The Ottoman Empire strikes back: How Turkey became the main beneficiary of the Assad regime fall

RU

The pounce on Damascus

The rapid advance of armed rebels from Idlib province towards neighboring Aleppo caught many off guard. It was less of a surprise to Turkey, which for years had been supporting the Syrian National Army (SNA) — the opposition's armed forces — supplying it with state-of-the-art weapons including drones.

In the initial days after Nov. 27, the Turkish government stressed its non-involvement in the offensive and expressed commitment to Syria's territorial integrity. But on Dec. 6, with the rebels already just a few dozen kilometers away from Damascus, Erdogan shed his mask: “Idlib, Hama, Homs, and of course, the target is Damascus. We hope the opposition march will continue without any incidents or trouble.”

The Turkish president maintains, of course, that Ankara continued offering Assad the opportunity to enter negotiations right up until the last minute, but to no avail. The deposed Syrian leader has refrained from comment, but in recent years he indeed rejected any potential agreements with Erdogan, demanding as a precondition the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syrian territory. Assad did so despite the entreaties of Moscow, which sought to assume a mediating role and offered to provide a platform for talks between the Syrian and Turkish leaders. And so Erdogan, seeing his vis-a-vis in Damascus on the ropes, may have decided to mock him by saying: “He did not accept the offered assistance.”

Now that Assad has fled Syria to find refuge on Russian soil, Erdogan has a chance to visit Damascus and pray namaz in the Umayyad Mosque — as he publicly dreamed of doing 12 years ago at a different moment when Assad appeared to be on the brink of defeat.

The way of the sultan

When the Arab Spring began in 2011, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK) had been in power in Turkey for right around a decade. Erdogan himself, despite his Islamist background, assured skeptics that he was not an Islamist, but a conservative democrat. When the wave of revolutions swept across the Arab world, the Turkish model was seen as a kind of guiding star for Islamists who came to power in Tunisia (Ennahda) and Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood).

Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister at the time, turned into a genuine hero of the Arab street. Whenever he visited Arab countries, the people applauded him, welcoming him as their own leader. He, in turn, dispensed fatherly advice on combining Islam with democracy.

“A person does not become secular, the state becomes secular... Libya belongs to Libyans. May Allah protect you!” Erdogan intoned, addressing a cheering crowd in Tripoli in September 2011. In the same speech, the Turkish prime minister explicitly voiced his intentions to interfere in the internal affairs of another neighbor, saying that the unfolding civil conflict in Syria represented “a domestic Turkish affair.” At the time, he argued that the authorities in Damascus “will not be able to survive” in the face of massive opposition protests. He was not wrong — even if his prediction took 13 years to come true.

In the early 2010s, Erdogan's triumph in the Arab world coincided with a cold spell in relations between Turkey and the European Union, which criticized the Turkish prime minister for human rights abuses in the country and suspended Ankara's EU accession talks. The change in foreign policy also affected the AK Party's domestic approach. After winning yet another parliamentary election in June 2011, Erdogan said: “Sarajevo has won as much as Istanbul today. Beirut has won as much as Izmir. Damascus has won as much as Ankara.”

From that moment on, Turkey has developed a taste for the Ottoman Empire. Images of Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, began to appear in public schools next to Ataturk's portraits. More and more movies set in the times of the Ottoman sultans began to appear, and Erdogan called on the population to learn the language of the old empire: “Whether anyone wants it or not, the Old Ottoman Turkish language will be studied and taught in this country.”

Experts refer to the shift in the AK Party's domestic and foreign policy — which saw the Turkish leadership proclaim itself the successor not of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, but of the Ottoman Empire — as “neo-Ottomanism.” Erdogan, for his part, avoids using this term, even if his actions speak for themselves.

The falling out between Erdogan and Assad

In 2011, Erdogan said of Assad: “Bashar and I have not only a personal connection but also a family friendship. Our wives are close friends. It has not been three years since I told Bashar, ‘I love you and I know you love me. I'm also aware that the people love you. But unless you start reforms, one day you will wake up in the morning and see that your nation no longer loves you.’”

Assad and Erdogan came to power in their respective countries around the same time. The Syrian dictator inherited power from his father in 2000, and the Turkish politician won with his party in the general election in 2002. Almost immediately, the two forged an amicable relationship. They even vacationed together. Their friendship normalized Turkish-Syrian relations, which up until then had been very tense.

