There are lots of ways for Syria to go wrong for Russia. Analysts have tended to focus on Moscow’s military shortcomings in that theater, wondering if Syria will become Russia’s Vietnam. They’ve also pointed to Russia’s deep economic troubles—exacerbated, of course, by very low oil prices—which call into question its ability to pay for the military campaign over time.

One of the understudied aspects of Russia’s involvement in the Syrian conflict is the ramifications it could have for the Russian government’s relations with Muslims back at home. Moscow is now home to the largest Muslim community of any city in Europe (with between 1.5 and 2 million Muslims out of a population of around 13 million, although illegal immigration has distorted many of the figures). Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders have consciously avoided choosing sides in the Sunni-Shiite divide in the Middle East—recognizing that doing so could provoke a backlash among Russian Muslims.

The rise of an extremist, Salafi- or Wahhabi-inspired, religious state in Syria—an Islamic caliphate established either by the Islamic State or by any religiously-based extremist group in the region—could pose a significant problem for Russia. That’s both because of how it’s likely to behave toward other states in the region (including key Russian partners like Israel, Egypt, and Iran) and because of what it could inspire in Mother Russia, where efforts by militant groups to create their own “caliphate” or “emirate” in the North Caucasus have created headaches for Moscow since the early 2000s. 

Islam and Russia go way back

Russia is a Muslim state. Islam is arguably older than Christianity in traditional Russian territory––with Muslim communities first appearing in southeastern Russia in the 8th century. It is firmly established as the dominant religion among the Tatars of the Volga region and the diverse peoples of the Russian North Caucasus. These indigenous Sunni Muslims have their own unique heritage, history, and religious experience. The Tatars launched a reformist movement in the 19th century that later morphed into ideas of “Euro-Islam,” a progressive credo that could coexist, and even compete, with Russian Orthodoxy and other Christian denominations. Sufi movements, rooted in private forms of belief and practice, similarly prevailed in the Russian North Caucasus after the late 18th century. 

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when Central Asia and the South Caucasus were also part of the state, the USSR’s demography was in flux. The “ethnic” Muslim share of the population was rising as a result of high birthrates in Central Asia, while the Slavic, primarily Orthodox, populations of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine were declining from high mortality and low birthrates. Since the dissolution of the USSR, Russia’s nominal Muslim population has swelled with labor migration from Central Asia and Azerbaijan, which has brought more Shiite Muslims into the mix, in the case of Azeri immigrants. As in other countries, Russia has also had its share of converts to Islam as the population rediscovered religion in the 1990s and 2000s after the enforced atheism of the Soviet period came to an end.

The foreign fighter problem

The Kremlin cannot afford the rise of any group that fuses religion and politics, and has outside allegiances that might encourage opposition to the Russian state among its Muslim populations. The religious wars in the Middle East are not a side show for Russia. Thousands of foreign fighters have flocked to Syria from Russia, as well as from Central Asia and the South Caucasus, all attracted by the extreme messages of ISIS and other groups.

Extremist groups have been active in Russia since the Chechen wars of the 1990s and 2000s. A recent Reuters report reveals how Russia allowed—and even encouraged—militants and radicals from the North Caucasus to go and fight in Syria in 2013, in an effort to divert them away from potential domestic terrorist attacks ahead of the February 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The Kremlin now worries that these and other fighters will return from Syria and further radicalize and inflame the situation in the North Caucasus and elsewhere in Russia. Putin intends to eliminate the fighters, in place, before they have an opportunity to come back home.

Putin also knows a thing or two about extremists from his time in the KGB, as well as his reading of Russian history. As a result, he does little to distinguish among them. For Putin, an extremist is an extremist—no matter what name he or she adopts. Indeed, Russian revolutionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries wrote the playbook for fusing ideology with terror and brutality; and Putin has recently become very critical of that revolutionary approach––moving even to criticize Soviet founder and Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin for destroying the Russian state and empire one hundred years ago in the Russian Revolution of 1917. For Putin, anyone whose views and ideas can become the base for violence in opposition to the legal, legitimate state (and its leader) is an extremist who must be countered. Syria is a crucial front in holding the line.

The long haul

With this in mind, we can be sure that Putin sees Russia in for the long haul in Syria. Recent signs that Russia may be creating a new army base in Palmyra to complement its bases in Latakia and Tarsus, underscore this point. Having watched the United States returning to its old battlegrounds in both Afghanistan and Iraq to head off new extremist threats, Putin will want to prepare contingencies and keep his options open. 

