[LINK] "Memo to Putin: Syria Is Turkey's Ukraine"

[rfmcdonald]

At Bloomberg View, Marc Champion makes the obvious observation that Syria is to Turkey what Ukraine is to Russia. Neither ex-imperial hegemon should be surprised at the strong support for the others' proxies.

Russian leaders have evidently been shocked by Turkey's deliberate decision to shoot down one of their planes, which they say was motivated by Turkey's alleged support for Islamic State and greed for the proceeds of smuggled terrorist oil. A simpler explanation is that Russia would have done the same.

Here is the hypothetical: What would President Vladimir Putin do if civil war broke out in a neighboring country, which had been part of the Russian empire for centuries before breaking away under circumstances, and with borders, that Russians still found difficult to accept? What would he do if, in that war, some of the rebels were ethnic Russians at risk of being brutally crushed by the armed forces of the neighboring state?

Actually, that's not so hypothetical; it pretty much describes eastern Ukraine. And we know what Russia did -- it became heavily involved in a poorly concealed invasion.

Syria was under Ottoman control from 1516 until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Russian Empire took over the Donbass region in the mid-1700s. The "Turkmen" rebels that Russia's Su-24 aircraft was bombing at the time it was shot down are ethnic Turks. They ended up on the wrong side of the border when it was imposed by a 1921 treaty (shortly before the Donbass region was incorporated into Soviet Ukraine).

Even the strange psychology of how former empires feel they still have a special right, even responsibility, to intervene in long-since amputated parts is similar. When pro-democracy protests began in Syria in 2011, Erdogan said Turkey had to view the turmoil in Syria as a domestic issue. He was affronted when President Bashar al-Assad refused to do as he was told.