British foreign secretary warns against pushing Erdogan into the cold over Syria

Nato unity is key for UK as it reacts to Turkey's Syrian incursion

The poll predicted that Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is at risk of losing his seat. Reuters

As Britain's main political parties held foreign affairs and defence hustings on  Thursday, the dilemmas of realpolitik were highlighted by the foreign secretary's intervention on Turkey.

Challenged over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's policy in Syria, Dominic Raab told an audience at Chatham House that keeping Turkey aligned with Nato was the clear British priority as it handled the fallout.

With the Nato partners due to meet at the 70th anniversary summit next week, Mr Raab said the country's Syria policy remained to support the UN-led peace process in Geneva. After the Turkish incursion and subsequent drawdown of the US commitment to north-east Syria, British officials prioritised a co-ordinated response with the other large European states.

Increasing pressure on President Erdogan to reverse course risked a Turkish realignment with Moscow which has sought to bolster ties with Turkey.

"We should be careful of pushing Turkey into loving arms of Putin -- that would be a major, major blunder," he said. "Not withstanding our frustration with Turkey’s role in Syria."

Mr Raab also urged engagement with regional conflicts to keep Britain as it sough to shoulder its international responsibilities. "You have to work with your partners," he said as he reference the conflict in Yemen and what was at stake there. "Yemen is part of a proxy power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The most effective thing we can do is work with our international partners to try and end that conflict."

Mr Raab was facing the Labour Party spokesman Emily Thornberry and Chuka Umunna for the Liberal Democrats.

Mrs Thornberry took issue with perceptions the party and it's leader Jeremy Corbyn was committed to Nato, a consensus position set out by Labour's policy making party conference.

Meanwhile the leaders of Britain’s two main parties faced criticisms over previous security gaffes in the only defence debate of the UK’s election campaign.

Labour’s defence spokeswoman Nia Griffith said it was “extraordinarily stupid” for Boris Johnson, the prime minister to withhold the publication of a parliamentary report which examined the threat posed by Russia to the UK.

It reportedly assesses allegations about the flow of Russian money into British politics and what role that Russia played in 2016 in support of Brexit. The government has said it would publish the report after the election.

Ms Griffith also cited the former foreign secretary’s comments at a parliamentary committee about the reasons for charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe being in Iran when she was arrested. His comments were seized on by Iranian media and her family believe it worsened the 40-year-old’s situation in prison, where she has been held since 2016.

Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn, the opposition leader, was criticised for his comments about Hamas, Hezbollah who he described as “friends” while a backbench MP.

“I don’t think he knows whose side he is on,” said defence secretary Ben Wallace at the event at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.

Ms Griffith sought to play down criticisms of Mr Corbyn after he suggested that it would have been better to have captured Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi alive. The ISIS leader killed himself when he detonated an explosives vest.

“When people wear suicide vests and put themselves and others in immediate danger, we have to do what it takes,” said Ms Griffith. “There’s a case for eliminating those individuals.”

Critics have highlighted comments by Mr Corbyn in which he said he would never press the nuclear button if he was in charge of the country. They said it would embolden Britain’s enemies.

Mr Umunna said Mr Corbyn offered "an anti-Western prospectus" that would be deeply damaging to the international rules-based order that was centred on Nato and established after the Second World War.