Russia breathes down Middle East necks over Ukraine

James M Dorsey

Europe is likely to shoulder the brunt of the fallout of a rapidly escalating crisis over Ukraine. Middle Eastern states could prove to be a close second.

That is no truer than for Turkey and Israel, whose management of the Ukraine crisis could determine their ability to protect perceived core national interests.

Indeed, for NATO-member Turkey, the stakes could not be higher. Its 2,000 kilometre-long Black Sea coastline stretching from the Bulgarian border in the West to Georgia in the East is the longest of any of the Sea’s littoral states, including Russia and Ukraine.

The Black Sea ranks on par with Turkey’s determination to prevent at any cost a permanent autonomous, let alone independent, Kurdish presence on Syrian soil.

As the crisis in Ukraine escalates, Turkey could discover that protecting both of those interests may no longer allow it to perform its virtuoso balancing act. Turkey has been maintaining a fragile partnership with Russia sustained by careful management of differences while remaining a Western ally committed to the defense of the Western alliance.

Turkish economic and military support of Ukraine and Crimean Tartars and its refusal to recognize the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea fit well with Turkey’s tightrope act and was aligned with NATO policy.

The imposition of US and European sanctions against Russia is likely to be the straw that breaks the back of the Turkish tightrope act.

Speaking to state-controlled Russian RT television, Bogdanov noted that the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) controls large areas east of the Euphrates River. The region is pockmarked by a patchwork of military forces from Turkey, Russia, the United States, Syria, the Kurds, and various militant and jihadist groups.

Designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and Europe, the PKK has waged a low-intensity war in southeastern Turkey for almost four decades that has cost the lives of tens of thousands.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to fend off a potential further Turkish incursion by agreeing to joint Russian-Turkish patrols in a region where Turkey has already built a chain of outposts as a buffer with Russian and Syrian regime forces.

For its part, Israel doesn’t share physical land or maritime borders with either Russia or Ukraine. Still, it is discovering that its ability to counter Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, militarily in Syria may depend on its approach to the Ukraine crisis.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz defiantly insisted in response that “we will continue to prevent the Iranian entrenchment that is eating Syria up from the inside. This is a supreme interest for the Syrian people and the regime: to stabilize, to remove Iranian forces from their territory and allow the country to be rehabilitated.”

Lapid noted further that Israel has sizeable Russian and Ukrainian Jewish communities and that a significant number of Jews are resident in the two feuding countries.

As a result, Israel, caught in a bind similar to Turkey’s, scrambled to avoid further provoking Russia’s ire. It announced that it was banning Baltic states from transferring to Ukraine weapons with Israeli components.

In contrast to Turkey that may feel it has greater maneuverability in its relations with Russia, China, and the United States, Israel feels that its options, like in the case of China, are more limited when it comes to Russia. It cannot afford to put its relations with Washington at risk.

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