When the Arab Spring swept into Syria in March 2011, Erdogan initially took a cautious stance, calling for Assad to begin reforms. But after watching Arab dictators lose power one after another — Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya — the Turkish prime minister was convinced that Assad's days were numbered.

Gradually, Turkey became a platform for the Syrian opposition, including for its armed elements. Ankara has never hidden its involvement in the creation and backing of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) — currently the Syrian National Army (SNA). In the recent offensive of the armed opposition on Damascus, the SNA fought as a part of a united front with the militants of the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

As the Syrian crisis worsened, Erdogan dramatically changed his rhetoric toward Assad, calling him a terrorist and promising to travel to Damascus one day to say namaz in the city’s ancient Umayyad Mosque. However, Iranian and Russian intervention in the Syrian conflict on the side of Assad forced the Turkish leader to reconsider his plans.

The partitioning of Syria

The Russian military intervention that began in September 2015 allowed Assad to regain control over more than 50% of Syrian territory before long, pushing armed rebel groups back to the north of the country. The crowning achievement of Assad's army — achieved with the aid of the Russian Air Force, along with ground troops from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — was the recapture of Aleppo, the country's second-largest city, in December 2016.

In 2017, the Astana Process, involving the participation of Russia, Iran, and Turkey, established special de-escalation zones in Syria with the aim of ceasefire. Ankara pledged to prevent the outbreak of hostilities in the de-escalation zone in the northwestern province of Idlib, where rebel armed groups dislodged from Aleppo and other regions were concentrated. In addition, the Turkish side was to ensure the opening of two major roads (M5 and M4) and eliminate terrorist organizations in the region.

Turkey's formal steps towards achieving these goals included the deployment of troops and the establishment of several checkpoints in northern Syria. In practice, however, Ankara saw its role differently.

Quarrel over Kurds

In recent years, the Turkish leadership has been primarily concerned with the emergence of Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria. In early 2014, three key Kurdish regions — Afrin, Kobani, and Qamishli (Jazira) — declared their sovereignty. Turkey, where the Kurdish issue remains unresolved, saw this development as a potential threat. Meanwhile, it was the Kurdish People's Defense Units (YPG) that played a decisive role in the defeat of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Iraq and Syria. For this reason, the United States has actively supported the Kurds.

Ankara nevertheless sees the YPG primarily as an extension of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which waged an underground armed struggle on Turkish territory from 1984 to 2013 and has been outlawed in the country as a terrorist organization since 1993.

To mop up individual Kurdish armed militias in northern Syria, Turkey occasionally conducted targeted military operations, including Euphrates Shield (2016-2017) and Olive Branch (2018).

But Erdogan longed for the complete defeat of the Kurdish armed units. To this end, Ankara pinned high hopes on Donald Trump's return to the White House, a development that Turkish officials assumed would prompt the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and thereby put an end to Washington’s support for Kurdish militias.

For its part, Russia has openly called any Turkish military presence in Syria an act of occupation. However, the swift offensive by Syrian rebel forces that began in late November has spared Erdogan the need to launch his own operation against the Kurds. They are now being handled by the Ankara-backed SNA, which is currently engaged in fierce fighting with the YPG.

Who has seized power in Syria?

When evaluating the Syrian rebels, it is important to distinguish the SNA from the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is internationally banned by a relevant UN Security Council resolution and is additionally banned in Turkey by a special law.

The HTS, which has assumed the leading role among the insurgents, is an amalgamation of several jihadist movements — chief among them the former al-Nusra Front, a group that emerged from al-Qaeda in Iraq.

HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, once in the service of al-Qaeda and ISIS, is now demonstrating complete autonomy and independence, including from Ankara. “Al-Julani, the former Syrian emir of ISIS who is on Turkey's terrorist list, will not treat Erdogan as his master,” said Turkish Middle East expert Fehim Tastekin.

As if tracking the changing allegiances of the various factions and figures fighting in Syria were not already complicated enough, al-Julani has severed all ties with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, seeking instead to demonstrate moderation and benevolence toward non-believers and all religious and ethnic minorities in Syria. In any case, HTS needs to shed the stigma of terrorists if it is to seek international recognition. As UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen has already hinted, such an option is indeed on the table.

For that, the formally former jihadists, who have minimal political experience, will need influential patrons on the international stage — a role Erdogan is well-suited to play. Aside from strengthening his standing in the region and beyond, Erdogan’s incentives include the need to bring home some 3 million Syrian refugees currently hosted by Turkey. In any case, the Turkish president has already achieved his main objective: the ousting of his geopolitical rivals — Iran and Russia — from Syria.