Ursula von der Leyen travels to Turkey. She must make offers to President Erdoğan so that the Turkish president does not brutally implement his military goals. But she has to do it cleverly.
Diplomacy is in difficult times in Syria. After the fall of the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, regional powers are trying to expand their influence in the region. Israel is bombing anything in Syria that even appears to be of military use to a future Syrian government.
At the same time, Turkey, under its autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is threatening a major ground offensive against the Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria. In particular, the predominantly Kurdish-populated large cities of Kobanê and the Arab Ar-Raqqa are in danger of being overrun and conquered by the Turkish army and the Islamist militias supported by Turkey.
It is therefore good and important that Ursula von der Leyen travels to Turkey on Tuesday in this tense situation. But the President of the European Commission must proceed carefully – because Erdoğan could stabilize the region, but he could also plunge it further into chaos.
There is no question: Turkey is of crucial importance for the political reorganization in Syria and is militarily one of the strongest regional powers in the Middle East. After all, the country has the second largest army in NATO and Erdoğan uses this military strength to underpin his hegemonic goals in the region.
Erdoğan dreams of revitalizing the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism plays a major role in modern Turkish foreign policy. The Turkish president also sees himself as the protector of the Sunnis in the Middle East. This often offends Iran, the strongest Shiite country in the region. Added to this is the simmering conflict with the Kurds, who rule large parts of northern Syria. Erdoğan sees them as an armed wing of the PKK workers’ party, which he has been fighting in Turkey for years.
The EU is under pressure and must influence Erdoğan so that he does not continue to fight Syria and the Kurds. But how? The EU and Turkey have close economic ties, and Erdoğan needs money from Europe. Inflation in Turkey is at 49 percent and the local currency, the lira, is weak. And then there are European arms exports, which the EU could turn back. Von der Leyen therefore has several good means of exerting pressure on the Turkish government, but she must also want to use them and possibly make economic concessions to Erdoğan.
Erdoğan is not an easy negotiating partner, and the EU will have to build pressure on Turkey without alienating it at the same time. The EU should therefore try to bind Turkey more closely to itself economically and politically. This would also be geopolitically advantageous for the West.
Von der Leyen took another step towards more cooperation on Tuesday. During her visit to Ankara, the EU Commission President announced a further tranche of one billion euros for refugees in Turkey. “Another billion euros is on the way for 2024,” she explained. The timing of this is hardly surprising.
Turkey is emerging victorious from the chaos in Syria, but Erdoğan’s success has come at the expense of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin. It is therefore also an opportunity for the EU to use clever diplomacy to widen the gap between Ankara and Moscow. However, von der Leyen must not approach the Turkish president with naivety, because he remains a dangerous partner. In the past he has shown often enough that he will brush aside diplomatic agreements if it means he can strengthen his own position of power.
Erdoğan knows that he is currently in a position of power. The European Union depends on Turkey to ensure stability in the region. In order to have significant political leverage to persuade Erdoğan to give in, the EU and the USA must now work closely together. Influence the Turkish head of state, make him offers, support your own demands. There is a chance for a long-term solution and peace in the region – but the Kurds must be included. They have been betrayed by the West too often in the past.
This must all happen quickly, before the Americans lose interest in the region again under the future US President Donald Trump. When it comes to stability in the Middle East, the West is once again running out of time.
