Turkey tiptoes through the melee to soften al-Assad
Ankara and Damascus have been at daggers drawn for years but now have reasons to talk. Syria wants Turkish troops gone, while Turkey wants its Syrian refugees to go home. Let the bargaining begin.
ERIC LEE / AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (right) at the G20 Summit on November 18, 2024, in Rio de Janeiro.
Turkey tiptoes through the melee to soften al-Assad
With the support of Russia and Iran, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad outmanoeuvred the opposition during his country’s civil war, which began with the Arab Spring in 2011. In Damascus, he retained power. It was no triumph, however. He is no longer in control of huge swathes of northern Syria.
Unlike his father, Hafez, during the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Syria in the 1980s, Bashar has not been able to claim absolute victory. Thousands of armed fighters are ensconced to the north, while Kurdish groups control land east of the Euphrates.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—a Sunni Islamist militia—has settled in Idlib, while Syrian opposition groups that work closely with the Turkish military have declared self-governance in other areas. In others, the Americans are present.
Territorial integrity
Turkey and the United States are far from the only foreign belligerents in Syria. Israeli sorties have ramped up significantly since October 2023, with Israeli planes striking Iranian and Hezbollah capabilities with renewed ferocity. The last such strike was in Palmyra, which is said to have killed far more than has been reported.
At the recent extraordinary Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh, al-Assad had harsh words for Israel and its actions in Gaza and Lebanon but made no mention of Israeli strikes against Syrian territory. Although Syria has some military defensive capabilities, it is not using them against the Israelis, possibly on the advice of Russia.
The US and Turkey are far from the only foreign belligerents in Syria. Israeli sorties have ramped up significantly since October 2023.
All this has an impact on the process of re-establishing normal relations between Turkey and Syria. President Erdoğan of Turkey argues that Syria's territorial integrity is threatened by Kurdish aims of establishing a state-like structure in Syria's north. He also says Israel's destabilising actions threaten Syria's fragile calm, calling on al-Assad to stand together against what he describes as common threats.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan echoed this, adding that Israel's attempts to expand the war in the region now threaten the achievements of the Astana Process—a trilateral forum in which Turkey, Russia, and Iran have been trying to end the armed conflict in Syria and pave the way to a negotiated settlement.
Another factor in any possible Turkey-Syria thaw is Kurdish-Israeli relations. Israel has always had good relations with the Kurds—especially under Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani— even when Tel Aviv was on very good terms with Ankara.
As Israel's relations with Turkey deteriorated, and as Turkey grew closer to Hamas, Israel increased its support to the Kurds, the Greeks, and the Greek Cypriots—all of whom have grievances against Ankara, calling to mind the ancient proverb: 'My enemy's enemy is my friend.'
In his first speech as Israel's new foreign minister on 11 November, Gideon Sa'ar made this explicit, saying the Kurds were Israel's "natural ally", that they were "a victim of oppression and aggression from Iran and Turkey", and that Tel Aviv should strengthen ties to Kurdish groups.
"The Kurdish people are a great nation, one of the great nations without political independence," he said. "It is a national minority in four different countries, in two of which it enjoys autonomy: de facto in Syria and de jure in the Iraqi constitution."
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad shakes hands with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the People's Palace in Damascus on October 11, 2010.
In Turkey, there has been some criticism of President Erdoğan's Syria policies. He and al-Assad have not seen eye-to-eye for more than a decade, their animosity stemming from al-Assad's crackdown in 2011 and made worse when Turkish forces began launching raids against the YPG—an armed Kurdish group that Turkey considers terrorist, in northern Syria in 2016.
Years have now passed, and while Erdoğan is keen to normalise relations, al-Assad seems cooler. He has set pre-conditions, namely Turkish troop withdrawal from Syrian territory and Ankara ending its support to Syrian opposition groups.
Turkey has affirmed its commitment "in principle" to withdrawal but wants that to be discussed later. "I am still hopeful of al-Assad and that we can get together and put Syria-Turkey relations back on track," said Erdoğan recently.
In a speech on 21 November, Fidan said Turkey's priorities (when it came to Syria) were clearing northern Syria of terrorists, preserving the unity and territorial integrity of Syria, making progress in the political process between Turkey and Syria, and the safe and voluntary return of Syrians in Turkey.
The US, Russia, and Iran
A NATO ally, Turkey's relations with the United States have been strained over Syria. Ankara is unhappy at Washington's backing of the YPG. In addition, there are around 900 US troops in northern Syria and al-Tanf in the south. Like al-Assad, Ankara would rather they left.
The disgruntlement is mutual, however. Erdoğan appears to have entrusted Turkey's Syria diplomacy to a US arch-enemy, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet Ankara knows that Moscow is the real power player in Syria, and at the annual BRICS Summit earlier this month, Erdoğan met Putin to discuss things.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the BRICS summit in Kazan on October 24, 2024.
Although Putin is amenable to helping Erdoğan, it was noteworthy that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russia's Special Envoy for Syria Aleksandr Lavrentyev were both clear that Turkey's military presence in northern Syria is illegal. It is unlikely that they did so without Putin's blessing.
Another important factor in the Syrian equation is Iran. Once a major ally of Damascus, Iran struggles to preserve its influence today. Almost all actors involved in Syria want Iran's influence diminished. Al-Assad may be of a similar mind.
Finding a way through
Turkey's Syria policy means that it is juggling balls, simultaneously talking to different parties with different interests. These include the al-Assad regime, Syria's opposition, militias in the north, Washington, Tehran, and Moscow. There are also reports of secret Turkish-Kurdish talks—probably through intermediaries—although this is unconfirmed.
While Erdoğan is keen to normalise relations, al-Assad seems cooler. He has set pre-conditions, namely, Turkish troop withdrawal.
Leader of the Nationalist Action Party in Turkey, Devlet Bahçeli—a major Erdoğan ally—recently called on Abdullah Öcalan (the imprisoned leader of the Kurdish terrorist group PKK) to disband the PKK and declare an end to the armed struggle in return for his freedom. This has refocused attention on Kurdish representation in Turkish politics.
Part of the domestic pressure on Erdoğan regarding Syria comes from the huge numbers of Syrians who have been living in Turkey for the past decade or more. Until now, the Turkish government has managed this mostly with palliative measures, but most Turks expect a feasible government policy that facilitates their return.
Ankara knows that real progress needs to be made to improve conditions in Syria before the refugees can go back home. For that, al-Assad's cooperation is needed. He has named his price. Whether it is met remains to be seen.