The fight with extremists is only beginning for Russia in Syria, now that Moscow has bolstered the position of Bashar Assad and the secular Alawite regime. For Putin and for Russia, Syria is the focal point of international action, and the current arena for diplomatic as well as military interaction with the United States, but it is also a critical element for Putin in his efforts to maintain control of the homefront.

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Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin made his fourth visit to China since President Xi Jinping became top party leader in 2012. During this latest meeting, the two countries inked more than 30 deals, including an oil supply contract, and issued numerous joint statements, one of which criticized the United States for its plans to deploy missile defense systems on the Korean Peninsula and in the Balkans. Chinese state media speculate that this year’s China-Russia joint naval exercises, held annually since 2005, will likely be led by the South China Sea Fleet, reinforcing a general perception in China and elsewhere that U.S. policies are pushing Chinese leaders to consolidate ties with Russia.

On July 26, the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings hosted a discussion on the U.S.-China-Russia trilateral relationship, the shape and scope of which carries far-reaching consequences for international order and global economic growth. Brookings President Strobe Talbott, who served as deputy secretary of state and ambassador-at-large on the new independent states following the Soviet breakup, provided an introduction. A panel of experts—J. Stapleton Roy, Fiona Hill, Yun Sun, and Cheng Li—discussed the current and historical dynamics at play, including expectations and recommendations for the future.

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For the first time in Turkey’s history, the electorate directly cast their votes for president earlier this week, overwhelmingly electing current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the position with 52 percent of the votes. After 12 years in power, Erdoğan’s victory was widely expected, even though the two main opposition parties chose Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu as their common candidate in a rare show of unity, and Selahattin Demirtaş the leader of the main Kurdish political party in Turkey, tried hard to appeal to an electoral base beyond just Kurds. The impact of the election’s results, however, remains to be seen.

How should the election results be interpreted? Will Erdoğan succeed in transforming Turkey from a parliamentary system to a presidential one? Who will he chose as prime minister? What will this outcome mean for Turkey’s economic performance and its foreign policy at a time when the neighborhood is sliding deeper into instability, if not chaos? What will happen to Turkey’s European vocation and its transatlantic relations?

On September 4, the Turkey Project of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings hosted a panel discussion to consider what President Erdoğan’s new mandate means for the nation, its government and institutions and the ruling Justice and Development Party. Kemal Kirisci, TÜSİAD senior fellow and Turkey project director, moderated the conversation. Panelists included Robert Wexler of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, Kadir Üstün of the SETA Foundation, and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Ömer Taşpınar.

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Terrorist attacks with high casualties usually create a sense of national solidarity and patriotic reaction in societies that fall victim to such heinous acts. Not in Turkey, however. Despite a growing number of terrorist attacks by the so-called Islamic State on Turkish soil in the last 12 months, the country remains as polarized as ever under strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In fact, for two reasons, jihadist terrorism is exacerbating the division. First, Turkey's domestic polarization already has an Islamist-versus-secularist dimension. Most secularists hold Erdogan responsible for having created domestic political conditions that turn a blind eye to jihadist activities within Turkey.

It must also be said that polarization between secularists and Islamists in Turkey often fails to capture the complexity of Turkish politics, where not all secularists are democrats and not all Islamists are autocrats. In fact, there was a time when Erdogan was hailed as the great democratic reformer against the old secularist establishment under the guardianship of the military.

Yet, in the last five years, the religiosity and conservatism of the ruling Justice and Development Party, also known by its Turkish acronym AKP, on issues ranging from gender equality to public education has fueled the perception of rapid Islamization. Erdogan's anti-Western foreign policy discourse -- and the fact that Ankara has been strongly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the Arab Spring -- exacerbates the secular-versus-Islamist divide in Turkish society.

Erdogan doesn't fully support the eradication of jihadist groups in Syria.

The days Erdogan represented the great hope of a Turkish model where Islam, secularism, democracy and pro-Western orientation came together are long gone. Despite all this, it is sociologically more accurate to analyze the polarization in Turkey as one between democracy and autocracy rather than one of Islam versus secularism.

