On December 9, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that a “bright period” had begun in Syria’s history. He is hardly embarrassed about his role in preparing the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. Just a few years ago, Erdogan boasted about his wife’s friendship with the wife of the now former Syrian president, but he did not hide the fact that he considers Syria a lost part of the Ottoman Empire and intends to actively influence the country’s politics. The Turkish authorities have long been pumping their “proxies” in Syria with money and weapons. And although even Ankara hardly expected that the sudden offensive on Aleppo would end so successfully, they intend to take full advantage of its results. The main thing has been done: the influence of Russia and Iran in the region has been practically neutralized.
A sudden rush to Damascus
The rapid advance of armed rebels from Idlib province towards neighboring Aleppo that began on November 27 came as a surprise to many. But not to Turkey, which has provided logistical support to the Syrian National Army, an armed opposition group, for the past few years and supplied it with the most advanced weapons, including drones.
If in the first days of the offensive the Turkish authorities stressed their non-involvement and expressed their commitment to the territorial integrity of Syria, then on December 6, when the rebels were a few dozen kilometers away from Damascus, Erdogan dropped the mask: “Idlib, Hama, Homs and, of course, the final goal is Damascus. We hope that this march of the opposition will continue without any incidents or problems.”
When the rebels were a few dozen kilometers away from Damascus, Erdogan dropped his mask and supported them
The Turkish president, of course, assures that Ankara offered Assad negotiations until the very end, but he refused. The ousted Syrian leader did not comment on this information, but in recent years he has indeed refused any agreements with Erdogan, demanding the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syrian territory as a precondition. Moreover, despite the persuasion of Moscow, which tried to play a mediating role and promised to provide a platform for negotiations between Assad and Erdogan. So it is possible that the Turkish president, seeing the helpless position of his Syrian counterpart, decided to mock him, saying : “He did not accept the outstretched hand.”
Now that Assad has fled Syria and found refuge on Russian soil, Erdogan has a chance to reach Damascus and pray there in the Umayyad Mosque, as he publicly dreamed of 12 years ago, the last time Assad was close to defeat.
The Sultan’s Path
By the time the Arab Spring began in 2011, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been in power in Turkey for about 10 years. For many, it was a model for combining Islamic values and democracy. At the same time, Erdogan himself, coming from Islamist circles, insisted that he was not an Islamist, but a conservative democrat. When revolutions began to occur one after another in the Arab world, the Turkish model was considered a guiding star for the Islamists who then came to the forefront, for example, in Tunisia (the Ennahda party) or Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood movement).
Erdogan, then Turkey’s prime minister, became a veritable Arab street hero. During his visits to Arab countries, he was applauded and welcomed as their own leader, and he, in turn, dispensed fatherly advice on how to combine Islam and democracy.
“A person cannot be secular, but a state can be secular. <…> Libya belongs to the Libyans. May Allah protect you!” Erdogan told a jubilant crowd in Tripoli in September 2011. In the same speech, the Turkish prime minister made an open bid to interfere in the internal affairs of another neighboring country, saying that the civil conflict unfolding in Syria was “Turkey’s internal affair.” He then claimed that the authorities in Damascus “would not be able to hold on” in the face of mass opposition protests. But he had to wait 13 years for that prediction to come true.
Erdogan’s triumph in the Arab world at the time coincided with a deterioration in relations between Turkey and the European Union, which criticized the Turkish prime minister for human rights violations in the country and suspended Ankara’s accession talks. The change in foreign policy also affected the AKP’s domestic policies. After winning the next parliamentary elections in June 2011, Erdogan declared : “Today, Sarajevo has won to the same extent that Istanbul has won. Beirut has won to the same extent that Izmir has won. Damascus has won to the same extent that Ankara has won.”
From that moment on, the Ottoman Empire became a fashion trend in Turkey. For example, in public schools, images of the conqueror of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II, began to appear next to portraits of Ataturk. Turkish cinema began to increasingly turn to historical stories from the time of the Ottoman sultans, and Erdogan called on the population to study the Old Ottoman language: “Whether someone wants it or not, the Old Ottoman language will be studied and taught in this country.”
Since 2011, images of the conqueror of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II, have begun to appear in Turkish schools next to portraits of Ataturk.
The turnaround in the domestic and foreign policy of the AKP that took place at that time, when the Turkish leadership began to demonstrate that it was succeeding not the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, but the Ottoman Empire, is called by experts the term “neo-Ottomanism”, although Erdogan himself avoids using this word.
How Erdogan and Assad Quarreled
“Bashar and I have not only human closeness, but also family friendship. And our wives are close friends. But three years ago I told Bashar: ‘I love you and I know that you love me. I also know that the people love you. But if you do not start reforms, one morning you will wake up and see that there is no longer a people who love you,'” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in 2011.
Assad and Erdogan took over their countries at about the same time. The former inherited power from his father in 2000, while the latter won the general elections in 2002 with his party. They developed friendly relations almost immediately. Moreover, their families became friends and began to spend holidays together. This allowed Turkish-Syrian relations, which had previously been very tense, to normalize.
