3 Future prospects for the peace process

Attitude of regional players

18.The conflict in Syria has drawn in the key regional powers: Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran. Writing in March 2015, Syria analyst Abdulrahman al-Masri argued:

The conflict in Syria is a multi-proxy war in which international, competing interests carry out their battles in Syria, demolishing the country’s hope of establishing a democratic state free of dictatorship.

This conflict is plainly of vastly greater relative national interest to these powers than the west.

19.In his oral evidence, Chris Phillips, Associate Fellow at Chatham House, argued that the UK has limited leverage over the combatants and should instead focus on influencing its regional allies:

We need to be realistic about how much leverage the UK and the west in general has over the situation. If you are looking specifically at the Syrian civil war, effectively you have four actors: the regime, ISIS, the Kurds and the various rebel groups. Within that, the west’s leverage extends to some of the rebel groups and, to an extent now, to the leading Kurdish groups, but is only limited. [ … ] the role of the western actors and the UK needs to be much more nuanced in leveraging the pressure it has over its key allies, and not just Saudi Arabia, by the way, but Turkey. [ … ] A lot of UK diplomatic pressure should be on its allies in Turkey to get more involved in the fight against ISIS and, of course, to play a more constructive role in the Syrian peace talks.

20.Saudi Arabia and Iran had a major diplomatic fallout in January 2016, which appeared as though it might derail the Syrian peace process. On 2 January, Saudi Arabia executed the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, along with 46 others, for terror offences. This led to large-scale protests in Shia-dominated Iran, where Sheikh Nimr’s execution was seen as a sectarian act by the Sunni regime in Saudi Arabia. In the early hours of 3 January, the Saudi Embassy in Tehran was set on fire. In response, Saudi Arabia broke off all diplomatic relations with Iran on 4 January.

21.On its visit to the region in November 2015, the Committee heard the diametrically opposed parallel narratives in Tehran and Riyadh, with each blaming the other as the source of the region’s instability, constituting a significant obstacle to necessary co-operation. A functioning working relationship between the three key regional powers, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, is essential to resolving this and no doubt many future crises and to providing a source of understanding to deliver regional stability. We recommend that the FCO with our allies does all it can to sponsor working-level engagement between Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey at Political Director level and below, so that a practical dialogue is developed between these key regional powers.

Turkey

22.The Turkish government has fought a lengthy insurgency within its own borders, principally with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and had agreed a hard-won ceasefire in 2013. However, Turkey resumed military repression in July 2015 following the deaths of two police officers in attacks by supporters of the PKK who were enraged by Turkey’s apparent complicity in a bomb massacre against Kurds claimed by ISIL in Suruc.

23.Reliable attribution for the recent upsurge in terrorist attacks in Turkey is difficult. This is because at least two groups, ISIL and the PKK, have been blamed for separate attacks. This confusion has not been helped by the speed with which sections of the Turkish government have sought to attribute blame, sometimes hours after the attacks themselves, in advance of reliable claims of responsibility being made.

24.The Turkish Government’s motive for resuming military repression appears to have been electoral, following the governing AKP’s loss of a majority government at the June 2015 election. Distressingly, this disgraceful policy, delivered at the reported cost of at least 3,000 dead in the reignited insurgency, worked, with the AKP recovering its majority at the November 2015 election at the apparent expense of the nationalist MHK party. Turkey has long argued that the Democratic Union Party or PYD (Syria’s main Kurdish party) is allied to both the PKK and the Assad regime. In the latter case the High Negotiations Committee agrees. However the PYD, and the associated People’s Protection Units or YPG militia, have proved effective allies in the fight against ISIL. The Syrian Kurds have been supported and equipped by the US. Nevertheless, in February, with talks on the brink, Turkey conducted artillery barrages and airstrikes on YPG forces in northern Syria.

25.President Erdoğan’s increasingly shameful domestic priorities and repressive policies have driven the PYD (Syria’s main Kurdish party/grouping) into the arms of the Syrian regime and Russia. Since Syrian Kurdish forces have until now been the most effective Syrian party in combating ISIL on the ground, this is working directly against shared international priorities. The UK must press Turkey to refrain from taking any further action against YPG forces and play a constructive role towards shared objectives in the defeat of ISIL. It is not acceptable for the UK, in return for Turkish co-operation on EU migration priorities as per the deal agreed on 18 March, to turn a blind eye towards the brutal Turkish government suppression of legitimate Kurdish aspirations at home and in neighbouring states, which is almost certainly illegal and involves a grossly disproportionate use of force.

