The Signs Point to “Hybrid Warfare”

While I was preparing this article, my wife was in the kitchen getting dinner ready.

At one point she asked: “What’s your article about?”

About hybrid warfare, I said.

The second question came at once: “What is hybrid warfare?”

Hybrid warfare is mixed warfare. It is a new type of irregular warfare that emerges from a mixture of conventional war and classic guerrilla and counter-guerrilla methods. It is a broad concept that covers asymmetric low-intensity warfare, psychological warfare, cyber warfare, controlled civil war and even space warfare together.

My wife said: “What is this! You listed 50 kinds of war, yet there is only one  ‘peace’,  but people don’t just fight wars, they keep developing new ways of fighting them. Good luck with it, this isn’t a subject for me.”

I very much liked my wife’s observation, “You listed fifty kinds of war, yet there is only one peace”.  Yes, it would be no exaggeration to say that the history of humanity consists of wars. A world unable to establish lasting peace carries on its wars with new tactics and methods.

The period in which these tactics and methods developed fastest was that of the two world wars of the last century and what followed. The destruction caused by the weapons of mass destruction used in these wars pushed states into new searches regarding hybrid warfare. When we examine the techniques and methods of war used during the Cold War, in which the United States (US) and Soviet Russia played the leading roles, we see that many of them were carried out in keeping with the concept of hybrid warfare.

Although the term hybrid warfare entered the literature only recently, an examination of the twenty years after the Cold War shows that the US, Britain, France and Russia have led the way in the practice of hybrid warfare methods, while Iran has made considerable progress.

Although it is a new concept, it can be said that an important aim behind such extensive use of hybrid warfare methods is to inflict damage on the target country, regardless of time and place, through intelligence organisations, paramilitary elements, propaganda instruments and even mafia groups.

The hardest thing in hybrid warfare is identifying the adversary who wants to carry out an attack.  Because the attackers mostly operate anonymously and remain invisible. Even if by chance they leave a trace somewhere, their training makes it easy for them to slip away from events. Moreover, the attackers carry out their activities in a highly coordinated way without crossing the threshold of a formal war. This is exactly what makes defence against hybrid attacks so difficult. If there is no open attack or attacker, the tactics and techniques to be developed against it naturally become correspondingly harder. Causing confusion on the other side by maintaining ambiguity and invisibility is the most powerful weapon used in hybrid warfare. With this weapon the attacker drags the defender into indecision and leaves the other side stuck in the dilemma:  “Are we still at peace, or are we at war?”

Here I want to examine two examples: Russia’s occupation of Crimea and 15 July.

Russia’s Occupation of Crimea

As is well known, the first chain of events began in 2013 with protests in the capital Kyiv against the pro-Russian government, attended by 800,000 people. Two demonstrators were shot dead by snipers, and the activist Yuri Verbytsky, who supported the protests, was abducted and tortured to death. Despite all this, the demonstrations grew, and in the end the pro-Russian government was overthrown. Thereupon Russia, which saw its activities and interests in Ukraine, and above all keeping hold of Crimea, as a red line for its country’s security, moved into action in Crimea without losing time.

Meanwhile, street demonstrations were being organised by Aksyonov, a pro-Russian former crime boss. These groups, supported by Russian irregular warfare units, forcibly removed the Crimean Prime Minister Mohyliov and succeeded in installing Aksyonov, whose party held only three seats in parliament, as Prime Minister. Behind this success lay, essentially, the invisibility and ambiguity of the activities carried out in the background. Because no countermeasures of any kind could be taken in this respect.

In addition, during the process, while militias, weapons and ammunition were sent from Russia to these regions under many pretexts and methods, humanitarian aid convoys above all, pressure was constantly applied in the background on the pro-Ukrainian population to leave for the West.

One of the most important elements of Russia’s military activities in Ukraine was “information warfare”. While the Russian government waged an intense propaganda campaign targeting the population living in Crimea and especially in eastern Ukraine, it openly told the outside world that it might intervene to protect the rights of the Russians living in this region if they were threatened. In this way third parties were prevented from fully understanding the situation.

This confusion caused indecision in everyone, above all in the NATO and Ukrainian armies. Indeed, Western countries that saw armed groups in professional green uniforms without insignia setting up barricades and occupying town halls, barracks, airports and television stations, along with certain professional civilians supporting them, could not fully make sense of or assess all that was being done.

Essentially, these tactics and techniques, applied behind the scenes in coordination with Russia, were hybrid warfare methods in action. The annexation of Crimea by Russia, the aim of these methods, had long been achieved, and Russia’s build-up of forces on the border cemented it.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea is a classic example of hybrid warfare entirely in line with the literature.

15 July from the Perspective of Hybrid Warfare

Another important example for understanding what hybrid warfare is, is the developments of the 15 July process and the situation the Turkish Armed Forces were thrown into. We can see the hybrid methods Russia displayed during its occupation of Crimea on the night of 15 July 2016 as well.

Dozens of examples could be given, from snipers to fanatics beheading people, from the broadcasts of journalists linked to intelligence units to the drawing of the people into the streets through the media, and from there to the phantom helicopters flying to Marmaris. I do not want to drag the subject out by republishing details known to everyone here.

But when the developments before and after 15 July are examined, it may be thought that there are serious signs that hybrid warfare methods were used. Here is why:

In war there are parties. War takes place between countries. It has political, military and diplomatic objectives. This is also true of hybrid wars. In this context, it can be argued that the political objective of 15 July was, without declaring war, to eliminate Turkey’s main institutions and to build a new system in line with the interests of the powers behind the scenes.

If what happened that night and afterwards had taken place during a conventional war and the country had been occupied, if the occupying forces had chosen a person ‘X’, associated with serious allegations of corruption, to run the country and rendered the Grand National Assembly effectively dysfunctional, if they had dismissed from their professions about half of the generals in the Turkish Armed Forces, thousands of staff officers and pilots and about a third of the judges and prosecutors, and thrown a large part of them into prison, the reaction of Turkish society would have been “to resist the occupation”. But we can see the public greeting the same intended results with applause and congratulations as hybrid warfare effortlessly achieving its political objective.

We noted in our definition above that hybrid warfare consists in causing confusion on the other side by maintaining ambiguity and invisibility, and that this is the most powerful weapon used. So who, then, was in the invisible space on the other side on 15 July?

Because of the nature of hybrid warfare, it is not at all easy to give a definitive answer to this question for 15 July. But in this context many actors can be brought to light, from Britain, which was generous in supporting the AKP government’s post-15 July policies, to Russia, which was paid billions of dollars through arms deals for missiles that will rot in depots. In addition, the appointment of Richard Moore, who served as Britain’s Ambassador to Turkey in 2014-2017, as head of the British intelligence service MI6, and the statements of the German intelligence agency BND after 15 July that it “did not believe the official narrative” can be considered in this context.

From this point on, the regime growing ever more aggressive, both so that 15 July is not brought to light and for the sake of its own survival, will suit actors such as Britain, Iran and Russia, which have long since collected what they were owed.

In Conclusion

While the definition of peace does not change, the definition and methods of war have changed over time, and in recent times they have evolved into hybrid warfare and its methods.

We can say that both the methods used during Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the practices that emerged in Turkey on 15 July contain hybrid warfare methods.

In order to survive, the current AKP government will continue in the period ahead to develop hybrid warfare methods and use them recklessly. Let us end our article by noting this observation here.