Editor’s Note: World in Ukraine takes a look at Ukraine’s bilateral relations with different nations. All articles are written independently from advertisers.
In the Kyiv Post’s first interview with Yagmur Ahmet Guldere, the new Turkish Ambassador to Ukraine, the Syrian crisis overshadowed Ukraine-Turkey relations, which are in generally good shape.
The abrupt U.S. withdrawal of troops from northeast Syria, where they had been aligned with Kurdish fighters in a battle against ISIS terrorists, and Turkey’s military incursion dominated the discussion.
The interview took place on Oct. 16 in the Turkish Embassy in Kyiv, outside of which a small number of demonstrators gathered that day to protest against Ankara’s actions in Syria.
It also took place amid worsening tensions in Turkish-Western relations.
Some in Europe and America see Turkey as a lost cause in the Western alliance and a NATO member in name only. The dim view is that the Mediterranean nation of 80 million people is an increasingly dangerous country run by a dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who wants to acquire nuclear weapons, exterminate the Syrian Kurds and crack down at home against political opponents and journalists. For instance, the U. S. Committee to Protect Journalists found that Turkey, for the third straight year in 2018, imprisoned more journalists than any other nation — with 68 jailed as of Dec. 1, 2018.
While the strains in Turkish-Western relations are clear, Guldere said Turkey is the victim of manipulations, misunderstandings and double standards. He also expressed hope that the crisis will subside.
Turkey’s aims in Syria
Starting with Syria, Guldere outlined Turkey’s goals.
“I should start by stating what we are not doing: We are not invading Syria. We are not occupying Syria. We are not massacring Kurds and we are not doing demographic engineering. What we are doing is conducting a military operation whose objectives and scope are clearly announced.”
Quite simply, the ambassador said, Turkey has been the victim of more than 300 acts of hostility in the last two years from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, and its Syrian offshoot, the YPG, with whom the Americans aligned even though Europe and the United States itself consider the PKK to be a terrorist organization.
“Fatal sniper attacks, guided anti-tank missile launches, plus we have tunnels coming from the other side into our land,” Guldere said of the attacks.
“Turkey has taken the brunt of the crisis. Still, when we take steps to ensure our security, we are condemned and subject to sanctions.”
He said the aim of Turkey’s military operation is to create a safe zone 30–40 kilometers beyond the Syrian border and stretching 450 kilometers horizontally, from the Euphrates River to the eastern end of the Syrian border.
“By day eight (on Oct. 16), we have eliminated more than 600 terrorists. We are suffering casualties, civilian casualties in Turkey because of random attacks, including a 9-month-old Syrian baby,” he said. “We lost about 150 of our boys in uniform. We know it’s not going to be an easy operation. We also know if we don’t do this operation today, the price for all of us will be even heavier. We have no choice but to go ahead with it.”
With the U.S. troop withdrawal, Turkey and Russia have reached an agreement to push Syrian Kurdish fighters out of a border area that the Turkish military will control and patrol jointly with Russia. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is trying to regain control of all of Syria, but more conflict could lie ahead since Turkey opposes Assad and Russia has backed him in the bloody eight-year war in which more than 500,000 Syrians have been killed.
‘Corridor of terror’
The goal, Guldere said, is for Turkey to feel safe and create conditions so that another 1–2 million Syrian refugees — out of 3.6 million that Turkey is hosting — can return safely to their homeland if they want to do so.
Guldere said that Turkey has conducted two previously successful military operations that allowed Syrian refugees to return to northwestern Syria.
“In 2017, we conducted Euphrates Shield and in 2018, Operation Olive Branch. In these two operations, Turkey secured 2,000 square kilometers of land. To these territories, more than 360,000 Syrians returned, mainly to the west of Euphrates.”
As for the YPG, the Syrian wing of the PKK, “they have been armed and emboldened just because they are fighting another terrorist organization (ISIS). So the other side of our border has been handed over to a band of terrorists because they are fighting another band of terrorists. This is basically a corridor of terror.”
“Turkey is not the only one suffering from this phenomenon,” the ambassador said. “Many ethnic Arabs living in these lands were intimidated by the YPG. Their children were conscripted forcefully. We currently host about 300,000 Syrian Kurds in Turkey who, because they don’t subscribe to the YPG agenda, were intimidated by the YPG and had to flee their land.”
When a joint approach with America and other partners failed, he said, “we had to act on our own,” to stop the YPG, which he said “is following a separatist agenda. What we’re doing serves Syrian territorial integrity as well.”
He said the Syrian Kurds’ rapprochement with Assad after U.S. withdrawal is telling. “The organization they have been harboring, feeding and arming is turning to a leader who has been the main player in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. There are some very big mistakes in the Syria story, starting from the selection of partners with whom you try to destroy terrorism.”
Rather than face condemnation from America and other NATO members, he said: “We would like the West to treat us as an ally.”
Erdogan’s troubles
Syria is not Turkey’s only big problem. The nation is still reeling from a coup attempt three years ago. Turkey accuses followers of Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who denies involvement and who is fighting Ankara’s attempts to extradite him from America.
