"Migration wave: the only way to push back Erdogan is to stand up to him"

Renaud Girard is a war correspondent and international chronicler for Le Figaro.

FIGAROVOX.- Can you explain the situation in Idlib and the link with the migration crisis?

Renaud GIRARD.- Syria is plunged into a civil war which, since 2012, has opposed a mainly Islamist rebellion (supported, among others, by Turkey) to the secular Baathist government of Bashar al-Assad (supported by Russia and Iran ). In September 2015, President Vladimir Putin decided to directly engage Russian forces alongside the Syrian government. This support enabled the loyalist camp to win the war and to reconquer most of the Syrian territory.

However, the city of Idlib, in the north-west of the country, near the Turkish border, is still in the hands of the rebels. The Sochi Agreements, concluded in September 2018 between Russians and Turks, made this city a "de-escalation zone", secured by the Turkish army which is supposed to protect civilians there.

But the Syrians and the Russians have decided to take back the city, because they consider that President Erdogan has betrayed his commitments. Indeed, the area was to be used only to protect civilians. However, the Turks welcomed in mass jihadists, Syrians and foreigners, who fled the reconquest of the other Syrian provinces by the government forces.

However, Erdogan does not accept this reconquest and his troops collide with the Syrian army. Furthermore, instead of attacking Russia head on, which he knows is strong, he threatens the European Union (EU), which he knows is weak. He encourages hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants to rush to the borders of Europe. All this because 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in a bombing carried out in Idlib (on Syrian soil therefore) by the forces of Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan thus unilaterally broke the commitment he had made to the EU to keep migrants (Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis ...) in Turkey and to prevent them from crossing into Europe, a commitment for which Europeans have generously paid. Erdogan is punishing the Europeans, when they have nothing to do with the bombing of Idlib.

The Turkish President knows that immigration has become the Achilles heel of European societies and that it risks causing the European Union to implode. This is all the more the case since European societies have never been democratically consulted on the migration issue, even though they have long since observed, at home, the failure of multiculturalism.

In addition, Erdogan seeks to negotiate with Putin, who is in a position of strength, but without losing face. The meeting of the two leaders, on March 5 in Moscow, has just led to a provisional cease-fire, which provides that Idlib will not be reoccupied by the Syrians for the moment but that the Islamist organizations (supported by Turkey) will be dismantled there.

How do you feel about President Erdogan's decision to encourage hundreds of thousands of migrants to force the borders of the European Union?

First point, this is a form of invasion. The borders of Europe are under attack. Thus, on March 1, 2020, we could see strong young bearded men, shouting “Allah Akbar!”, Carrying a tree trunk as a ram and trying to smash the gate of a Greek border post. These Muslims, resident in Turkey but natives of different countries of the Middle East, were transported free of charge by bus by the Turkish authorities to the Greek border.

Second point. Erdogan is largely responsible for the chaos in Syria. Until 2010, it had chosen as a line of foreign policy "zero problems with our neighbors", and maintained excellent relations with all the countries of its geographical entourage. But in 2011, the Arab Spring broke out: Erdogan tried to recover it for his own profit and dreamed of taking the leadership everywhere. For this, he supports the Muslim Brotherhood. He intervened in the Syrian civil war against the Baathist regime of Assad, of which he had however been a personal friend. Its secret service, MIT, welcomes jihadists from around the world and takes them to Syria. He arms them and heals them, on Turkish territory. Erdogan then feels himself growing wings and boastful, announcing in 2012 that within a few weeks the Bashar regime will have fallen and that he himself will come to pray in Damascus at the great mosque of the Omeyaddes. But Erdogan's Arab Islamist allies lost. If the Turkish President had not played the sorcerer's apprentice, the Syrian civil war would have ended sooner and would have resulted in fewer victims and refugees. Why should Europeans pay the price for Erdogan's serious imprudence?

Third point, when we look at Erdogan's choice to sanction the EU, there is reason to be surprised twice. First, the Turks are not at home in Idlib. Turkey is neither invaded nor attacked. It is it which, on the contrary, occupies a portion of Syrian territory, territory which the government of Damascus seeks to reconquer, which is in the nature of a government, whatever it is. When you send soldiers on an expedition to a country other than their own, don't you run the risk of them being killed there? Then why punish the Europeans, when it was not they - but Syrian or Russian planes - who killed these unfortunate Turkish soldiers?

