Like all the previous cases that we have witnessed in the past few years, including Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Oman and other Arab countries going towards opening up to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and re-normalizing relations with him, Turkey seeks to follow the same path after a series of meetings with senior security officials on both sides. And some diplomatic contact between the two foreign ministers, up to the political level, represented in a statement by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he confirmed the possibility of a meeting with Bashar al-Assad in the context of rearranging relations between Ankara and Damascus.
Despite the unity of purpose in the experiments of opening up to the Assad regime, each of these experiences has its merits and specificities, but all of them, with the exception of the Turkish experience, which has not started yet, have reached almost the same conclusion. Which is that there are no real and serious results in the countries’ relations with the Assad regime, and the reason is one of two. The first lies in the nature of the limited relations between the concerned country and the Assad regime, as in the example of the Kingdom of Bahrain and Oman, which are mostly limited to diplomatic and consular relations, and the reality of the Syrian situation adds another limitation as a result of the circumstances, especially the political and security conditions in which the Assad regime is mired after ten years of war in and around Syria. The second reason is related to factors that prevented the development of some countries’ openness to the Assad regime, as is the case of the UAE and Jordan, Syria’s neighbor on the southern borders. Destroying financial and administrative capabilities, killing, arresting, displacing millions of Syrians, and perpetuating the policy of shabeeh and violating the law to the point where officials are engaged in the manufacture and smuggling of drugs, making it among their basic activities.
Turkey’s journey, which is about to start opening up to the Assad regime, is surrounded more than all of its predecessors with reasons that make it limited in results, if not doomed to failure in the existing circumstances. Because the matter is not related to words and intentions, but rather to facts and data on both sides, which present difficulties facing Turkey in its openness, preventing reaching satisfactory results that are being talked about, unless the difficulties are addressed.
Ankara’s motives for opening up to Damascus are not related to Turkey’s strategy, on which Turkey’s current renaissance was based, by opening up to the surrounding world and eliminating problems with it, which was Turkey’s motive in its reconciliation with Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Egypt, and it does not lie in the gains that Turkey achieves from the openness in a way that is the background in the relations of countries, as Turkey is one of the countries most aware of the state of the Assad regime in terms of weakness, lack of capabilities, collapse in credibility, and dependence on its protectors, and this makes the trend towards openness linked to pressures and immediate circumstances, which are mixed in internal and external factors. The most prominent in the latter are pressures Russia in order to normalize Turkish relations with the regime in Damascus, which would help Moscow secure its partial withdrawals from Syria in light of the continuation of its war in Ukraine on the one hand, and contribute to preventing Iran’s intrusion and control in Syria, and the Russian pressure in one of its aspects coincides with internal pressures, the essence of which is the demand for an amendment Turkish policies on the Syrian issue, whether in an effort to win more Turkish votes in the upcoming elections in 2023 to secure Erdogan’s victory for a new presidential term, or in terms of satisfying parties in the opposition about the balance of the Turkish position.
Ironing out Assad after a long bias towards opposing him without tangible results, and mitigating the costs and responsibilities of the Turkish presence in the Syrian file, all of which require changes in Ankara’s positions, in which circles see that openness paves the way for economic expansion towards the Syrian market and through it to neighboring Arab countries, which contributes to addressing some aspects of the current economic and living crisis, and leading to the improvement of socio-economic conditions in Turkey.
As is clear from the background of the opening, there is nothing in it related to the main concern of the Turkish government in the Syrian issue, and there are two main items in it. The issue of the Syrian Democratic Forces “SDF” and the “voluntary” return of refugees to Syria, and if Turkey is proceeding with the issue of returning refugees unilaterally, the second issue requires a different effort, and the participation of parties at multiple levels. Turkey believes that the Syrian Democratic Forces are “SDF”, in which the Kurds of the Democratic Union Party form the solid nucleus of a “terrorist group”, as Turkey describes them as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and it fears their presence in the region, and looks forward to expelling them from its borders with Syria or moving them to a further place. The Assad regime has no ability to influence in the subject; Not only because of the lack of capabilities, but also because of his inability and his Russian and Iranian allies to influence American support for the “SDF”.
And if the opening to Damascus is useless on the issue of “SDF,” and Turkey does not need it on the issue of returning refugees, and is of little use in other areas, then it constitutes a burden on Turkey’s presence in the northwest, which is described as a Turkish-controlled area, which is enshrined in the presence of Turkish forces and allied armed groups. Despite its internal conflicts with the existence of a social and economic incubator that is supportive of the Turkish role in Syria and in its north in particular, it is difficult for Ankara to abandon its presence in the north and its role in the Syrian file merely to open up to a regime that has a strict, closed doctrinal structure with national-sectarian loads, mortgaged, and continuing with the help of forces. An external entity that imposes its control and will over what is left of the state and society in Syria.
Amid the general picture of the backgrounds of the expected Turkish opening to the Assad regime, it can be said that it will not be a natural opening that meets the needs of Turkish general policies, but rather it will be a limited and seasonal openness, responding to pressures, Turkey believes in the need to satisfy its owners in line with its interests in influencing the results of the 2023 elections, and it will maintain Ankara, amid the path of its openness, which will be limited, and the media field may not go beyond its stated policies in northeastern Syria, the least of which is pushing the “SDF” forces away from the borders whose vacuum can be filled through consensus. It supported Turkey’s recent air operation, and it will support the next ground operation, as it supported all operations. The former Turkish government in Syria, amid talk about the Turkish openness to Damascus, and perhaps taking some steps in it.
