ANKARA  (IPS) —
A new week, a new campaign for Ankara’s diplomacy. After a victorious arm-twisting
on Saturday with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to divert the
leadership of the aerial war against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from France
to NATO, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned his attention
to trouble closer to home, Syria.

Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had daily phone
calls during the weekend, and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu followed
up with a teleconference with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Moualem to offer
Turkey’s assistance in the event of a reform process towards a democratic
regime.

The head of Turkish National Intelligence (MIT), Hakan
Fidan, was dispatched on Sunday to Damascus to express his government’s
concerns about spreading social unrest from Daraa, in Syria’s southwest, to
larger cities such as Latakia, a Mediterranean port nearer the Turkish border.

Close to 100 demonstrators have died and hundreds have been
wounded in the clashes with the Syrian security and military forces since the
rallies began two weeks ago.

Domestic problems in Syria are of particular sensitivity to
Turkey. Although the two countries still have open territorial issues, upheaval
in one may result in destabilization in the other. Their 800 km common border
provides safe passage to political activists.

A major concern for Turkey is the Kurdish population in
Syria of 1.4 million, which, in case of collapse of Assad’s regime could
collude with the estimated 15 million or more ethnic Kurds in Turkey, seven
million Iranian Kurds, and six million Northern Iraqi Kurds to claim an
independent state.

In anticipation of such an eventuality, Ankara and Damascus
formed in 2009 a High Level Strategic Cooperation Council (HSCC) and held their
first joint military exercises in April 2010.

Since 1978, Turkey has been in armed conflict with the
Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a separatist organization classified as a
terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the U.S.

The hostilities have caused the death of at least 40,000
Turkish soldiers and gendarmes, PKK guerrillas, and civilians, while the number
of wounded has exceeded 30,000, and that of the missing is estimated at 17,000.

A study in 1998 by Brunswick University in the U.S. reported
that at least three million people had by that time been displaced in south-eastern
Turkey and the area bordering Iraq, for war operational reasons, while 3,000
villages were totally or partially destroyed.

Kurdish autonomy is a sensitive issue in public opinion in
Turkey, Iran and Syria alike, where territorial integrity has ranked at the top
of these countries’ priorities since their respective independence from Western
rule.

The current regimes in Tehran and Damascus are intransigent
on Kurdish freedoms, while Erdogan’s government, in power since 2002, has begun
a dialogue process with the Turkish ethnic Kurds to enable cultural autonomy,
which, after this year’s national elections, might evolve into devolution of
some governance powers to the local administrations.

The main opposition, nationalist parties and the military
are, however, implacable in their hostility to such a perspective.

Turkey’s unease about the Syrian domestic situation is also
influenced by economic and geopolitical concerns. After a long period of cool
relations, with occasional threats of armed confrontation, Assad and Erdogan
have crossed the fence to develop a cosy relationship, building on the
settlement in 1998 of old political disputes.

On the strategic plane, both countries see cooperation as
being instrumental to maintain the geopolitical status quo of Iraq’s
territorial integrity, frustrate Pan-Kurdish aspirations, and to keep Israel’s
and Iran’s testosterone in check.

The Turkish premier, speaking on Monday to journalists,
confirmed he had urged the Syrian president over the weekend to adopt a conciliatory
spirit with his people.

“We advised Mr. Assad that responding to the people’s
years-old demands positively, with a reformist approach, would help Syria
overcome the problems more easily,” said Erdogan. “I did not get a
‘No’ answer,” he commented, adding that he expected reforms to be
announced by Damascus this week.

Syria has a long record of iron-fist governance style, aimed
at securing the survival of the ruling Ba’ath party. Hafez al-Assad, father of
the current president and leader of the coup which installed it in power in
1963, immediately imposed an emergency law, which suspended practically all
civil liberties and is still in force today.

The Ba’ath party, dominated by Allawis, a tolerant religious
Shia Muslem denomination, has been at odds with the Sunni movement in Syria.
Hafez al-Assad in 1982 violently crushed a Sunni Islamist Brotherhood revolt,
killing 20,000 rebels. Tolerance and appetite for power did, obviously, not
coexist.

Amnesty International has repeatedly ranked Syria as the
country with the most repressive laws in the Middle East. In an attempt to calm
spirits, Bashar al-Assad offered last week to amend the emergency law and allow
for new parties to be formed. The gesture was turned down by the demonstrators,
who insist on full democratization of the system.

Turkish business executives and political observers have
been recommending that Erdogan include in his prescription to al-Assad to also
work on reducing corruption, clientelism and cronyism, which are endemic in the
Syrian economy and sources of poverty for the population. They hamper foreign
direct investment from Turkey to Syria.

But Turkey — a majority Sunni state with religious
minorities that were “tamed” by the military in the 20th century —
feels uncomfortable giving lessons to its neighbour, an increasingly important
trading partner.

With ongoing domestic unrest next door, but also in Bahrain,
Jordan, Yemen, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco,
Ankara’s Middle Eastern and Northern African ambitious plans are poised to
return to the drawing board.