But then why is Erdogan attacking the EU? And how should Europeans respond?

The only way to understand Erdogan's gesture is that this Muslim Brother has always, in his foreign diplomacy as in his internal policy, preferred to attack the weak than the strong. Erdogan has no trouble insulting Macron. Before insulting Putin or Trump, he will think twice. Erdogan lives on our weaknesses and our renunciations. It is only strong because we are weak. And we are weak by our own fault.

Erdogan only understands strength. Trump has grasped this, as the attack on the Turkish lira in August 2018 shows to free the American pastor Andrew Brunson, imprisoned in Turkey. Putin also understood this. Erdogan had to reconcile with him in 2016 after the Russian sanctions following the death of a Russian pilot, whose plane had been shot down by the Turks.

Russia and the United States are not blackmailed countries. The European Union is different. Since the 2015 migrant crisis, the Turks have understood that they can blackmail it as they please: "You don't want to do what I want, you don't want to give me more money or support me in my politics ? So I'm going to send you a few hundred thousand more Muslim migrants. ” This is, in essence, the language that our new neo-Ottoman sultan speaks to Brussels every day. There, he has just moved into high gear by unilaterally revoking agreements he had signed when the EU has already paid him several billion euros to prevent the arrival of migrants. And just as Erdogan orders his police to push the migrants to the Greek border, the European Commission announces that it will pay him an additional 500 million euros. It's surreal.

The weaker we are with Erdogan, the more he will be contemptuous and demanding. It is a serious mistake to believe that he will be kind if we are complacent and give in to his threats. He will always want more. Giving in to him would be a new Munich, like when we gave in to Hitler, thinking he was buying peace. On the contrary, the only way to make Erdogan back off is to stand up to him.

Why does the ECB not speculate against the Turkish lira (as the US did successfully to free Pastor Brunson)? Why don't we overtax Turkish exports (steel, aluminum, hazelnuts ...)? Why don't we take economic sanctions - on trade and tourism - against Turkey (as Trump and Putin did) so that Erdogan stops his blackmailing migration? French justice has just indicted four people suspected of having collected funds for the PKK (Kurdish independence political-military organization, hostile to Erdogan). Yet the Kurds have done us great service against Daesh. Erdogan does not make the police for us (with the migrants), why would we do it for him, by arresting Kurds belonging to a movement, the PKK, which he considers terrorist.?

Above all, it is urgent to help financially and militarily Greece and Bulgaria to defend the borders of Europe and to stop this mass Muslim immigration, dangerous for the cohesion of the EU. We must mobilize the European armies and police to block the flow of migrants and neutralize Turkish blackmail. This would give European peoples a positive and protective image of the EU.

Is the Turkish President weaker than we think?

Yes. Its foreign policy has been counterproductive. We are the opposite of the line “no problem with neighbors” for the years 2002-2010. Today, in addition to not having been able to overthrow Bashar, Erdogan is diplomatically isolated. He became angry with many Middle Eastern Muslim countries (including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which - although Sunni like Turkey - consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization).

Inside, the Turkish President is also in a weak position. Its popularity rating is down. His party, the AKP (Islamo-conservative), lost the city of Istanbul (the country's main city and economic capital, of which Erdogan was long mayor). Its economy is experiencing difficulties. Its population is overwhelmed by the presence of millions of Arab, African and Afghan migrants.

By embarking on a military operation to stimulate nationalist sentiment and by trying to get rid of migrants, Erdogan hopes to boost his popularity with his public opinion. But if his policy resulted in economic sanctions, his bet would backfire.

In Idlib, civilians are caught between the Turks (and their jihadist allies) and the forces of Bashar al-Assad. Faced with war, cold and famine, they are experiencing a real humanitarian crisis. You are the author of a book entitled Quelle diplomatie pour la France? (Le Cerf, 2017), a work in which you criticize the position of the Hollande presidency on the Syrian dossier. For you, what should France do for Idlib?

France has continued (since 2011!) To refuse any dialogue with Bashar al-Assad when it is now obvious that this line is completely wrong.

