OPINION - No method in the madness

By Adam McConnel

- The writer teaches Turkish history at Sabanci University in Istanbul, and holds a PhD from the same university.

Recently, the U.S. foreign policy in Turkey’s region has repeatedly brought Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now to mind.

Coppola’s film was intended as an American reinterpretation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and is a profound examination of imperialism, power, and the forces that drive human civilization. Set during the Vietnam War, the film’s main character, Capt. Willard, is sent by his superiors to “terminate” the command of a Col. Kurtz, who has established himself as ruler over a tribe in Cambodia’s interior jungles.

One of the conversations between Kurtz and Willard includes the following well-known exchange:

“What did they tell you?”

“They told me that you had gone totally insane. And, uh, that your methods were unsound.”

“Are my methods unsound?”

“I don’t see any method at all, sir.”

The U.S. policy in Eastern Mediterranean has also lost any appearance of sanity or method. Under John Kerry’s term as secretary of state, the U.S. refused to take any strong stance opposing the Syrian regime, Tehran, or Russia, which are ultimately responsible for six years of violence in Syria and the disorder in Ukraine.

The U.S. took no steps to discourage the Egyptian military from overthrowing a popularly-elected president; once the event was accomplished through the slaughter of hundreds of Egyptian civilians, the Barack Obama-led administration did nothing more than slap the wrists of Egypt’s officers. When Fetullah Gulen’s adherents tried the same thing in Turkey, probably emboldened by the Egyptian example, three weeks went by before the U.S. Vice President, Joe Biden, appeared in Ankara to belatedly express sympathy for Turkey’s lost lives and battered democracy.

There was some expected change with the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, but those hopes have already been dashed. President Trump has an extremely short attention span and has amply demonstrated that he does not have a grasp on the complexities of policy formulation. On macro-scale foreign policy issues, the State Department and Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, are not even on the same page, but both are subject to momentary chaos if President Trump tweets something awkward.

Thus, the U.S. policy in Turkey’s region, which has been disintegrating for the past four years, has become even more unhinged. No definitive policy change has occurred despite the occasional rhetorical outburst or the launch of a couple dozen Tomahawk missiles. One reason is that the State Department, usually the prime mover for U.S. foreign policy, has been hobbled by an administration whose ideological foreman rolled into Washington proclaiming the end of the “administrative state”. Even though the U.S. foreign policy towards Turkey’s region was misguided under John Kerry, at least he displayed consistency in his mistakes. Now there is no rhyme or reason to each day’s U.S. policy steps around Turkey’s borders.

Even worse, because the State Department is a non-factor and President Trump is impressed by military power, the Pentagon has been left to its own devices in Iraq and Syria. Last Thursday, for example, U.S. ambassador to Turkey John Bass gave interesting comments at the Atlantic Council Istanbul Summit. Bass emphasized that the U.S. wants to see a strong, successful Turkey, and expressed the desire for Turkey and the U.S. to “deal with… differences” and achieve common goals “by working more closely together and pulling in the same direction.”

But only 24 hours before Ambassador Bass provided those statements, pictures of U.S. military officials inspecting the aftermath of Turkish airstrikes on PKK/PYD militants’ Sinjar (Shengal) operations bases, and in the company of known PKK/PYD militants, emerged on social media. The U.S. Central Command tweeted it was “troubled” by the Turkish strikes. The spokesman for the anti-Daesh coalition, Col. John Dorrian, complained that Turkey had acted “without proper coordination with the coalition.” The State Department also chose to describe itself as “very concerned – deeply concerned” about those airstrikes.

So, the scene in Turkey-U.S. relations this past week looked like this: the Turkish military informed its NATO ally, the U.S., that it would carry out strikes against an organization that is designated “terrorist” by both governments. Over the past two years alone, that mutually-designated terrorist organization has killed hundreds and injured thousands of Turkish citizens and security forces. The U.S. opposed those strikes, and then sent military officials, accompanied by representatives of that so-designated terrorist organization, to inspect the facilities affected by the strikes. The U.S. military then expressed its concern, not for Turkish security forces who are putting their lives at risk, but for the militants of the terrorist-designated organization.

In other words, the U.S. has allied itself and defends a violent militant group professing an ideology that, little more than 25 years ago, was considered the premier threat to American society. That same organization has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Turkish citizens, but the U.S. leadership sees it as a preferable partner in northern Iraq and Syria. Even though this has been the case for nearly three years now, it is still astounding to see the highest levels of the U.S. military collaborating with, and praising, an organization that is designated “terrorist” by its own government.

For its part, the State Department expressed dismay at Turkey’s actions, claiming that it did “not approve” the strikes, that the strikes also led to the deaths of northern Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) Peshmerga forces, and that “military action in Iraq should respect Iraqi sovereignty.” The State Department neglected to mention that the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, clearly a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty, is the ultimate cause for the situation in question.

The KRG, on the other hand, told the public that the designated terrorist organization’s presence in the region is the reason for the Turkish airstrikes, and that the terrorist organization should immediately withdraw its forces from KRG territory. Even the KRG displays more opposition to the PKK than the U.S. military and State Department. Then the U.S. ambassador to Turkey tells his hosts that they need to work together more closely. Though Ambassador Bass has overcome his previous tendency to tweet messages and pictures entirely inappropriate for his position, his comments still bring Hamlet to mind. The ambassador “doth protest too much, methinks”. Will he keep his word?

The entire situation boggles the mind and defies reason. What has happened to U.S. foreign policy? But I have to be frank: I don’t know. I’ve been struggling for the past four years to understand the U.S. administration’s reasoning in Turkey’s neighborhood and have found no rational explanation. And the switch in administrations has made no difference. Is simply fear, that is, the “Islamic threat,” now the guideline for U.S. foreign policy formulation? Only that would provide some sort of basic reasoning for the focus on Daesh instead of the true source of Syria’s disorder, the Damascus regime. Only that would explain the U.S.’s official charade, now approaching its fourth year, pretending that the PKK can provide a dependable partner, somehow more palatable than the NATO ally it worked so hard to have admitted in 1952, in the battle against Daesh.

Or maybe it is simply that, like London in Conrad’s book, Washington is a capital on a river linked through flowing waters, like fluids moving through the world’s veins, to its dark, violent, and confused policies on another river far away. But the U.S.’s disasters on the Mekong River were not sufficient to discourage another adventure, and further policy quagmires, this time on the Euphrates.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.