26.The Committee is concerned that the EU’s relations with Turkey are being dominated by the issue of refugees, one of the results of the conflict, while avoiding the more difficult issues of Turkey’s direct role in the conflict. The UK should spearhead raising with Turkey their behaviour on the Kurdish issue, their support for Islamist groups, playing a destructive role overall in the political process and the suppression of internal dissent and freedom of speech. The UK also needs to encourage its European allies in lobbying Turkey in order to put the full weight of the European Union behind efforts to address both the consequences and the causes of the conflict. We welcome Donald Tusk’s comments about press freedoms in Turkey but we do not consider that they begin to go far enough in properly addressing the Committee’s concerns.

Implications for fight against ISIL

27.As well as calling for peace talks, the ISSG’s original Statement from November 2015 called for a transitional government to be established, and a timetable to be agreed for drafting a new constitution, within six months. It also called for elections to take place in Syria within eighteen months. In her oral evidence Lina Khatib, Senior Research Associate at the Arab Reform Initiative, suggested that this timetable was over-optimistic:

I don’t think that we can hope for a constitution to be written in six months. All we can hope for realistically is that this can be the start of a process that will probably take a lot longer than we hope and that will eventually lead to the conflict ending. This is the best we can hope for. Anything more concrete than that in terms of the constitution is too premature.

Evidence we have taken in the course of our Libya inquiry offers cautionary tales about the consequences of a rush to elections.

28.In his response to our previous report on Syria, the Prime Minister appeared to suggest that the Syrian Government and opposition forces would be unable to focus their attentions on ISIL until agreement was reached on a political transition:

In the medium-term, we will work through the political negotiations towards a ceasefire between the Syrian armed forces and moderate opposition, which would create the conditions to allow both sides to focus their military efforts on ISIL. In such circumstances, ground taken from ISIL in Syria could be administered effectively by one or other of those forces. While Assad’s forces as currently constituted and led would be unlikely to make an intense effort to take on ISIL, a political transition in Syria would allow new leadership and reform of the Syrian Arab Army to enable it to tackle terrorist groups in defence of the Syrian Nation. Without transition, it will continue to be difficult to generate a Sunni force able to fight ISIL and hold ground in Eastern Syria.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State made similar comments in his oral evidence, arguing that: “The order in which things will move forward is to ensure that we get that political transition, which then allows a united capability to take on Daesh itself.”

29.The Syrian peace process is likely to take some considerable time. We do not accept the Government’s view that the Syrian Government and opposition forces should be assumed to be unable to focus their attention on ISIL until agreement is reached on all aspects of a political transition in Syria. The fight against ISIL cannot wait for a comprehensive peace settlement. In the short term it is imperative that the Cessation of Hostilities be maintained, and that all parties arrive at a preliminary political accord, so they can then focus their attention on the fight against ISIL. We recommend that the FCO give greater priority to the immediate fight against ISIL, alongside its longer-term work towards a comprehensive peace settlement. As we concluded in our Second Report on the extension of British military operations to Syria, we remain unpersuaded that talks involving all parties provide an incentive for people to join ISIL.

30.This will require military co-ordination of the formerly warring parties, and practical support from the regional powers. The emerging military-to-military co-ordination between the US-led coalition and Russia appears to offer the best available environment in which to have these conversations. If the armed forces of the Syrian Arab Army and the Free Syrian Army on ceasefire are able to agree an early mutual purpose to reclaim Syrian territory jointly from ISIL, they can begin a positive founding narrative of a new Syria, and build trust, which should ultimately allow for the resolution of the hard issues around the future of the leaders of the current Syrian government. We recommend that the FCO and the Ministry of Defence work together to advance the recovery of territory from ISIL control, assist Syrian armed groups which have ceased hostilities to work towards this objective whilst ensuring that civilian protection is also prioritised, and press the regional powers to provide the necessary enabling capability, including action to disrupt ISIL’s business and financial activities.