Tomb raider, Turkish style

Turkey has raised quite a few eyebrows with its latest foray into foreign affairs. In the early hours of Sunday morning, the Turkish government authorised the army to deploy across the Syrian border, travel through Ayn Al-Arab (Kobani) and gain access to the tomb of Suleyman Shah about 22 miles into Syria. Once there, the soldiers were ordered to relieve the small Turkish garrison guarding the tomb, exhume the remains of Suleyman Shah and relics of religious significance, and then evacuate back to Turkey. The body will be reinterred on another slice of Syrian land, now under the control of the Turkish military, in the next few days.

Suleyman Shah was the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman Gazi, and his burial site in Syria is considered to be a Turkish enclave and thus sovereign Turkish territory. This was agreed in a 1921 treaty with the then French rulers of Syria; the tomb has been moved at least twice since then. Due to its connection with the Ottoman Empire, it is no surprise that Suleyman Shah’s tomb is a place of significance to the Turks. It has been at increased risk from ISIS, which has a track record of blowing up shrines, mosques and graves. With elections coming up in Turkey, this decision was clearly made to limit domestic political fallout should this site of historical and ancestral significance to Turks be desecrated or destroyed by the militant group; if that happened, the Turkish government, which is seeking a fourth consecutive term at the country’s helm, would be blamed.

Domestically, leaders of both of the main Turkish opposition parties opposed this raid, but one suspects that was only because they are prone to opposing anything that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) does. Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the ultranationalist far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), claimed that the AKP leadership had abandoned sacred Turkish soil, and insulted Turkish traditions and the nation. Similarly, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the aggressively secular and anti-Islam Republican People’s Party (CHP), said that Turkey had fled from terrorists rather than fighting them (referring to ISIS, of course). It is worth noting that the CHP was established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic and the man who began a series of sweeping reforms in the 1920s to Westernise Turkey and excise any form of active Islamic practice from his new republic. With AKP viewed by some as being an Islamist party, this might make clear why the CHP leader would be against almost anything the current government says or does, perceiving it to be a threat to Atatürk’s vision.

Internationally, not much has been said apart from some indignant squawks from the embattled Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad, who complained that although the Turkish government had informed Damascus about the operation in advance, Turkey violated Syrian sovereignty by not waiting for Assad to give his permission. Such rhetoric was, perhaps predictably, echoed by Iran which supports Assad’s war against the Syrian people. Iran claimed that Turkey’s military operation inside Syria had “no justification“. Of course, this was said with not a hint of irony, despite the depth of Iran’s own military involvement in Syria, from the deployment of its soldiers to sectarian Shia militias from Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and even beyond.

This was quite a small operation in military terms, but politically it was big. Turkey deployed a well-equipped and well-manned battalion of just under 600 men, which included an armoured convoy of 100 vehicles, including 39 tanks. To put that into perspective, a small and nimble force with that kind of firepower and mobility, and with the Turkish Air Force on standby just across the border, could wreak some serious havoc on bands of terrorists nearby, whether those terrorists are Kurdish fighters associated with the PKK and their Syrian YPG counterparts, state-sponsored terrorists from the Syrian army and its associated militias, or even ISIS.

However, combat operations were clearly never the intent behind this move. What some may find strange, especially international observers who will not be voting in the upcoming Turkish elections, is how Turkey was willing to commit troops unilaterally to protect a dead man’s remains, but is not willing to deploy troops to protect the living. No one should ever seek to belittle the praiseworthy efforts of the Turkish people and government in taking in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, providing them with food, healthcare and safety, not to mention a haven for the Syrian opposition groups to be politically active. In this regard, Turkey is peerless in its contributions, and should be aided by the international community rather than expected to shoulder the burden almost single-handedly. That being said, if Turkey had the courage to take the political and military decision to deploy such a force into Syria for a long dead person, one would not be blamed for wondering, “But what about those still alive who are trapped and suffering untold horrors in Syria?”

Let us also not forget that the Turkish government even discussed the possibility of conducting a false flag operation involving the Suleyman Shah tomb; this was revealed in leaked recordings last year. In the leak, the then foreign minister and current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu met with the former chief of MIT (Turkish intelligence) and some military generals, who discussed intervening in Syria under the pretext of Turkish land being attacked. The land that was to be “attacked” by Turkish agents was the Suleyman Shah tomb; even incumbent President Erdoğan said in a speech that an attack on the tomb would be considered an attack on Turkish territory “and NATO land”. Turkey had already passed up on the opportunity to intervene when two of its air force pilots were shot down and killed by Syrian anti-aircraft fire in 2012, and so with the crisis worsening, they were perhaps mulling over the options for another opportunity. If the leaked recordings did not scupper that idea altogether, removing the body of Suleyman Shah completely certainly did.

So what does that signify? It would appear that Turkey, although capable of limited unilateral moves, is removing any excuse for it to be drawn directly into the Syrian quagmire. Whilst the 15th Century Muslim ruler Sultan Mehmet II moved warships overland in order to establish his dominion over Constantinople militarily, the current Turkish leadership is content to move a long-dead body overland in order to avoid a fight it would rather not get into.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.