Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently announced his country’s long-expected counter-offensive against the ongoing Russian invasion, pushing back with the support of the NATO security alliance. Authorities in Ukraine, which itself is not yet a formal member of NATO, are closely following Turkey’s ongoing refusal to allow Sweden to accede to the security alliance, while demanding concessions primarily centred around fresh assaults on and repression of the Kurds in Sweden, the European diaspora, and throughout Kurdistan.
Dr. Amy Austin Holmes is an academic and Non-Resident Fellow at George Washington University, whose work and research has brought her to the heart of several of these inter-related crises on Europe’s eastern flank. Holmes has conducted extensive research in Kurdish-led North and East Syria, attended electoral observation missions to Turkey including during the crucial re-election of incumbent President Erdoğan in 2023, and is currently teaching a university course in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. She spoke to Medya News to share her observations on how President Erdoğan’s aggressive foreign policy is affecting the war in Ukraine – and whether the West should be allowing Turkey to dictate its own policy.
Selected highlights follow, and you can listen to the full conversation above.
What do people in Ukraine think about Turkey’s role in the conflict? Is it a major concern?
People here openly say they want to join NATO, and they know who is openly blocking that – Turkey’s opposition to Sweden now joining NATO is something they are very aware of, but Ukraine themselves would also like to join NATO, and so this is something they are paying attention to.
I’ve been a bit surprised because the Turkish Bayraktar drones were very hyped here in Ukraine, at least in the Western media, as being so important, but to be honest, nobody here has mentioned them since I’ve been here – which is surprising, in a way. Because that was a theme in the media, to highlight Turkey’s role here, and Turkey’s contribution to Ukraine defending itself from Russia.
I think people are very focused on the counter-offensive, and looking at the territory they’re try they’re trying to reclaim from Russia, but I think Ukraine’s larger orientation to the USA and Western Europe is also interesting to watch.
You were part of an informal electoral delegation to follow the recent Turkish elections, in Kurdish-majority Ara. What were your observations of this process?
I was only allowed into three of eight polling stations, meaning only into the building, and one of those only with police escort. So there was a very heavy police presence. There were also a few soldiers from the Turkish military present. To compare it to 2015, when I also joined an international observer delegation to Gaziantep during the Parliamentary elections, and back then we were allowed in everywhere. I don’t recall being told we couldn’t enter a polling station. Compare that to now.
The other important point is that while there were [Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe] observers there, that were of course the official monitors, no-one from the OSCE was in Ara – which was one of the provinces where people expected there might be problems. It was in the remote regions, far from Ankara, far from Istanbul, predominantly Kurdish regions, where they expected there might be fraud.
The West appears ready to pragmatically accept Erdoğan’s aggressive foreign policy in order to keep him in the NATO fold. What’s your take on this approach?
A lot of European countries, and to some extent the USA, have approached this by saying ‘really, we need to do anything to get the Nordic countries into NATO’. That has meant being relatively quiescent when it comes to speaking out over some of the things Erdoğan has done, including even the Turkish drone strike on a convoy that was carrying Syrian Democratic Forces Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi, but also three US military personnel. It was kind of shocking to me, as an American, that there was no statement put out by the White House or State Department. That type of policy is potentially going to harm us again in the future. If there’s not a stronger push-back, and stronger condemnation of these types of reckless drone strikes carrying US personnel and the SDF, it’s not going to help us down the road.
Is appeasement the only possible foreign policy approach toward Turkey, or could the West take a more dynamic stance?
The type of argument we need to be making is this: we can complain, and talk about Kurdish rights, the rights of Armenian and Assyrian [minorities threatened by Turkey in Syria], as long as we want. But to convince the new government of Erdoğan will require convincing them that they are not able to achieve what they say they want, even, by continuing these policies. In fact, there is a ‘win-win-win’ situation available, in theory, which would be to get the Turkish business community and Kurdish business community to invest in northern Syria. The general licence in 2022 [removing sanctions on Kurdish-led North and East Syria] has not resulted in investment in the north-east. I myself worked at the State Department for a year, and I think the US government didn’t do a good job of explaining this policy to business communities who stand the most to benefit.