Because, whether we like it or not, Bashar al-Assad has today won the war and reconquered most of his territory. Even the United Arab Emirates (Sunni power which long supported and armed the rebels) took note of the victory of Bashar and reopened their embassy in Damascus! By acting as it does, France is depriving itself of all influence on the politico-humanitarian settlement of the Idlib crisis.

Realism alone will allow us to have a positive political and humanitarian impact where our moralism condemns us to impotence. To mend Charles Péguy's formula on Kant's morality, we can say that: "French diplomacy has its own hands because it has no hands" . Our position is of no help to the civilians of Idlib where a realistic posture of rapprochement with Bashar al-Assad would on the contrary allow us to weigh on him. To pacify Bosnia and put an end to the massacres thanks to the Dayton accords, it was necessary to speak to Milosevic.

Since the start of 2012, western governments have stopped talking to the Assad regime, believing that its fall was only a matter of weeks. They were wrong. It is time to take the realities as they are and to understand that Assad is - whether we like it or not an essential actor, who enjoys the support of a significant part of the Syrian population. We may not like it, but those are the facts. Idlib will not be silenced without talking to him. Our moralizing and human rights diplomacy was useless and did not advance human rights or democracy by an inch. On the contrary, it has led to immoral results, namely horrible suffering for the people. We refuse to compromise by talking to Bashar, but it is the Syrian civilians who endure the terrible consequences of our position. "True ethics makes fun of ethics," said Pascal.

We made two big mistakes in the Middle East. The first was to break with Bashar al-Assad and take the Syrian rebels for "democrats" when the majority of them were Islamists. The second was to abandon our friends: the Christians of the East and the Kurds. However, in this region of the world, people - including your enemies - only respect you if you don't abandon your friends. Thus Putin is respected by all the Eastern peoples, including by the Turks and the Saudis, because he did not abandon his friend Bashar. Because of these two errors, the voice of France does not count today for anything in Syria, whereas we are however the former mandatory power: in the negotiations of March 5, Putin declined Erdogan's request for also invite Emmanuel Macron to a meeting on Syria. We are paying nine years of error and blindness.

Should we condemn the Russian strikes on Idlib?

To answer, let's look at the numbers. The war in Syria left 73,000 dead in 2013 and 75,000 in 2014, but 20,000 in 2018 and 11,000 in 2019 (i.e. a figure divided by 7 compared to 2014). So the Russian intervention (which dates back to 2015) and the Russian-Syrian successes are synonymous with a drop in the number of deaths on the ground.

Above all, the Russian strikes target jihadists, that is to say our main enemy, the same one who massacres the Christians of the East, kills our children in our streets and whom we fight in France and in Mali. Moreover, the France 24 channel has published images in which French jihadists proudly film Idlib among the rebels. Our attitude is therefore incoherent: in France or in the Sahel, we fight these people. But in Syria, we regret that Putin is bombing them.

The rebels of Idlib, protected by Turkey, belong to Hayat Tahrir al-Cham, jihadist conglomerate whose main branch is Fatah al-Cham, new name of the Al-Nosra Front, that is to say of the Syrian branch from Al Qaeda. Let us not forget that Al Qaeda is behind the September 11, 2001 attacks (the deadliest in the history of terrorism). It is this that we face in the Sahel (under the name of Aqmi). For 20 years, this nebula has also killed thousands of civilians in the Arab world.

During the entire Syrian war, the Al-Nosra subsidiary remained faithful to the reputation for savagery of its parent company Al-Qaeda. It was sadly illustrated, among other abuses, by massacres of Druze, Christians and Alawites, but also of Sunnis. For example, on December 11, 2013, Al-Nosra infiltrated the city of Adra: at least 32 civilians were massacred, some beheaded. The victory of Al Nosra in Syria, prevented by the Russians, would have meant the extermination of all religious minorities, the establishment of sharia and the constitution of an Islamist and terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. If the bombing of Idlib unfortunately also kills civilians, it is because the jihadists take the population hostage and mingle with it.

In September 2015, I wrote "we must help the Russians in Syria" . If we had, we could play a role in the Syrian crisis instead of being swallowed up as passive spectators.