Living with an expansionist Russia is the new challenge for Turkey

Turkey’s downing of the Russian jet over the violation of its airspace invites us to rethink the basic parameters of Ankara’s relations with Moscow. The government in Ankara has presented the incident mainly in defensive terms, in line with its Syria policy, which was based on minimalist military engagement. As such, subsequent steps by Turkey have sought to deescalate the crisis and salvage its bilateral relationship with Moscow. Russia’s response, however, was extremely harsh; it is going ahead with several measures intended to punish and deter Turkey. These include mounting a stern response to Turkey militarily, by scaling up its capabilities on the ground and intensifying aerial operations in support of the Assad regime’s offensive against moderate opposition groups and other pro-Turkey elements. Russia is also discarding altogether the policy of compartmentalisation, which used to characterise the bilateral relationship; instead, it is working aggressively to deal a heavy blow to Ankara in the economic, commercial and political fields. At the same time, as high level Russian officials have signalled, we can expect psychological warfare against Turkey, supported by black propaganda. Moreover, it is very likely that Moscow will provide covert support to the elements posing asymmetrical threats to Turkey’s national security.

The Russian counter-measures are clear indications of its willingness to escalate the crisis. More important than that, though, is the speed with which Russia moved to maximise the impact of this incident and elevate the Syria crisis to a new level, which forces us to problematise the main strategy behind Russia’s Syria policy. In this thought exercise, both Turkey and the West need to confront candidly a question which they have been avoiding for some time: “What kind of a Russia are we going to live with?”

Expansionism blended in strategic ambiguity

There is no single explanation for the main objectives of Russia’s Syria policy. Having supported the Assad regime since the very beginning of the crisis, Russia decided to intervene directly. Although Moscow seeks to legitimise this move with reference to fighting terrorism, the consensus is that its objectives go well beyond that. The minimalist explanations assume that Russia aims to consolidate its ally Assad, who has been weakened considerably over the course of 2015 under rebel advances. Another theory suggests that Russia seeks to settle other scores with the West, through its involvement in Syria. On this point, while some say that Russia could find new common ground with the West centred on fighting terrorism, others claim that it could also break the isolation it has been subjected to in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine. Maximalist interpretations, however, suggest that Russia’s policy in Syria reflects its search for status as a global actor and thus be able to challenge the US leadership.

In line with its policy of strategic ambiguity, which has characterised its behaviour in many previous crises, Moscow has been successful in blending its wider objectives with the catchy intention to fight Daesh. Through its deliberately manipulated policy of strategic ambiguity, Russia is forcing its counterparts to engage in a thought exercise to gauge its intentions. Faced with this approach, which Russia has used at least since the 2008 war in Georgia, Western governments have come up with rather optimistic answers in response to the question of whether Russian behaviour was driven by offensive or defensive motivations. Even in crises where Russia’s aggressive, expansionist and revisionist motivations are established unequivocally, no proper reaction could be given. On the contrary, efforts were usually made to rationalise Russian actions. One can argue convincingly that the risk averse policies of the Western powers are based on some justifiable concerns. Granted, in the final analysis, since the 2008 Georgia war, there has effectively been a policy of appeasement in place, under which Russian expansionism continued.

In crises where the West confronted Russia, it acted with a flawed strategic analysis in defining the nature of the problem at hand. A retrospective analysis shows clearly that the Western actors approached Russia’s moves in Georgia, Ukraine or Syria as one-off incidents and responded as such. Russia, in contrast, appears to have acted with a holistic approach. For instance, when the crisis over Crimea broke out, the prevailing mood was to manage it with lower levels of reaction. To justify this policy, there were references to Russia’s historic rights over the peninsula or the mistakes committed by Ukraine, ignoring altogether the simple fact that it was bare revisionism and a blatant attack on the modern international system. The same flawed strategic analysis also blurred the Western reaction to Russia’s involvement and later intervention in the Syrian crisis. Manipulating and where possible taking advantage of its Western counterparts’ ambiguity, indecisiveness and internal divisions, Russia has concluded that this is an opportune moment to realise its own plans, hence, the deep military intervention.

