Turkey, the U.S., Russia, and the Syrian Civil War.

• Author: Hale, William
• Position: COMMENTARY

Although a member of NATO, which continues to stress its attachment to the alliance, in several policy areas Turkey is now closer to Moscow than to Washington. This paradox has been abruptly demonstrated by international reactions to the Turkish offensive in Northeastern Syria since October 2019. More broadly, it can also be seen as a delayed response to the end of the Cold War. Without the security threat from Russia, Turkish governments felt free to relax their relations with their northern neighbors, and develop political and economic relations with them. Changes in the Middle East have also been instrumental in this shift. Within the region, the most important transformation of the past decade has been the dramatic decline of American power, combined with the unexpected re-emergence of Russia as a powerful actor, especially in Syria. On the one side, America's bitter experiences in Iraq between 2003 and 2012 sharply reduced domestic public support for any further military involvement in the region. America's interests must be protected, it was urged, but with the minimum number of American boots on the ground. On the other side, Vladimir Putin, apparently unhindered by parliamentary or media opposition, was anxious to reassert Russia's role as a global power after the disastrous years under Boris Yeltsin. In his campaign to rescue the Assad regime, as Russia's only firm ally in the region, and with Iranian support, he has been given an almost free hand in Syria. Turkey, like other regional actors, cannot openly resist this: to play any effective role it is obliged to work through Russia, like it or not.

The U.S., Russia, and the Syrian Civil War (2012-2017)

The turning point in this process began in August 2012, when President Barack Obama apparently pledged to take effective action if Bashar al-As-sad's regime used chemical weapons in Syria's escalating civil war. (1) What form this action would take was unclear, but the unanswered question became impossible to ignore on August 21, 2013, when the Syrian regime forces used Sarin nerve gas against civilian targets in Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, reportedly killing over 1,000 people. President Obama's response on August 31 was that he was prepared to launch missile attacks against Syrian government targets. He first went to Congress to ask permission for this, although he was not constitutionally obliged to do so. In the event, the President's request was turned down without a floor vote in either House, although it would have limited the action to 60 days, with a possible extension to 90 days, and specifically prohibited the use of ground troops. (2)

Of course, we cannot know the exact extent of, or how effective, the threatened missile attacks against Syria in 2013 would have been. In the worst case scenario, the conflict could have escalated out of control, worsening rather than improving the plight of the Syrian people. Against this, it is strongly argued that if such an attack had been carried out at the time, Assad could have been forced to accept a ceasefire or even a settlement of the civil war, as large parts of his country were controlled by the rebels. As a result of America's inaction, Russia was able to seize the initiative. In September 2013, under pressure from both Washington and Moscow, the Syrian regime agreed to surrender its chemical weapons stocks, under international supervision, (3) a process which was reported to have been completed by the summer of 2014. (4)

Tragically, the Western powers' failure to act put Russia in a position of dominance, and Assad was able to carry on the civil war for years to come. The result was the emergence of far more militant groups on the rebel side, notably the fanatics of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or Daesh). This prolonged the war by some three to four years, making it hard for the west to identify who was the enemy Assad or Daesh. To escape appalling suffering, millions of Syrian refugees fled into neighboring countries, with at least 3.5 million in Turkey, and many trying to continue into Europe under heartrending conditions. Therefore, the Syrian civil war surged onto the doorstep of European states that had done nothing to stop it.

Turkey, Syria, and the Start of the Civil War (1998-2013)

The refugee influx came as the latest upheaval in the roller-coaster ride of Turkey's relations with Syria since the latter gained independence in 1946. Until 1998 there was almost constant tension between the two countries, caused by Syrian resistance to the annexation of Alexandretta province (Hatay) from Syria to Turkey in 1939. Later disputes arose over distribution of the waters of the river Euphrates, flowing from Turkey into Syria, and above all by Syrian support for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which carried out terrorist attacks on civilian as well as military targets in Turkey from bases in Syria. (5) A turning point came in the winter of 1998-1999 when Hafez al-Assad, Syria's then President, came under direct military pressure from Turkey to end his support for the PKK. With the Soviet Union then approaching its death throes, and thus unable to act on his behalf, and with no support from the other Arab states, the Syrian President threw in the towel by expelling the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan from Syrian-controlled territory in October 1998. After travelling to Russia, Italy, and Greece, Ocalan was captured by a Turkish security team, with the help of the CIA, in Nairobi in February 1999. He was duly tried and imprisoned in Turkey. Meanwhile, in October 1998, Turkish and Syrian officials met in Adana to sign a historic agreement under which the Syrian side promised to stop supporting the PKK. A hotline was established between Ankara and Damascus to prevent future clashes, with joint inspection of security measures on both sides of the frontier.

The Turco-Syrian detente of 1998 ushered in an unprecedented honeymoon in relations, which lasted until the summer of 2011. Following the death of Hafez al-Assad in June 2000, Ahmet Necdet Sezer became the first Turkish President to set foot in Damascus when he attended the funeral. Bashar al-Assad, who had succeeded his father in what was virtually a hereditary dictatorship, paid a return visit to Ankara in January 2004. With over-optimistic hopes on both sides that Bashar would be more liberal and more open to the West than his father, there was a steady flow of mutual visits, a burgeoning of cross-frontier trade, the abolition of mutual visa requirements, and the establishment of a High Level Cooperation Council between the two countries. In effect Syria became the centerpiece of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's ambitious 'zero-problems with neighbors' strategy, which he hoped to expand into the rest of the region.

Tragically, this process was ended by the false dawn of the Arab Spring', and the Syrian regime's reaction to it. Initially, it was thought that the 'Spring' would not affect Syria, but when oppositional demonstrations broke out in March 2011 the regime reacted with predictable ruthlessness. This set off a civil war, which had killed almost 5,000 people by the end of the year. During April-May 2011 President Erdogan, then the prime minister, tried a positive approach, by trying to persuade Assad to enact social and economic reforms so as to allay the discontent. When this proved fruitless, he changed his tune, describing the regime's crackdown on the opposition as 'savagery.' From now on, the overthrow of the Assad regime became the stated aim of the Erdogan government. Over the following four years, it put this principle into practice by hosting a mainly Sunni Arab political resistance group currently known as the Syrian Interim Government, and an associated military organization, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), originally mainly made up of Sunni Arab deserters from Assad's army. After 2013, however, neither of these achieved much success, as the Damascus government gradually regained its strength, with Russian and Iranian support.

Turkey and the Syrian Kurds (2014-2018)

By 2014, attention was shifting back to the position of the Kurdish population of Northeastern Syria, with serious implications for Turkish foreign policy. In July 2012, Syrian government forces had withdrawn from the area, which then emerged as a separate region, known as Rojava. This enjoyed de facto autonomy, under the control of the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party (PYD) and its military wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG). Initially, during 2013-2014, the Turkish government tried to reach an accord with the PYD, inviting its leader Salih Muslim to Ankara for secret talks in which it was proposed that the YPG should link up with the FSA in a joint platform against the Assad regime. (6) Apparently, Muslim turned down the offer. Hence, he was strongly opposed by Ankara, which identified the PYD/YPG as the Syrian extension of the PKK, as did the Iraqi Kurdish...