The second reason why ISIS terrorism is exacerbating Turkey's polarization is related to foreign policy. A significant segment of Turkish society believes Erdogan's Syria policy has ended up strengthening ISIS. In an attempt to facilitate Syrian President Bashar Assad's overthrow, the AKP turned a blind eye to the flow of foreign volunteers transiting Turkey to join extremist groups in Syria. Until last year, Ankara often allowed Islamists to openly organize and procure equipment and supplies on the Turkish side of the Syria border.

Making things worse is the widely held belief that Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, or MİT, facilitated the supply of weapons to extremist Islamist elements amongst the Syrian rebels. Most of the links were with organizations such as Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and Islamist extremists from Syria's Turkish-speaking Turkmen minority.

He is trying to present the PKK as enemy number one.

Turkey's support for Islamist groups in Syria had another rationale in addition to facilitating the downfall of the Assad regime: the emerging Kurdish threat in the north of the country. Syria's Kurds are closely linked with Turkey's Kurdish nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has been conducting an insurgency for greater rights for Turkey's Kurds since 1984.

On the one hand, Ankara has hardened its stance against ISIS by opening the airbase at Incirlik in southern Turkey for use by the U.S-led coalition targeting the organization with air strikes. However, Erdogan doesn't fully support the eradication of jihadist groups in Syria. The reason is simple: the Arab and Turkmen Islamist groups are the main bulwark against the expansion of the de facto autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Syria. The AKP is concerned that the expansion and consolidation of a Kurdish state in Syria would both strengthen the PKK and further fuel similar aspirations amongst Turkey's own Kurds.

Will the most recent ISIS terrorist attack in Istanbul change anything in Turkey's main threat perception? When will the Turkish government finally realize that the jihadist threat in the country needs to be prioritized? If you listen to Erdogan's remarks, you will quickly realize that the real enemy he wants to fight is still the PKK. He tries hard after each ISIS attack to create a "generic" threat of terrorism in which all groups are bundled up together without any clear references to ISIS. He is trying to present the PKK as enemy number one.

Only after a peace process with Kurds will Turkey be able to understand that ISIS is an existential threat to national security.

Under such circumstances, Turkish society will remain deeply polarized between Islamists, secularists, Turkish nationalists and Kurdish rebels. Terrorist attacks, such as the one in Istanbul this week and the one in Ankara in July that killed more than 100 people, will only exacerbate these divisions.

Finally, it is important to note that the Turkish obsession with the Kurdish threat has also created a major impasse in Turkish-American relations in Syria. Unlike Ankara, Washington's top priority in Syria is to defeat ISIS. The fact that U.S. strategy consists of using proxy forces such as Syrian Kurds against ISIS further complicates the situation.

There will be no real progress in Turkey's fight against ISIS unless there is a much more serious strategy to get Ankara to focus on peace with the PKK. Only after a peace process with Kurds will Turkey be able to understand that ISIS is an existential threat to national security.

This piece was originally posted by The Huffington Post.

The decision by the Federal Election Commission to defer action on new rules to constrain the activities of so-called 527 political organizations is being portrayed as an utter collapse of the new McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. In fact, nothing could be further from reality.

The dispute over whether several new Democratic-leaning independent political groups should be required to register with the FEC and abide by contribution limits is a legitimate one, and there is merit in the regulatory proposal — rejected by the full commission — that was offered by Commissioners Scott Thomas and Michael Toner. But this argument largely concerns unresolved questions stemming from judicial and FEC interpretations of the 1974 law that governs federal election law — not McCain-Feingold.

Had the Thomas-Toner proposal been adopted, the Media Fund and America Coming Together would have faced tougher requirements on the sources and amounts of contributions they receive. But supporters of the Media Fund and ACT still would have had legal options to continue their campaign activities. ACT would have had to raise more hard money to match its soft-money contributions, but it had already been moving in that direction, as had Moveon.org, which is now focusing its campaign activities on hard-money fundraising and expenditures.

Millionaire contributors to the Media Fund could have separately made independent expenditures in the form of television ads that expressly advocated the defeat of President Bush. Unions could have financed their own "issue ads" supporting Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and attacking Bush until 30 days before the party convention or 60 days before the general election. Corporations would have retained the option to sponsor similar ads. Thereafter, even without FEC action, a key provision of McCain-Feingold kicks in. As the election nears, no 527 organization can use corporate or union money to finance broadcast ads that feature federal candidates.

McCain-Feingold was not written to bring every source of unregulated federal campaign funding within the scope of the law. Rather, it was designed to end the corrupting nexus of soft money that ties together officeholders, party officials and large donors. The law's principal goal was to prohibit elected officials and party leaders from extracting unregulated gifts from corporations, unions and individual donors in exchange for access to and influence with policymakers.