Owing to the blurred strategic thinking, Western thinking bordered on Pollyannaism over how to make sense of Russia’s intervention in Syria. Through its protection of the Assad regime in the UN Security Council and bolstering of the regime’s military arsenal, Russia has been the main culprit in dragging the country into a civil war, blocking a political solution in 2012 and worsening the problem. Despite this, the West embraced the Russian proposals and preferred to see it as a partner in a solution, after failing to give a proper response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons. As the fight against the threat posed by Daesh — which was bolstered by the Assad regime as part of its survival policy — came to occupy the core of Western policy on Syria, Russia too moved to capitalise on it as part of its own planning. Indeed, Moscow presented itself and, by extension, the Assad regime, as the solution partner, by reducing the Syrian crisis into a common fight against Daesh. More remarkably, Russia has fielded a military presence that is far beyond the requirements of fighting the terrorist group on the ground.

Rethinking Russia in the wake of the jet incident

Aside from punishing Turkey through the aforementioned means (as well as ending visa-free travel for Turkish passport holders, cancelling some economic deals and intimidating Turks living in Russia, plus arbitrarily detaining visiting business people), more remarkably Russia has opted for a rapid military mobilisation. In addition to deploying a missile-capable cruiser to the Eastern Mediterranean, it rushed to dispatch and make operational an S-400 missile defence system. It would be naïve to buy into the Russian line that the advanced air defence capabilities and missile systems will be used only to extend protection for their forces on the ground or to deter Turkey. The speed with which these capabilities have been mobilised following the jet incident underscores a willingness to consolidate a permanent military presence that can deter the West and deny its armies access to the Syrian theatre of operations.

Russia’s policy in Syria and the evolution of this crisis cannot be analysed without taking into account Moscow’s grand strategy of expanding its global standing. With this in mind, the response to its moves by Western security forces needs to be grounded in a rethinking of Russia. Owing largely to the quest for a new direction for US foreign policy and the inability of Europe to converge around a new joint strategy, Russia’s expansionist geopolitical agenda since the 2008 Georgian war has gone unanswered.

Currently, the optimistic assertions that by downing the Russian jet Turkey destroyed “the prospects of forming a joint platform with Russia against Daesh/ISIS” underscores the resistance to confronting the root causes of the problem. There are a considerable number of Western powers willing to take Russia’s “offers that cannot be refused”, and this encourages Moscow to continue its policy of expansion through tactics based on “divide, isolate and intimate”.

Turkey’s difficult choice

As things stand, short of a drastic change in its Western partners’ perceptions of Russia, Turkey will have difficulties internationalising its task of standing up to the new threat. Turkey will, therefore, above all else, have to rely on its own capabilities, which must also be based on a rethinking of Russia. The head of policy planning at Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Altay Cengizer, argued recently that the ambiguity that Russia breeds in the Black Sea, Caucasus and Eastern Mediterranean is producing many risks. He argued further that the international community does not have the luxury of making any inferences from Russia’s actions, and the onus is on Moscow to clarify its intentions. Nonetheless, it will be correct to assume that Russia will refrain from doing this and maintain the same policy of manipulating strategic ambiguity.

The latest stage of Russia’s expansionist policies blended in strategic ambiguity has produced a direct confrontation with Turkey. Having avoided asking tough geopolitical questions in its flourishing relationship with Moscow, which came to be defined as a multi-dimensional partnership, Ankara now faces difficult strategic choices. It has preferred to move its relationship with Russia away from the realm of enmity and existential security, and conceptualised it as one of friendship and economic interdependence. This preference has been tested many times before when, for example, Russia made clear its revisionist and expansionist impulses during the 2008 war in Georgia or the crisis in Ukraine. Turkey was comfortable enough to cut a grand energy deal with Russia in 2009, soon after Georgia, and it accepted Russia’s offer of the Turkish Stream, following the 2014 crisis over Crimea-Ukraine. This time Russia has moved closer to home and the strategic stakes for Turkey are high. The biggest foreign policy test of the government in Ankara will be how it will adjust to this new phase of Russian expansionism, which poses direct threats to Turkey’s territorial security.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.