MESOP NEWS : PROFESSOR MICHAEL GUNTER (USA) – INTERVIEW WITH IRANIAN BASED “KURDPRESS AGENCY”

3 Nov 2016 – MESOP  – Turkey better to make agreement with Syrian Kurds: Prof. Michael Gunter tells Kurdpress

Turkey is exaggerating its Kurdish question and the Syrian Kurdish issue and it’s better for Ankara to make an agreement with the Kurds in the two countries, a university professor told Kurdpress in an exclusive interview.Michael Gunter, a political science professor in Tennessee Technological University, believes Russia is seeking a greater role in the regional politics and Turkey would continue its ties with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the north of Iraq and Iran has an important role in the developments in the region.

Kurdpress interviewed the professor in the wake of the recent developments, Mosul operation in particular. What follows is his answers to our questions.

Why did Daesh choose Mosul as the first city and its headquarter in Iraq?

Well, Daesh is a Sunni organization, a radical Sunni organization. The majority in Mosul is Sunni and it seems that Mosul is a more logical place where the population would support Daesh while the majority in Baghdad is Shiite and it would be a more difficult situation for Daesh to control Baghdad.

Did people in Mosul welcome the group at the beginning?

Right, I think at the beginning there was a certain amount of welcoming of the Daesh because Baghdad alienated the Sunnis with its sectarian policies that favors the Shiites so much.

There are operations and the sides, including Iraqi forces and Peshmerga, in the operation are making the situation tough for Daesh. What will be the end of these operations?

Well, we cannot predict it for certain but it seems certain that Daesh is going to be pushed out of Mosul. That’s pretty certain. The problem is that what happens on the next day. All these different groups and the coalition do not agree with each other; so we can end up in a tremendous struggle for the control of Mosul after the Daesh is eliminated.

How will this conflict or dispute be after Daesh is over, with all these sides seeking their own interests?

I think it’s going to be a great problem and we don’t know what’s going to happen. Hopefully a common sense would prevail and there will be an amount of wiliness to compromise and cooperate with each other for the good of everybody. But I don’t know, we are just going to wait and see what happens afterwards as again I think that there is a strong potential for a complete chaos and even renewed fighting among all these different groups.

Why Mosul is so important for the U.S., Turkey, Kurds in the north of Iraq and Baghdad in the south?

Let’s start with history. Mosul has been a very important station along the Silk Road for trade and political control of the larger area around there. We can even go back in the history. Iranian Shah tried to capture it in a major battle back, I think in the 1720s, and Mosul has always been in a very important position in the Middle East. So who controls Mosul controls a lot of the surrounding area. For Turkey it is extremely important because nobody seems to be looking out for the interests of Sunnis and the U.S. in busy supporting Baghdad which basically means supporting the Shia. Who is supporting the Sunnis, Turkey is supporting the Sunnis because the Shias are supported by the U.S. and Iran. How about the Kurds? Kurds are interested in Mosul, to some extend, because of the disputed territories between KRG and Baghdad. Whoever controls Mosul has a lot of opportunities to control the disputed territories around Kirkuk. The U.S. finds it important to control Mosul because the United States wants to keep Iraq in the fight and Mosul is supposedly the second or third largest city in Iraq.

You mean the U.S. favors Baghdad to take over the control of the city?

Yes. I think the U.S. has always realized that the Sunnis have to be treated fairly and that’s really the problem how Daesh arose in the first place. The Sunnis were not treated fairly by the Shia. Of course you cannot understand that the Sunnis always mistreated the Shia. It is such an ancient problem between the Sunnis and the Shia and it seems to be very difficult or even impossible for Iraq to get the two sides to agree. All I can say is that historically the Sunni and Shia have often been able to work together. So maybe we can find some historical basis to get the two sides together again.

What stance the U.S. will take in face of Turkey in Mosul?

Turkey does not support Baghdad. As you know Baghdad is very upset about Turkey even been involved at all these where Turkey feels that he has a historical role to play in defending the Sunni interest here. The U.S. and Turkey have had a lot of difficulties in the recent months or even the last few years about all this. But in the end Turkey is a NATO ally, the United States’ the only NATO ally in the Middle East and the U.S. considers Turkey so very important, so in the end I think the U.S. is certainly going to at least partially support Turkey.

What about the Kurds. How will the U.S. deal with the Kurds in the north in the wake of the situation right now in Mosul and the operations?

You are indentifying a very complicated problem for the U.S. because the U.S. supports the KRG too. The U.S. supports all these different groups that are potentially antagonistic to each other; Baghdad, the KRG, Turkey, the Sunnis, the Shia. The U.S. is like to have all these to cooperate and work together and this of course is the ultimate problem for their not working together very well and the U.S. has a huge problem here.

Turkey seems to be supporting Kurds in the north of Iraq, will this support end after Daesh is over?

Turkey has been supporting the Iraqi Kurds since about 2007 or 2008, long before Daesh was created. Turkey supports the Iraqi Kurds for a number of reasons and the main reason is oil and in fact Turkey needs a buffer, something on its southern border in Iraq to buffer Turkey against all the instability in the south. And Turkey has finally overcame its irrational fear of the Kurds, at least the Iraqi Kurds, and seems that cooperating with Iraqi Kurds can be a great benefit to Turkey both economically and politically. So this alliance has been going on for almost 10 years and will be strengthened by cooperation against Daesh and it will continue in the future.

Turkey is fighting Kurds in the north of Syria and has imposed a tough situation in the mostly Kurdish south and the southeast of its country but has good ties with Kurds in the north of Iraq. How will it handle this situation?

As you know Kurds are notoriously divided among themselves and for the past several years one of the greatest divisions among the Kurds are the Iraqi Kurds on the one hand, KDP specifically, and on the other hand the PKK and its ally, the PUK, and so these are two different groups of Kurds and Turkey supports the KDP because the KDP is more conservative and pro-Turkish. But Turkey is literally against the PKK and PUK which Turkey sees as a terrorist enemy trying to disembowel Turkey’s territorial integrity; so at the first glance its sounds crazy why does Turkey support the Iraqi Kurds in fight against the PKK but that’s the reason. I have always argued that in the long run Turkey should make an agreement with the PKK and become the protector of the Turkish and Syrian Kurds just it already is the protector of the Iraqi Kurds and the Kurds look up to Turkey but apparently this is too much for Turkey to have a deal with the PKK and Syrian Kurds.

There are countries involved in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, among them Russia. What is the role of the country there?

Well, Russia is trying to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union and is doing a pretty good job of it. So one reason Russia is involved in all these is that it’s seeking to establish a greater role for itself in the regional and world politics after the fall of the Soviet Union.

One thing else we should say is that Russia has a tremendous Islamic problem itself and the Russians see their first line of defense against this Islamic problem of fighting against the Islamic extremists in Syria rather than waiting for it to come to Russia itself. So, I think, one major reason Russia is in Syria is preempt the Islamic extremists.

The other reason Russia is there is to protect its ally, Syria, the only ally Russia has in the Middle East. Also I think another reason that Russia is in Syria is to divert attention away from the Crimean peninsula which Russia seized a couple of years ago and has made the U.S. and the EU very angry of Russia. So to take the heed of Crimean peninsula issue and Ukraine, Russia is in Syria too. And very specifically the only warm water port the Russians have in the world is Tartus in Syria which has to be defended.

Turkey is against the Kurds in the north of Syria while the U.S. supports them as one of the most important allies in fighting against Daesh. What the policy will the U.S. follow in the future in relation with Kurds in Syria?

The U.S. is trying to have cooperation among its different allies who seem to hate each other and in this case the two allies are the PYD and Turkey. They are both allies of the U.S. and they both hate each other. Frankly I think Turkey is exaggerating the problem here. The PYD does not hate Turkey. I personally know Salih Muslim for several years. I have spoken with him in a number of cases and I do not think he bares ill-will for Turkey. He would like to cooperate with Turkey in a way that would be fair to both the Syrian Kurds and to Turkey. I think Turkey exaggerates the threat of the Syrian Kurds. Turkey should try to find some type of modus vivendi, some type of cooperation, with the Syrian Kurds and  the Syrian Kurds would be willing to do that. But right now Turkey sees the Syrian Kurds as a model enemy and just another extension of the PKK which is trying to form a PKK-state on Turkey’s southern border which would destabilize Turkey.

What will Turkey do in the future in the wake the arrests of Diyarbakir mayors and Erdogan’s talking about returning death penalty to the constitution?

Well, Turkey is obviously in northern Syria now and the purpose of Turkey in northern Syria is, number one, to reduce the influence of the PYD and certainly keep it from unifying with Syrian third canton to the west and keep the PYD east of the Euphrates River. The second goal of Turkey is to drive south and help eliminate Daesh from Raqqa and the thirst goal of Turkey is to support its jihadist allies, moderate jihadist allies, if we can use the term modern and jihadist, but the moderate jihadist allies of Turkey who are still besieging or involved in a fighting in Aleppo and of course this gets Turkey into direct confrontation with Russia because Russia certainly wants to help Assad regain control of Aleppo where the Turkish allies are currently involved. I think Turkey is making a mistake getting involved in Syria because there are so many problems in Syria, but on the other hand I understand that Turkey is bordering all these and Erdogan is said is better to take the fight to Daesh rather than waiting for Daesh to attack Turkey. So it’s a tremendous problem to Turkey too.

What the situation will be in the future in Syria, what will happen to the country?

That’s a good question and only time will tell. But my belief, based on what has happened, is that Syria is irreversibly broken. It does not exist anymore except in the mind of U.S. State Department which would like to have a unified Syria for a reason for over the last time. The U.S. thinks that breaking up any states in the Middle East leads to instability and problems that have threatened the U.S. so the U.S. is against the breaking up of Syria. That trouble with that is that Syria is already broken up and it would be much better to go with the flow and try to work what’s happened in Syria. What’s happened in Syria is that several different portions are well on their way to be either independent or largely autonomous in a decentralized Syrian confederation which I think is really in the long run impossible. But we have obviously a second Kurdish state. This is ironic for years and years we have no Kurdish state but now we really have two Kurdish states, the KRG and Rojava. Rojava will certainly remain in Syria. it appears now that Assad will remain, at least, in the short run but in a much truncated Alawite State centered around traditional Alawite areas in the northwest of Syria plus Damascus and then various jihadist groups will also play a role in the future of Syria. So, it is a very chaotic situation in Syria. And the Syria that we knew in the past since the Sykes–Picot Agreement 100 years ago no longer exists.

What about the situation in Iraq in the future?

Same thing. Well, there is more order in Iraq. In Syria it’s a pretty chaotic situation. It is hard really to even see where the different new state-let borders are. But in Iraq we have three things. We have the Baghdad government which is largely the Shia. We have the Kurdish government which itself has a lot of problems right now because of the economic problems and the divisions between the PUK and the KDP, but the Kurds are the second element. And the third element was Daesh, a radical Sunni group, and now the Daesh is being eliminated. We primly are going to have some type of a third federal element in northwest of Iraq for the Sunnis centered around Mosul.

What about another element. The presidential election in the U.S. How will the election impact the region?

This will be very important which is going out wait and see who wins the elections in the United States. I thinks it would be much better for Clinton (Hillary Clinton, democratic candidate for U.S 2016 presidential election) to win because she has a much more adopted foreign policy and has a great deal of experience and I think is a more rational careful person who won’t make any horrible quick mistakes, although frankly there is no magical bullet to solve the problems, but I think Clinton is more equipped to solve or at least work with these problems in Iraq and Syria whereas Donald Trump (U.S. presidential election candidate of the conservatives) frankly knows nothing about the situation and would be a danger to make some serious mistake that could lead into a disaster.

Is there anything else that you would like to mention about the situation in the region in the wake of the recent developments and Mosul operation?

We did not talk about Iran and Iran certainly has played a background role here. Possibly we have not talked too much about Iran because Iran is more interested in the eastern part of Iraq and we talked about the western part of Iraq, around Mosul. However Iran is very involved in Syria, so as Daesh is pushed into Syria now and who knows may be we may have a climactic battle around Raqqa after our great battle for Mosul. This will certainly involve Iran. So I think we are going to hear more from Iran and of course Iran supports Baghdad and ultimately Baghdad is supposed to be the number one actor in trying to seize Mosul. So, even though we have not heard much about Iran, I think we are going to hear more from Iran and we are to be cognizant that Iran is plying a very important role here. Of course Iran opposes the U.S., Iran opposes Turkey; Iran is a very important actor at all this.

Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee where he teaches courses on international relations, international organizations, international law, American foreign policy, European politics, and American politics, among others. He also is the Secretary-General of the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) headquartered in Brussels.

Interview: Parviz Lotfi