Malaysia’s ties with Turkey go back a long way. In the Ottoman era, Johor’s Sultan Abdul Bakar had close personal ties with the empire’s ruler, for example. The 2019 KL Summit was also seen by some as an attempt by Turkey, Qatar, and Malaysia to create an Islamic bloc to rival a Saudi-led one, an option that looks less probable as time passes. Nevertheless, both countries have increased cooperation significantly, particularly in the defense and economic sectors.

Also, Turkey and Malaysia share similar positions on the Palestinian issue and Hamas. Erdogan openly supports Hamas, although the recent thaw between Turkey and Israel has led to the expulsion of several of the Palestinian group’s activists. Malaysian leaders have also hosted Hamas leaders in Putrajaya, while former Prime Minister Najib Razak became the country’s first leader to visit Gaza. Much has also been written about the training of Hamas operatives in Malaysia, and recent reports have speculated that the group is eyeing the country as a possible operations base after coming under pressure in Turkey.

Ineffective Sanctions Prompt More Deployments

While Ankara, Sadat, and other Turkish PMCs are denying any involvement in recruiting and deploying mercenaries to fight abroad, security and military experts from the West beg to differ. The Western narrative on Sadat frames the company as a conduit between Ankara and Syrian proxy fighters, linking the Turkish military and security services to combat actions perpetrated by Syrian mercenaries from Libya to Caucasus, while giving Ankara room to deny any official involvement in them.

Turkey realized early on that the careful deployment of mercenaries, from riflemen to special operations units, in important geostrategic areas allowed it to establish beachheads in such countries and send a message to competing powers. At the same time, using such forces limited domestic opposition to putting regular Turkish troops in harm’s way.

Another variable that is helpful to forecast an increased use of mercenaries by Turkey is the limited effect of sanctions.

The international community considered economic sanctions a viable tool to contain Wagner’s expansion in the MENA region. The increasing footprint of the group in Africa has resulted in tighter sanctions from the United Nations, the United States, and Europe. Sixteen European governments, including France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany, cited the involvement of the Russian Federation in providing matériel in support of the Wagner Group’s deployment in Mali, and called on Moscow to revert to responsible and constructive behavior in the region.

Unfortunately, sanctioning a group that is defined as a private company in a non-liberal market economy is a daunting task, especially considering that, even in Russia, private military operations are ostensibly illegal.

Ineffective Western efforts to quell the Wagner Group using economic sanctions have provided Ankara with a straightforward cost-benefit analysis: Deploying mercenaries and PMCs is not going to generate a significant backlash.

Country Risk Indicators and the Mercenaries’ Variable

From the Middle East to the African continent, Russia’s limited but tactically efficient quasi-PMCs enable Moscow to achieve long-term strategic objectives, from expanding its geopolitical sphere of influence to acquiring natural resources and widening the market for its arms. Ankara is taking notes.

Mercenaries and soldiers for hire are not a piece of news in Turkey. Looking at Ottoman history, the image of janissaries is the first to come to mind when looking at foreign professionals specializing in waging war. Yet, comparing the contemporary Turkish PMCs to the Ottoman Empire’s janissaries is beguiling but misleading. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Ottoman army used different types of mercenaries defined by their geographical origin or the task they were paid to accomplish. An example is related to the Okaban, a kind of combat engineer corps that was tasked to build roads and bridges and the related logistic support when the Ottoman army was on the move. Similarly, the famed and feared Ottoman artillery counted on Hungarian and other European specialists’ siege expertise, while the janissaries were part of the standing army.

As happened in the past, it is also essential not to overstate each mercenary unit’s capabilities. One truth from history will still hold: Winning or losing are both bad outcomes for them. In The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli observed that losing is bad because they end up dead, and winning is also a negative outcome because it will end their business. On the same line, the seventeenth-century Ottoman chronicles mention that mercenaries are a financial menace to the empire’s stability.

Hence, private military companies are mainly deployed to preserve insecurity. Russia pioneered the use of mercenaries as a valuable tool in pursuing its foreign policy aims. Turkey is following closely the Russian playbook, fine-tuning such tactics to suit its own purposes. Turkish and Russian use of “manageable chaos” in neighboring countries to their advantage will likely have to be accounted for with greater urgency in threat spectrum assessments.

Dr. Alessandro Arduino is the principal research fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS). He is an associate at Lau China Institute, King’s College London. His most recent book is China’s Private Army: Protecting the New Silk Road (Palgrave, 2018).

Image: A member of Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), seen with a mural of the Islamic State in the background, stands guard in front of a building in the border town of Jarablus, Syria, August 31, 2016. Reuters/Umit Bektas