When the Arab Spring swept Syria in March 2011, Erdogan initially took a cautious stance, calling on Assad to reform. But as he watched Arab dictators fall from power one after another – Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya – the Turkish prime minister became convinced that Assad’s days were numbered.
Turkey gradually became a platform for the Syrian opposition, including the armed one. For example, Ankara never hid its participation in the creation and support of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA). Today it is called the Syrian National Army (SNA) and participated as a united front in the attack of the militants of the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on Damascus.
Türkiye has gradually become a platform for the Syrian opposition, including the armed ones.
As the Syrian crisis worsened, Erdogan dramatically changed his rhetoric toward Assad, calling him a terrorist and promising to one day come to Damascus to pray at the ancient Umayyad Mosque. However, Iranian and Russian intervention in the Syrian conflict on the side of the Syrian president forced the Turkish leader to reconsider his plans.
How Syria was divided into “zones”
After the start of the Russian military operation in Syria in September 2015, Assad managed to regain control over more than 50% of Syrian territory in a short period of time, and armed rebel groups were pushed back to the north of the Arab Republic. The crowning glory of the victorious march of Assad’s army, accompanied by Russian aviation from the air and units of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the ground, was the liberation of the country’s second largest city, Aleppo, from armed rebels in December 2016.
In 2017, special de-escalation zones were created in Syria within the framework of the Astana process with the participation of Russia, Iran and Turkey in order to cease fire. For example, Ankara committed to preventing an outbreak of violence in the de-escalation zone in the northwestern province of Idlib, where armed groups driven out of Aleppo and other regions were concentrated. In addition, the Turkish side had to ensure the opening of two main roads (M5 and M4) and eliminate terrorist organizations in the region.
Formally, to achieve these goals, Türkiye deployed several checkpoints and its military personnel in northern Syria. In practice, however, Ankara saw its role quite differently.
Kurds of discord
One of the main concerns for the Turkish leadership in recent years has been the establishment of Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria: in early 2014, three key Kurdish regions of the Arab Republic: Afrin, Kobani and Qamishli (Cizre) declared their sovereignty. In Turkey, where the Kurdish issue has still not been resolved, this was regarded as a very dangerous precedent. Meanwhile, it was the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that made a decisive contribution to the defeat of the terrorist group Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. For this reason, the Kurds have been actively supported by the United States in recent years.
However, in Ankara they are viewed primarily as a continuation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned in Turkey and declared terrorist, and which waged an underground armed struggle on Turkish territory from 1984 to 2013.
In order to clear out isolated Kurdish armed groups in northern Syria, Turkey has occasionally carried out limited military operations, such as Operation Euphrates Shield (2016–2017) and Operation Olive Branch (2018).
But this was clearly not enough for Erdogan. He craved the complete defeat of the Kurdish armed groups. In this regard, Ankara has recently placed great hopes on the return of Donald Trump to the White House, who, as Turkish officials assume , will begin the withdrawal of American troops from Syria and thereby stop supporting the Kurdish armed groups.
Russia, for its part, has been vocal in its opposition, openly calling any Turkish military presence in Syria an act of occupation. However, the rapid advance of Syrian rebel forces that began in late November appears to have spared Erdogan the need to launch his own operation against the Kurds. That is now being done by the Ankara-backed SNA, which is currently engaged in fierce fighting with the YPG.
Who seized power in Syria?
In the ranks of the Syrian rebels, the SNA should be distinguished from the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is banned internationally by the relevant UN Security Council resolution and is also banned in Turkey by a special law .
HTS, which plays the leading role among the insurgents, is an amalgamation of several jihadist groups, starting with the former Jabhat al-Nusra, which in turn was originally linked to al-Qaeda and emerged from its Iraqi affiliate, al-Qaeda in Iraq (later transformed into the Islamic State in Iraq).
HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani, who was formerly in the service of al-Qaeda and ISIS, is now demonstrating complete independence and autonomy, including from Ankara. “Al-Julani, the former Syrian emir of ISIS, who is on Turkey’s terrorist list, will not treat Erdogan as a master,” says Turkish Middle East expert Fehim Taştekin.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader al-Julani, former ISIS emir in Syria, won’t treat Erdogan as a master
At the same time, al-Julani, who has severed all ties with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, is trying to demonstrate moderation and benevolence towards non-believers and all religious and ethnic minorities in Syria. In any case, HTS will need to shed the terrorist label in order to gain international recognition. Such an option is possible for them, as Geir Pedersen, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Syria, has already hinted at.
But for this, jihadists who lack serious political experience will need high-ranking patrons in the international arena. Erdogan is best suited for this role, as he, in addition to strengthening his international authority, needs to return about 3 million Syrian refugees home from Turkey. The Turkish president has already achieved the main thing in any case: ousting geopolitical competitors in the form of Iran and Russia from Syria.