



By Vestnik Kavkaza

The Middle East has always been a center of political, religious, and inter-ethnic problems. Huge energy resources attract the interests of key players of the global and regional politics. And when the interests clash, it causes conflicts. The most acute issues today are the Syrian crisis, the protests in Turkey, and the Kurdish problem. Russian experts give their own appraisals to the developments in the region.

Concerning the Syrian conflict, today the most important problem is preparation for the conference Geneva-2 which can significantly encourage settlement of the conflict. According to Fyodor Shelov-Kovedyaev, director of the Russian Public Policy Center, the peaceful conference on Syria can also influence supplies of the Russian missile systems S-300 to Syria. He thinks that after the conference “a fresh consignment of these weapons on which there was an agreement, on which there is actually a contract which was signed a long time ago, will be supplied to Syria.”

“Israel, of course, will not tolerate this in any case, because our systems in some ways are better than the Patriot systems in service in Israel. For Israel it will be a challenge to ensure its security. Therefore it is impossible to exclude that when such supplies will be carried out, or the day before it, Israel will strike at Syrian targets, as it has already done this. Iran, as we remember, stated after the first strike that, if it happens again, the Iranian armed forces will act on the side of the Syrian regular forces, i.e. will act as an armed formation in support of Bashar al-Assad,” Fyodor Shelov-Kovedyaev predicts.

Moreover, the expert has the impression that a large-scale international conflict involving the number of different parties is not excluded and is afraid of Russia’s intensive participation in the conflict.

The other Russian expert Kirill Vertyayev sees in the events happening in Syria negative influence on a different regional power because if asplit of the country between Sunnis and Alawites occurred, it would lead to escalation of the situation in Turkey where the Alawite part is quite influential in the political sphere and among the Turkish population.

“In this context, the Turkish scenario that is happening before our very eyes, the scenario of an internal political struggle, in many ways will have a beneficial impact on the Kurdish factor,” Vertyaev believes. “The fact is that the political regime that has existed in the country since 2002, the Islamist political regime, is not an usurpation of power, this is a power that came to the country in a democratic election, but that in some way exceeded the trust of the population, which resulted in the mass protests that are taking place in Turkey. Tellingly, the Turks and the Kurds, in opposition to the current Islamist regime, are now in Turkey on the same side. This situation is in many ways important, because the Kurdish factor should not get involved in the conflict, or be used as a bargaining chip in the current political standoff in Turkey.”

It is well-known that in March the leader of PKK Abdullah Ocalan and the official leadership of Turkey agreed on final peacemaking between Ankara and the Kurds. According to Vertyaev, “Since the de facto truce was announced, now the Kurds of Turkey and the Kurds of Iraq are interested in seeing that the situation does not get out of control, and these internal political conflicts that are happening now in Turkey do not spread to the ethnic sphere.”

As for the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan, Vertyaev thinks that the political situation around Iraqi Kurdistan will be determined by the significant impact of the fact that in Turkey there is now a gradual withdrawal of the Kurdistan Workers Party fighters who are stationed in the Kandil Mountains, which are de jure in the territory of Iraq.

“What is now happening as a result of the peace process, the negotiation process in Turkey, will, of course, affect the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Because, sooner or later, we will have to determine the status of the armed men who will be in the Kandil Mountains.

The Turkish side during the conduct of the negotiations insisted that the first condition for an agreement between Ankara and Öcalan is that the Kurdish rebels should lay down their arms. But by definition, from the point of view of political science, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party are guerrillas who protect their specific culture, and, as a result of this, it is believed, they cannot lay down their arms, because it would mean defeat. So the fragile peace process, which began in Turkey, will largely depend on the position of Iraqi Kurdistan, the consistency of leadership on this issue and an understanding of the need to preserve the delicate balance that now exists in Iraqi Kurdistan with all those revolutionary changes taking place in the whole of the Middle East,” the expert concludes.