m3 are hold; the commodity turnover is growing (by 11% in 2012, up to $33 billion).

Moreover, invitation to Ankara to join Eurasian integration project became a new stage in the relations of two countries, though Turkey has almost no chances to become a full-fledged member of a forming Eurasian Union due to the same reasons as its entering European Union. Any other status intends subordinated position of a junior partner which suits fine to Moscow, Astana and Minsk but not Ankara.

And though in order to create real counterpoise or to balance virtually the “western” vector of the foreign policy Ankara will tend to strengthen or at least to imitate strengthening of “eastern” vector, it will mainly focus on more flexible geopolitical project in which Russia accumulates more problems and contradictions and wh ere it is not an ultimate leader, i.e. in Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

¹ ИА "Росбалт", 23 января 2013г., http://www.rosbalt.ru/main/2013/01/23/1084750.html

² В Сирии арестованы четыре турецких летчика-истребителя, ИА «Interfax», 31 декабря 2012 года, http://www.interfax.ru/russia/news.asp?id=283671

³ Турция отрицает арест своих летчиков в Сирии, ИА «Новости», 31 декабря 2012, http://evrazia.org/news/24843

⁴ Азербайджано-турецкий саммит под сенью российской РЛС, Аналитическая служба Туран, 12 сентября 2012г., http://www.contact.az/docs/2012/Analytics/091200010898ru.htm#.URf5p2LPzeM

⁵ By the compound flight line (the extension of the terminal phase) – 300km; by low-altitude flight line (at a height of 15m) – 120km

“Globus” analytical journal, #2, 2013

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