Stepping up Sanctions: Arab and Turkish Pressures on Syria

Syn­op­sis
Pres­sure is mount­ing on Turkey to lead a poten­tial mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion to stop the blood­let­ting in Syr­ia. How­ev­er, sanc­tions by Arab states and Turkey on the regime of Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad could become an effec­tive pol­i­cy tool.

Com­men­tary

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (MB) is look­ing to Turkey rather than the Unit­ed States and Europe to inter­vene mil­i­tar­i­ly to stop the Assad regime’s vio­lent sup­pres­sion of a nine-month-old rebel­lion. In meet­ings with Turk­ish offi­cials, the leader of the MB, Moham­mad Riad Shak­fa, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Syr­i­an Nation­al Coun­cil have urged Turkey to enforce a no-fly zone above Syr­ia and, if mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion becomes unavoid­able, they want Turkey to take the lead. 

Turkey is already pro­vid­ing tac­it sup­port to the rebel Syr­i­an Free Army, which has a camp on the Turk­ish side of the bor­der and in recent days has staged more dead­ly attacks on Syr­i­an mil­i­tary tar­gets. Turkey has also allowed the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion to use Istan­bul as a base. 

Turk­ish Dilem­ma

Nonethe­less, despite Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increas­ing­ly emo­tion­al denun­ci­a­tions of the Assad regime, Ankara is find­ing it dif­fi­cult to step up the pres­sure on Syr­ia with­out risk­ing Turk­ish inter­ests in the short term. Turkey’s reluc­tance so far to impose sanc­tions of its own when the Arab League is about to step up to the plate, risks its los­ing the moral high ground it achieved in part by tak­ing the lead in con­demn­ing the Syr­i­an crack­down and demand­ing that Israel lift its block­ade of the Gaza Strip. 

Erdo­gan has so far been long on rhetoric and short on actions, part­ly because of dif­fer­ences between the gov­ern­ment and the mil­i­tary. While Erdo­gan describes Syria’s cri­sis as Turkey’s “inter­nal prob­lem”, army chief of staff Gen­er­al Necdet Ozel recent­ly insist­ed that it was “pri­mar­i­ly the inter­nal prob­lem of that coun­try”. As a result, Erdo­gan, in addi­tion to hold­ing back on sanc­tions and drop­ping plans to cre­ate a human­i­tar­i­an buffer zone on the Turk­ish-Syr­i­an bor­der, has yet to ful­fill his promise to vis­it camps for Syr­i­an refugees in east­ern Turkey. 

Turk­ish offi­cials fear that impos­ing sanc­tions, let alone overt mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, could open Pandora’s Box with Syr­ia and its ally Iran; Tehran could be pushed to increase its sup­port for the Turk­ish Kur­dish Work­ers’ Par­ty (PKK) that has already stepped up its attacks on mil­i­tary tar­gets in south­east­ern Turkey. In return, Turkey would have to step up its retal­i­a­tion against PKK bases in north­ern Iraq and sup­port unrest in some of Iran’s more restive provinces such as East­ern Azer­bai­jan whose major­i­ty Tur­kic pop­u­la­tion resents Per­sian rule. All in all, the cri­sis in Syr­ia would risk becom­ing a region­al conflagration. 

The Arab League’s new assertive­ness in Syr­ia offers Turkey a way out of its dilem­ma and could help increase the pain lev­el of sanc­tions to a degree that may bring Assad to the nego­ti­at­ing table. The Syr­i­an leader has so far reject­ed Arab calls for a halt to the vio­lence and has shown dis­dain for the League’s plan to impose sanc­tions of its own and tak­ing Syr­ia to the Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Council. 

Wors­en­ing econ­o­my

Nonethe­less, Arab and Turk­ish sanc­tions would boost those already enforced by the US and Europe on Syria’s bank­ing and oil sec­tor; halt imports of non-oil prod­ucts from Syr­ia, which con­sti­tute the bulk of the country’s exports; shut down one of Syria’s last links to the inter­na­tion­al bank­ing net­work; and pre­vent its gov­ern­ment and busi­ness­es from open­ing let­ters of credit. 

Oil pro­duc­tion is drop­ping as Syr­ia finds it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to find buy­ers for its 140,000 bar­rels of crude oil per day and has been unable to pay oil majors Shell and Total for their pro­duc­tion. As a result, petro­le­um prod­ucts such as diesel for heat­ing are becom­ing scarce and Syr­ia increas­ing­ly can­not foot its bill for imports. Syria’s state-owned oil com­pa­ny Sytrol last week can­celled a ten­der for the sale of 50,000 tonnes of fuel because of a lack of buy­ers. Swiss refin­er Petro­plus announced that it had replaced Syr­i­an oil with Iraqi prod­uct. Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate invest­ment more­over has come to a halt, tourism has evap­o­rat­ed, indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion is down, agri­cul­ture is imped­ed by mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and unem­ploy­ment has jumped to 25 per cent. 

Chi­na has already expressed sup­port for the Arab League’s pres­sure on Syr­ia. Arab and Turk­ish sanc­tions would make it more dif­fi­cult for Rus­sia and India in par­tic­u­lar as well as West­ern com­pa­nies that sup­ply and main­tain Inter­net sur­veil­lance sys­tems in Syr­ia to spoil the game. The sanc­tions may not be enough for the regime to crum­ble, but they would be suf­fi­cient to force it to look for a polit­i­cal rather than a mil­i­tary solu­tion that could drag the region into a war. 

More than sym­bol­ic act

To be sure, mak­ing Turk­ish and, even more so, Arab sanc­tions stick could be eas­i­er said than done. Banks in Lebanon, the pil­lars of the Lebanese econ­o­my, are like­ly to be reluc­tant to apply the sanc­tions, argu­ing that they would have to vio­late the country’s strin­gent pri­va­cy laws. The gov­ern­ment is unlike­ly to want to rock either its eco­nom­ic boat or rela­tions with its big broth­er neighbour. 

Nev­er­the­less, the chances of Syr­ia becom­ing a rare case where sanc­tions work are enhanced by the fact that the planned sanc­tions enjoy the sup­port of sig­nif­i­cant parts of the pop­u­la­tion. They have, how­ev­er, so far failed to cre­ate a sense of uni­ty against a com­mon ene­my that is respon­si­ble for people’s mis­ery. In fact, it is Syr­i­ans opposed to the Assad regime that are demand­ing tougher sanc­tions and tougher actions. For once, tough sanc­tions applied by a major­i­ty of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty could con­sti­tute more than a sym­bol­ic act and avert the risk of a mil­i­tary con­flict that esca­lates into region­al war. 

About The Author:
James M. Dorsey is a senior fel­low at the S. Rajarat­nam School of Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies at Nanyang Tech­no­log­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty in Sin­ga­pore and the author of the blog, The Tur­bu­lent World of Mid­dle East Soc­cer.

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →