It’s "not possible" to say with any degree of certainty where Turkey’s allegiance lies in the fight with the Islamic State (ISIS), former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman said Monday on "America’s Forum" on
Newsmax TV.
"President Obama spoke with President Erdogan of Turkey by phone late last week," Edelman said. "Vice President Biden met with him in New York and had a lengthy discussion. We've had the secretary of state, the secretary of defense both in Turkey within the last couple of weeks, but although the president of Turkey has said Turkey will participate in the coalition, it's not clear at all what if anything they are really willing to do."
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Turkey has been coy both within the region and with the U.S. policy for at least the last decade, Edelman explained, because the Turkish regime is comprised of conservative Islamists.
"I am glad to say that the prime minister has now denounced ISIS for its barbarity, but fundamentally they are still very sympathetic to the Sunni uprising that is taking place in Syria and therefore they want to be extremely careful," he said.
There exists a great deal of mystery about the
release of 49 Turkish hostages from Mosul, he added. The hostages were taken captive by the Islamic State in June when the terror group seized the city while playing out its mission to take over portions of Iraq and Syria.
"Whether there was a trade of prisoners, whether there were some assurances provided offline by the Turkish government to ISIL about its participation with the coalition against ISIL, we just don't know and the issue is extremely sensitive in Turkey because of the large refugee population just in the last week or so, there'd been 150,000 Kurdish refugees floating into Turkey, around the city of Kobani, and this is a very sensitive domestic issue for the government in Turkey," Edelman said.
ISIS released the Turkish hostages while it opted to behead two American journalists along with a British aid worker as well as a French hiker.
Turkey’s reticence to come out strongly with the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS may stem from a fear of empowering Syrian Kurds or providing them greater autonomy, something that could spread across the border to Turkey, according to Edelman.
"They're rooted in the reality that Turkey had in the 1980s and '90s, a very, very painful, costly and bloody Kurdish insurgency in the southeast of the country that cost over 20,000 lives, so it's rooted in that reality," he said. "Currently, however though the government of Turkey has extremely good relations with Kurdistan regional government in Iraq and has seemed to make its peace with the Kurds in Iraq."
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan presides over a "divided society," Edelman said, and is a "deeply controversial, increasingly authoritarian" figure.
"A lot of Turks blame him for having brought many of the consequences of refugee flow into Turkey, which is well over a million now," he said. "The cost that that imposes on Turkey so he has to tread a little bit carefully on this issue. It's also one of the few issues on which the press feels safe in criticizing him."
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