EXPERT INTERVIEWS — The stunning uprising in Syria will have ripple effects that reach far from Damascus and the other cities that the rebels captured in their rapid rebellion. Some ripple effects are already being felt – the departure of Iranian military and diplomatic personnel from Syria, and Israel’s bombing of Syrian military targets, to name two major developments in the days since Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was driven from power.
Syria’s complex geopolitics (it occupies the Middle East’s “most complex geography,” as Cipher Brief expert Norman Roule put it last week) is evident in its relationship with Turkey, its powerful neighbor to the north. Turkey has played multiple roles in the Syria drama: the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has supported various groups opposed to the Assad regime – including the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the successful rebellion; Turkey is home to some 3 million Syrian refugees, and another 3 million live in camps along the Syrian side of the border; and Turkey and Syria have had a long-shared goal of enmity toward the Kurdish groups that seek autonomy in the borderlands of the two countries.
Perhaps most significantly, Turkey has occupied territory in northern Syria since August 2016, launching military action there against Islamic State fighters as well as Kurdish forces.
In the aftermath of the Syrian rebellion, Cipher Brief CEO Suzanne Kelly spoke two experts on Turkey in our expert network: Glenn Corn and Edward Bogan, both former Senior CIA officers, to discuss the country’s role in these fast-moving events, and Turkey’s stake in a post-Assad Syria.
These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Turkey’s support of the rebels
Corn: I think the Turks played a major role because they never abandoned the Syrian opposition. They've maintained relations. They've provided assistance. They've kept a steady hand. If you saw the first comments (the HTS leader Abu Mohammad] al-Golani made when he went into Aleppo, they were very moderate comments – an appeal to the international community and the community inside of Syria, basically trying to say that I'm not an extremist, we're not going to be extremist. We're not going to go after religious minorities or other ethnic groups.
We'll see if he can live up to that, but I am sure that the Turks had a hand in managing that marketing package.
Bogan: Turkey has an incredibly important role in the region and it sits at a table with a lot of other dominant actors, including Russia, including the United States, including Israel. There are overlapping equities and individual equities that are competing. I look at Turkey here as potentially having been probably more of a catalyst for what's taken place than anything.
I suspect Turkey made some moves to be fairly aggressive, to reset some things in their favor. Whether this entire outcome was the vision, I don't know that that's the case at all. But once you start a fire, a fire burns and controlling that is more art than science.
Turkey’s influence in the region
Corn: [The rebellion] probably gives the Turks some advantage, because they're in a key position and they're probably going to use that to negotiate things they want with other players, including the U.S. and the Russians. My understanding is that negotiations are ongoing, according to media reporting, with the Russians about their bases in Latakia and Tartus in Syria, and how they're going to either retrograde, or whether they're going to stay there at all. And the Turks are key right now, given their relationship with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA).
Turkey could now have a better relationship with Syria. Some people are concerned they're going to try and expand their influence into Syria. Some people are claiming it's Erdogan trying to recreate the Ottoman Empire, because Syria was once part of the Ottoman Empire. I'm skeptical about that. But they are definitely going to want to increase their political influence.
Turkey’s Syrian refugees
Corn: This is a big win for Turkey in one way, because a lot of Syrian refugees can return. There's a lot of pressure on the Turkish government given the number of Syrian refugees in the country – it’s the largest number of Syrian refugees anywhere in the world. The largest number per capita is in Lebanon, but the largest number overall is in Turkey, which has been a big political issue and put great pressure on the economy of Turkey.
Now they can start returning home. Of course, the Russians had been able to blackmail Ankara for years by using the threat of more waves of refugees. That threat has been reduced or eliminated, at least temporarily.
On the Turkish-Syrian border, the ISIS threat
Bogan: Looking at HTS and who they are and what this means, there's an awful lot of questions to answer about governance, about what's going to happen to the various different ethnic groups there. There's also the question of ISIS detainees being held (in northeast Syria) and what happens to them. And we're talking about tens of thousands, low tens of thousands of these detainees. What's the plan? Are they going to get freed? What are the implications of that?
Corn: Turkey and all the border countries are concerned that the groups that are now behaving moderately could go back to their old ways, or some of them at least, which would mean a return to the behavior of al-Qaeda, ISIS, other extremist groups, which is obviously of concern to everybody on the borders. And I'm sure people in Syria as well.
As for the [ISIS] prisoners, my understanding is they're at al-Hol, which is controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) [led by the] People’s Protection Units (YPG), by the Syrian Kurds that the U.S. has been supporting. That's one of the reasons why we've continued to support the Kurds, because we're concerned that if we lose control of al-Hol, there'll be an outflux of ISIS fighters.
I think right now the concern is that if the Turks or their proxies, the SNA especially, go after the Kurds and if fighting starts, this will weaken the Kurds' ability to control al-Hol. That's the argument that the Kurds have made. The Turks, I think, are going to try to make it clear that they are in a position to secure that area and they also have no interest in letting ISIS expand or reform in any sizable manner, because it's a threat to Turkey as well. The Turks will say over and over again, they've suffered more from ISIS attacks than the U.S. did, given what ISIS did in Turkey. So I'm sure there are going to be a lot of negotiations.
The way forward
Corn: My prediction is that the Turks are going to put pressure on the incoming administration [of Donald Trump] to end U.S. support for the Syrian Kurds. I'm sure there are going to be a lot of negotiations. If you remember, President Trump wanted to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria during his first term, and then he was convinced not to do that. The Turks were upset about that.
My own advice to the incoming team would be, OK, we should have that discussion, but we should also have some demands for the Turks in exchange for ending our policy now. But also, I've argued for years that Turkey is a much more important strategic partner for the U.S. than the Kurds. And some people don't like to hear that, but I think that's the fact.
And the Turks just demonstrated this. The Turks will say that they stuck it to the Russians in Libya, in the South Caucasus in Nagorno-Karabakh with the Azeris, and in Syria now. They’ll often say, We're the only NATO country that's gone head-to-head with the Russians. And it's something we should probably listen to.
Bogan: Looking at it from the prism of the more dominant players that have had a stake in different aspects of the region, Iran's holdings and Iran's sort of arc is significantly diminished since Israel's response to the October 7th attacks, and most recently the last six months of operations that they've been conducting, to really change so much of the region in their favor and against Iran's favor. This is a continuation of that. I think someone like Erdogan is not going to miss an opportunity to see that as well. He has his own rivalries with Israel and, watching that take place, there probably was a necessity to express Turkey's interests here as well.
Now what does that mean for us? Turkey is a member of NATO. It’s easy to say this is a “frenemy” state because it's difficult to deal with. But this is realpolitik. This is the way the rest of the world works, when we're not in sort of a values-based silo. Erdogan is an important player and Turkey is an important player both in the region, but also in broader issues like the Russia-Ukraine war and a range of other parts of the globe that have a wide array of disruptive things happening in them right now. So having someone like Erdogan as a partner in NATO, and putting a significant thumbprint on Syria’s outcomes right now is something we absolutely have to pay very close attention to, and see how the dust settles here.
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