Indeed, the law has accomplished this objective. Members of Congress and national party officials are no longer soliciting unlimited contributions for the party committees, nor are they involved in the independent fundraising efforts of the leading 527 groups. The FEC's decision to defer action, therefore, does not pose the same risk of corruption as did the soft-money decisions of the past.

One of the fundamental concerns raised by the activities of 527s is that these groups, with their ability to receive unlimited contributions, would overshadow the candidates and weaken the role of parties in the electoral process. The new law, however, increased contribution limits to candidates and parties, to offset the effects of inflation and to ensure that parties remain major players in federal elections. Here, the evidence is overwhelming that the law's objective is being realized.

Bush and Kerry have both registered extraordinary fundraising success. Kerry has already raised more than $110 million, while the president has raised more than $200 million. In raising these sums, the presidential nominees have attracted the support of more than 500,000 donors who did not give money during the 2000 campaign. Congressional candidates, too, are also reaching out to new donors, with fundraising up 35 percent over the last cycle.

And in the first 15 months of this cycle, the national party committees have raised more than $430 million in hard money alone — $60 million more than they had raised in hard and soft money combined at the comparable point in the previous presidential cycle. This financial strength reflects the parties' success at adding more than 2 million new donors to their party rolls. For all the attention they are garnering, these 527 groups — both Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning — pale when compared to the activities of the parties and candidates.

The 2004 elections have enormously high stakes. Supporters of Bush and Kerry are highly motivated to boost the election prospects of their favored candidate. All signs point to a vibrant get-out-the-vote effort by both parties and a rough equality in funding by and on behalf of the two major presidential campaigns. This reflects the 50/50 partisan division in the country and suggests that a disparity in resources is unlikely to determine the outcome of the presidential election.

The FEC has cheered some and disappointed others with its decision to defer new rulemaking on independent political organizations. While we empathize with the critics' concerns, we nonetheless take satisfaction that the major objectives of the new campaign-finance law are being realized.

With only a few months remaining before the 2004 elections, national party committees continue to demonstrate financial strength and noteworthy success in adapting to the more stringent fundraising rules imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). A number of factors, including the deep partisan divide in the electorate, the expectations of a close presidential race, and the growing competition in key Senate and House races, have combined with recent party investments in new technology and the emergence of the Internet as a major fundraising tool to produce what one party chairman has described as a "perfect storm" for party fundraising.¹ Consequently, both national parties have exceeded the mid-year fundraising totals achieved in 2000, and both approach the general election with substantial amounts of money in the bank.

After eighteen months of experience under the new rules, the national parties are still outpacing their fundraising efforts of four years ago. As of June 30, the national parties have raised $611.1 million in federally regulated hard money alone, as compared to $535.6 million in hard and soft money combined at a similar point in the 2000 election cycle. The Republicans lead the way, taking in more than $381 million as compared to about $309 million in hard and soft money by the end of June in 2000. The Democrats have also raised more, bringing in $230 million as compared to about $227 million in hard and soft money four years ago. Furthermore, with six months remaining in the election cycle, both national parties have already raised more hard money than they did in the 2000 election cycle.² In fact, by the end of June, every one of the Democratic and Republican national party committees had already exceeded its hard money total for the entire 2000 campaign.³

This surge in hard money fundraising has allowed the national party committees to replace a substantial portion of the revenues they previously received through unlimited soft money contributions. Through June, these committees have already taken in enough additional hard money to compensate for the $254 million of soft money that they had garnered by this point in 2000, which represented a little more than half of their $495 million in total soft money receipts in the 2000 election cycle.

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¹Terrence McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee Chairman, quoted in Paul Fahri, "Small Donors Grow Into Big Political Force," Washington Post, May 3, 2004, p. A11.
²In 2000, the Republican national party committees raised $361.6 million in hard money, while the Democratic national committees raised $212.9 million. These figures are based on unadjusted data and do not take into account any transfers of funds that may have taken place among the national party committees.
³The election cycle totals for 2000 can be found in Federal Election Commission, "FEC Reports Increase in Party Fundraising for 2000," press release, May 15, 2001. Available at http://www.fec.gov/press/press2001/051501partyfund/051501partyfund.html (viewed July 28, 2004).

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