The success of Russian mediation in Turkish-Syrian reconciliation will not please Washington.
The curtain is coming down on the brutal 11-year Syrian conflict that was launched by former US president and Nobel laureate Barack Obama when the Arab Spring swept across West Asia two decades ago.
The United States suffered another major setback in West Asia in late 2022. The Russian-brokered Syrian-Turkish reconciliation process must be seen as a saga of betrayal and revenge.
In 2011, the Obama administration put enormous pressure on Ankara to lead the regime change project in Syria. Obama blithely assumed that Turkey would gladly serve as the charioteer of “moderate” Islamism for the transformation of West Asia.
But Ankara has taken time to evaluate its foreign policy and adjust to the Arab Spring before responding to the changing landscape in Syria.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan was caught off guard by the uprising in Syria at a time when Ankara was pursuing a “no problem” policy with Turkey’s neighbours. Ankara wasn’t sure how the Arab Spring would unfold and was silent when revolt broke out in Tunisia.
Even on Egypt, Erdogan made an emotional plea for Hosni Mubarak’s departure only when he perceived, correctly, that Obama was disassociating himself from America’s staunch ally in Cairo. Syria was the last test and a real challenge for Erdogan.
Ankara had invested heavily in improving relations with Syria under the so-called Adana Agreement in 1998, after the massive confrontation between the Turkish army and Damascus over hosting Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Initially, Erdogan did not want Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to lose power and advised him to reform. The families of Erdogan and Assad went on vacation together.
Obama had to send the then head of the Central Intelligence Agency, David Petraeus, to visit Turkey twice in 2012 to get Erdogan to engage with the US in operational planning to bring down the Assad government. . It was Petraeus who proposed to Ankara a secret program to arm and train the Syrian rebels.
But already in 2013 Erdogan began to perceive that Obama himself only wanted limited US involvement in Syria and preferred to lead from the rear. In 2014, Erdogan made public that his ties with Obama had declined, saying he was disappointed that he was not getting direct results in the Syrian conflict.
By then, more than 170,000 people had been killed and 2.9 million Syrians had fled to neighboring countries, including Turkey, and the fighting had forced another 6.5 million people from their homes inside Syria.
In short, Erdogan was bitter about being left with the lead and Obama gone. Worse, the Pentagon has begun to align itself with PKK-linked Syrian Kurdish groups. (In October 2014, the US began delivering supplies to Kurdish forces, and in November 2015, US special forces were deployed to Syria.)
Indeed, since then Erdogan has protested in vain because the United States, a NATO ally, had aligned itself with a terrorist group (the YPG of the Syrian Kurds) which threatened Turkey’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In this context, two meetings between the defense ministers and the heads of the intelligence services of Turkey and Syria were held in Moscow on 28 December in the presence of their Russian counterparts.
Erdogan’s reconciliation process with Assad is the quintessential sweet revenge for America’s betrayal. Erdogan has sought the help of Russia, the archetypal enemy country targeted by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to communicate with Assad, who is a pariah in American eyes.
On December 29, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said: “At the meeting [en Moscú]we discussed what we could do to improve the situation in Syria and in the region as soon as possible, ensuring peace, tranquility and stability… We reaffirm our respect for the territorial integrity and sovereign rights of all our neighbours, especially Syria and Iraq, and that our only goal is the fight against terrorism, we have no other goal”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has advised Erdogan in recent years that Turkey’s security problems are best addressed in coordination with Damascus and that the Adana accord could provide a framework for cooperation.
The Turkish Defense Ministry’s reading said that the meeting in Moscow took place in a “constructive atmosphere” and it was agreed to continue the format of the trilateral meetings “to ensure and maintain stability in Syria and the region as a whole “.
Undoubtedly the normalization between Ankara and Damascus will have an impact on regional security and, in particular, on the Syrian war, given the influence Turkey exerts on the remaining Syrian opposition.
A Turkish ground operation in northern Syria may not be necessary if Ankara and Damascus were to reactivate the Adana agreement. Indeed, Akar revealed that Ankara, Moscow and Damascus are working to carry out joint missions on the ground in Syria.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s willingness, right in the midst of the war in Ukraine, to take the helm and lead Turkey’s reconciliation with Syria adds a whole new dimension to the deepening of strategic ties between Moscow and Ankara.
Even for Erdogan, Syria becomes the latest addition to his recent policy initiatives to improve Turkey’s relations with regional states. Normalization with Syria will be welcomed by the Turkish public, and this has implications for Erdogan’s candidacy for a new mandate in the next elections.
From a Syrian perspective, normalization with Turkey will have far more ramifications than the re-establishment of ties with various regional states (starting with the UAE) in recent years, which had fueled the conflict.
Turkey’s equations with Syrian militant groups (e.g., the Syrian National Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), its continued occupation of Syrian territory, Syrian refugees in Turkey (amounting to 3.6 million), etc ., are vital issues affecting the security of Syria .
The United States is shocked by Erdogan’s move to normalize relations with Assad, and moreover with the help of Russia. Now it is even more unlikely that he will give up his military presence in Syria or his alliance with the Syrian Kurdish group YPG (which Ankara considers affiliated with the PKK).
But the YPG will be in trouble. While Syria asks Turkey to withdraw from its territories (Idlib and the so-called areas of operations) and to stop supporting the armed groups, Turkey, in return, will insist on removing the YPG from the border.
Syrian government-aligned newspaper Al-Watan reported, citing sources, that at the tripartite meeting in Moscow, Ankara pledged to withdraw all its forces from Syrian territory.
Indeed, the replacement of YPG militias with Syrian government forces along the borders with Turkey would lead to the weakening of both the YPG and the US military presence. However, the question will remain unanswered about the Kurds’ place in Syria’s future.
The US State Department recently said: “The United States will not improve diplomatic relations with the Assad regime and will not support other countries in improving their relations. The United States urges states in the region to carefully consider the atrocities inflicted by the Assad regime on the Syrian people over the past decade.”
“USA. believes that stability in Syria and the wider region can be achieved through a political process that represents the will of all Syrians.”
Last week’s meetings in Moscow show that Russia’s position in the West Asian region is far from being defined by the Ukrainian conflict. Russian influence in Syria remains intact and Moscow will continue to shape Syria’s transition out of the conflict zone and consolidate its long-term presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.
OPEC+ has gained traction. Russia’s ties with the Gulf Arab states continue to grow. Strategic ties between Russia and Iran are at the highest level in history. And Benjamin Netanyahu’s return as prime minister means that Russian-Israeli ties are set for a restoration. It is clear that Russian diplomacy is on the move in West Asia.
It was widely believed that the geopolitical interests of Russia and Turkey would inevitably collide once the floodgates opened in Ukraine. Herein lies the paradox, because what happened is the opposite.
MK Bhadrakumar
