Turkey’s Syria Conundrum

Once upon a time, Turkey’s then-prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hosted Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, for a family holiday in Turkey and planned a Middle East Union together with Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. But the Arab Spring changed all of that. Assad ruled with a savagery that surpassed that of his father, Hafez, until his downfall at the hands of an opposition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) last weekend. 

Later, Assad became “the murderer al-Assad,” and now President Erdogan declared he would soon pray in the Ummayad mosque in Damascus. This, however, has taken longer than he expected. To replace Assad’s Alawite-led regime and substitute it with Sunni rule, Erdogan has employed both subterfuge and an alliance with a motley band of jihadis. 

In a gaffe at Harvard University in 2014, then-Vice President Joe Biden, in a Q&A, stated that America’s allies in the region, Turkey, the Saudis, and the Emirates, were the largest problem in Syria. 

“They were so determined to take down Assad, and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad—except that the people who were being supplied, were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis who were coming from other parts of the world.” 

Turkey’s perpetual problem has been with Kurdish nationalism, ranging from the Sheikh Said rebellion in 1925 to the so-called “dirty war” with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party). This still resonates today with the weekly demonstrations by the “Saturday mothers,” demanding to learn the whereabouts of their loved ones. 

Ironically, it was Erdogan who was the first Turkish leader to admit Turkey had a Kurdish problem, which led to the Oslo talks and a two-year ceasefire until 2015. However, in a bait-and-switch deal, in July 2015, Erdogan offered Obama the Incirlik air base in return for what amounted to a free hand against the Kurds. 

A second peace process has been initiated by the governing AKP’s (Justice and Development Party) partner, the MHP (National Movement Party), but this has been handicapped by the removal of legally elected Kurdish mayors and the humanitarian disaster caused by Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish-held northeast Syria. 

Francesco Siccardi’s analysis clearly demonstrates the role of Syria in Turkey’s foreign policy. The author contends that Turkey’s policy in Syria is driven by domestic politics and the need to secure electoral support through an aggressive, nationalistic foreign policy. 

Turkey’s intervention and actual occupation of areas of Syria is marked by three cross-border operations in August 2016 (“Euphrates Shield”), in January 2018 (“Olive Branch”) and October 2019 (“Peace Spring”), and internally in Idlib in February 2020 (“Spring Shield”). The latter provided a jumping-off point for HTS’s successful campaign. 

The first was a rebuff to the United States, as the operation was launched the same day as Joe Biden touched down in Ankara to reassure Turkey of American support after the attempted coup in July 2016. 

Olive Branch led to the occupation of Afrin, a Kurdish enclave in northwest Syria, and Peace Spring was an incursion into northeast Syria, another rebuff to U.S. support for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the war against ISIS. 

Turkey’s control and administration of areas of northern Syria makes a mockery of Turkey’s support for the preservation of Syria’s territorial integrity. 

In his analysis, Francesco Siccardi mentions the strategic realignment between Turkey and Russia that has helped both countries pursue their respective objectives in Syria: the survival of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime for Moscow and the weakening of the Syrian Kurds for Ankara.

After Assad’s flight, Moscow’s hand has weakened, and there are signs of withdrawal, although it maintains control of the Khmeimim air base and its naval base at Tartus for now. Turkey, however, is touted as the outside power with the most substantial hand in steering Syria’s political transition. Erdogan has gone so far as to claim, “Now, there are only two leaders in the world. They are myself and Vladimir Putin.”

Turkey is adamantly opposed to the Syrian Kurds playing any role in shaping their country’s future, which flies against the fact they make up some 10 percent of the population and occupy a large area of the country. 

Turkey also has a vested interest in the return of the four million Syrian refugees that Turkey, with European support, has hosted since 2011. 

An interim Syrian government has formed. Yet, given the influence of HTS, there is concern about its direction. 

In January 2017, Russia, Turkey, and Iran convened a meeting in Astana in an attempt to end the six-year conflict in Syria. The meeting was attended not only by the Syrian government but also by the Syrian opposition and a UN envoy. 

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov proposed a draft constitution for a settlement, which the Syrian opposition rejected. Nevertheless, it contains elements that could provide a basis for a resolution. For example, it proposed dropping the “Arab” from the country’s official name, the “Syrian Arab Republic,” and rejecting Islamic sharia as the basis for law. It also recognized Kurdish cultural autonomy and the equal use of Arabic and Kurdish in this respect.

As Syria’s new government has an acute need for international support, not least financially, the Russian draft merits further study. 

Robert Ellis is a Turkey analyst and commentator. He is also an international advisor at RIEAS (Research Institute for European and American Studies) in Athens.

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