More than 300 people were killed in the coup attempt in which a faction of the Turkish armed forces bombed parliament and the Presidential Palace.
The attempted coup prompted mass arrests and purges of suspected participants from government and other positions, an overreaction in the view of critics who allege mass human rights violations.
“It has been a very difficult period for Turkey,” the ambassador said. “The response was decisive.”
Again, he said, Turkey feels let down by a lack of sympathy from the West. “The reaction from our allies is not what you’d expect from a member of the alliance. We feel a little offended and alienated, but it doesn’t prevent us from doing something we believe.”
He rejected the dictator label for Erdogan, increasingly applied since the crackdown following the coup attempt.
“Is that why the mayor of Istanbul is from the opposition party and the mayor of Ankara is from the opposition party?” Guldere noted. “We have been subject to all sorts of double standards when it comes to the situation in Turkey. We have mechanisms in place to address the concerns of those who feel that they were unjustly treated after the coup attempt…If we took some steps, it was because the wound was deep. We have to clean each and every government institution. After a coup attempt, you have to make sure you take zero risks (from those) who infiltrated and then poisoned the system.”
‘Win-win’ situation
Compared to Syria and the domestic strife after the 2016 coup attempt, Turkey’s relationship with Ukraine is a bright spot — or “kazan-kazan,” the Turkish phrase for a “win-win” situation.
“I think that pretty much symbolizes the spirit of Turkish-Ukraine relations,” he said. “Everybody has only to win from this relationship.”
As Turkey’s ambassador, “my biggest advantage in Ukraine is to be serving a friendly country, where I feel the support of the Ukrainian government, which looks at us as strategic partners.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signaled the importance of Turkey, visiting after his election for a vacation, and then on an official Aug. 7–8 visit to Ankara to meet with Erdogan and to open a center for Crimean Tatars and to Istanbul for a meeting with the business community. “It was a very fruitful visit,” Guldere said.
Tourism boom
Moreover, since the advent of visa-free travel between both nations, there’s been a tourism boom that’s led to deeper personal ties and greater understanding. Last year, 1.5 million Ukrainians visited Turkey while 300,000 Turks came to Ukraine.
“Tourism is turning out to be a very big investment in Turkish-Ukraine relations,” he said. “Mutual interest in language, culture and travel is moving our two countries closer.”
“It’s the best thing we did,” he said of Turkey’s decision to drop visa requirements for Ukrainians. “The Ukrainian tourist is an educated tourist. They are discovering Turkey is not all about Antalya and open buffets. There are lots of unseen bridges connecting Turkey and Ukrainian culture.”
A picture taken on August 24, 2018 in Istanbul shows a night view of July 15 Martyrs’ Bridge (L), known as the Bosphorus Bridge and the financial district of Levent (R). (Photo by OZAN KOSE / AFP)
Thorny problems
Still, the relationship isn’t without its challenges.
Ukraine and Turkey still haven’t come to a free trade agreement despite many years of talks, as domestic industries on each side — textiles in Ukraine, steel, and agriculture in Turkey — put up resistance. Consequently, bilateral trade is far short of the $10 billion annually that both sides have set as the goal. The current trade of $4 billion annually is in Ukraine’s favor — with $2.5 billion in exports, compared to $1.5 billion in imports from Turkey.
Nonetheless, Turkish investment in Ukraine is still significant —- estimated at $3 billion, with hundreds of businesses and 15,000 Turkish citizens living in Ukraine.
Additionally, while Turkey said it will never recognize Russia’s military invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, Ankara doesn’t believe economic sanctions on the Kremlin will persuade Vladimir Putin to call off Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Despite rough times in Turkish-Russian relations, “at the end of the day, countries that share geography need to find a common language,” Guldere said. “On issues where we disagree, we have the maturity to let us not spoil the entire picture. We cooperate where the interests converge.”
He said that “as a country which has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, Turkey is ready to do whatever we can to contribute to a resolution.”
First ambassadorship
Guldere, a married father of two children, arrived in January for his first ambassadorial posting.
But he’s been in the Foreign Ministry for more than 20 years, serving five years in Moscow, three years in Damascus and two years in Brussels. He also worked the American and Iraqi desks from Ankara. Before his posting, he was deputy general overseeing relations in Eastern Europe, including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.
“I think we are looking at a family legacy here,” he said of his interest in becoming a diplomat. “My father used to work at the Ministry of Economy and he also served abroad. When I was very young, he got a transfer from Paris to Karachi. They drove all the way in 1976, when I was six months old. I tend to believe that trip sealed my fate. I grew up looking at the diplomatic passports of my father from previous postings. Somehow got into my blood.”
He arrived in Ukraine just before sweeping political changes that brought Zelensky to the presidency and his political party, Servant of the People, to power in parliament.
“The domestic policy, energy and tempo is something quite impressive,” Guldere said. “We have been trying to grasp the whole change here. It’s quite impressive. It’s been a terrific 10 months.”
