Turkey's gamble in Syria will cost thousands of lives

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on the rise. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former al-Qaeda affiliate that Turkey subsidized, armed and advised, rampaged through Syria and sent President Bashar al-Assad fleeing into exile in Moscow.

While HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has abandoned his nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani and adopted a moderate face, at least rhetorically, he deftly evades questions about the imposition of his brand of Sunni Islamism radical to society. Concerning questions concerning alcohol, for example, he indicated that a constitutional council would decide later. Christians and liberals demonstrate freedom from religious rules, not because they expect freedom, but because they fear the direction Sharaa is taking the country. Much of the diplomatic drive to achieve moderation has less to do with a sincere conversion of al-Qaeda's core ideology than with a desire to become the conduit for billions of dollars in international funds for reconstruction.

As Turkish nationalists celebrate Erdogan as he promotes terrorism against Israel, threatens genocide against Syria's Kurds, and begins to reconstitute the old parts of the Ottoman Empire, they may soon realize that Turkey's victory in Syria is Pyrrhic. Whenever regimes promote Islamist extremism as a foreign policy tool or solely for export purposes, they invariably face backlash.

A history lesson

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the real power behind the state, began promoting Islamist extremism in 1971, after East Pakistan seceded to form Bangladesh.

The logic was simple: Pakistan was an ethnic puzzle made up of Pashtuns, Punjabis, Balochs, Sindhis, among others, and the Bengalis were not the only dissatisfied minority. The Pashtuns, for example, had long sought to reunify Afghanistan and Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (since renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) after the British divided the two regions with the Durand Line in 1893, while They were still colonial masters of India. The ISI believed that if they could substitute Islam for ethnicity as the primary source of identity, they could unite their fissiparous country.

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the ISI exploited the Pakistani gateway to landlocked Afghanistan to channel aid only to groups that embraced Islamism, thereby ensuring that more Afghan groups traditional people starve to death for lack of funds and supplies in just a few months; The result was a permanent transformation of the Afghan landscape, such that only Islamist groups survived, whether traditional groups associated with the Northern Alliance or, after 1994, the Taliban.

Pakistani officials rejoiced when the Taliban triumphed over U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, leaving Afghanistan entirely under Islamist rule for the first time. ISI sponsorship of Kashmiri terrorists, and then the Taliban, however, enabled Islamist infiltration that slowly radicalized many Pakistanis against their own, more secular, government. When Pakistani diplomats claim that Pakistan suffered a lot during the war on terror because of terrorism propagated by the Pakistani Taliban, they are telling the truth; they simply forget that the cynicism of the Pakistani government is responsible for this dynamic.

The prognosis for Pakistan only worsens as the Taliban in Afghanistan now turn their attention to Pakistan, where they are planning an offensive to end the reign of whiskey-suited jihadists who profess Islam while drinking alcohol. alcohol at the Islamabad club, somehow believing that they can promote the most radical interpretations of Islam, but then circumvent its prescriptions. Expect tens of thousands more Pakistanis to die as extremists turn their guns on their countrymen, starting with religious minorities before moving on to those who simply desire a more liberal way of life.

Saudi Arabia is proof B of the danger of Islamist reaction. The Kingdom has long used its oil wealth to finance a network of Salafist mosques from Berlin to Brunei and from Cape Town to Copenhagen. Even after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Saudi authorities paid lip service to stopping the financing of terrorism. Only after extremists began attacking Saudi officials in the Kingdom itself did the country's monarchy become serious.

Syria is the latest example of how export-driven Islamism is turning against its sponsor. New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman once described Syrian President Hafez al-Assad's bloody 1982 crackdown on Sunni Islamists in Hama as Hama's rules. The concept was simple: secularists could maintain power with overwhelming force against the Islamists. However, as usual, Friedman's view was superficial. Assad didn't just defeat the Islamists; he co-opted them. He allowed the continuation of their jihadism on the condition that they direct their violence outside Syria. A quarter of a century later, the nominally secular state of Bashar Assad, Hafez's son, has become the underground railroad for suicide bombers seeking to unleash Islamist chaos in Iraq. However, when outrage erupted in 2011, Islamists once again turned their guns on the Syrian regime itself, with devastating consequences.

What happens next?

Turkey will be the next epicenter of the Islamist blowback. The Turkish blowback could be as destructive for society as that experienced by Pakistan and Syria. First, Turkey has enabled, if not directly supported, the Islamic State. These radicals are contained in al-Hol, but they have already indoctrinated a new generation. Turkey has already experienced Islamic State Limited backlash As some activists have not understood the message, they should ignore Turkey in choosing their targets. It is conceivable that Islamic State terrorists, if released, could wreak havoc in Türkiye, including its Western-looking tourist areas.

Syria is only fueling the inevitable fire. HTS is largely a Turkish creation. It may claim to be entirely Syrian, but even that does not protect Turkey since the country is home to several million Syrians, few of whom plan to return to Syria proper. As Syria adopts the governance of a reformed al-Qaeda group, its religious prescriptions will spread to Turks via television, radio and commerce; the days of Turkish secularism are over, even Turkish diplomats in Western capitals or traders in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul want to maintain the illusion. If it becomes acceptable, for example, for HTS to kill heterodox Alawites in Syria, why wouldn't the same thing happen to Alevis in Turkey proper? And if unveiled women can have acid thrown in their faces in Aleppo or Idlib, why not in Ankara or Istanbul?

Sharaas' comments on the legality of alcohol were unnecessary if he was prepared to accept it. Syria's future will likely be that of the Taliban, and those who sell or consume alcohol will face punishment from the radicals, or even the government. Why should such extremists treat Turkey any differently, especially since Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, the father of modern Turkey, was an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis of the liver?

Atatrk promoted the slogan “Peace at home, peace in the world”. Due to Erdogan's sponsorship of extremist Sunni Islamism on its borders, Turkey will have neither. The Turks must be prepared. The ensuing Islamist insurgency will take place along the Bosphorus and on the shores of the Mediterranean.

About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran and pre- and post-war Yemen and Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught at-sea courses on conflict, culture and terrorism in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East to deployed U.S. Navy and Marine Corps units. Dr. Rubin is the author, co-author, and co-editor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shia politics. The opinions of the authors are their own.