Turkey and Syria open for rapprochement after a ten-year hiatus

In that case, this will be the first direct meeting between the two regional leaders since they broke off all contact in 2011.

At the time, there were large demonstrations once morest the regime in Syria, and a brutal reaction from Syrian security forces degenerated into a civil war that is still not over.

During the NATO summit in Washington last Thursday, Erdogan said that two weeks ago he had called Assad and asked him to travel to Ankara for a meeting, possibly for the meeting to be held in a third country. Erdogan said he had appointed his foreign minister to follow up on the move.

During the most intense periods of the civil war, Turkey supported the Syrian rebel groups that wanted to overthrow Assad. Erdogan still has forces in the opposition-controlled areas of the northeast, much to the annoyance of Assad.

Out in the sand

This is not the first time that feelers have been sent out regarding a normalization between the two countries, but previous attempts have failed. But at the latest on Saturday, Erdogan said that Turkey will soon end the military operation once morest the PKK in northern Iraq, as well as at the Turkish border with Syria.

Turkish forces have been conducting military operations once morest the PKK Kurdish Workers’ Party in northern Iraq since 2019. They have also carried out attacks once morest the Kurdish YPG militia, which is the armed wing of the PYD party, in northern Syria since 2016.

Russia is Assad’s strongest supporter and has come to his aid on several occasions. The Kremlin also has close ties to Turkey and is now pushing for normalization.

In December 2022, the defense ministers of the three countries met in Moscow, the first ministerial-level meeting between Turkey and Syria since 2011. Also last year, Russia hosted a meeting between officials from the two countries. But the dialogue crumbled, and Syria continued to lash out at Turkey for the military presence in the north.

Continued war of words

Last August, Assad accused the Turkish president of talking regarding rapprochement, but that the aim was to continue the Turkish occupation.

What is new in this round is that Iraq, which shares a border with both Syria and Turkey, has offered to mediate, as the country did between arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Aron Lund at the think tank Century International believes that Iraq has taken this initiative to reduce the pressure from Ankara to crack down on the PKK’s bases in northern Iraq.

– By promoting a rapprochement with Syria, the authorities in Baghdad can try to create a form of positive interaction with the Turks and reduce the threat of an invasion as happened in northern Syria, he says.

The geopolitical situation in the region has also changed following the outbreak of the war in Gaza. Fears of a major regional war are widespread.

New alliances

Ozgur Unluhisarciki, a Turkey expert at the German Marshall Fund’s office in Ankara, says both countries may feel insecure and thus seek new alliances faced with the war’s repercussions.

The expert says that Erdogan’s motivation to open rapprochement is rooted in a growing opposition to Syrian refugees in Turkey. Erdogan apparently hopes that a possible agreement might lead to the return of many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees who are on Turkish territory in the border region.

For Syria, a rapprochement might mean that the years of isolation and more than ten years of treatment as a leper might be softened. Despite their differing views on what is happening in northern regions, both the regime in Ankara and Damascus are interested in limiting the self-rule that the Kurds have been fighting for.

Void

Unluhisarciki believes that Turkey is concerned that the security situation in this area might deteriorate if the United States withdraws the forces that are part of the coalition that was created to fight IS. He believes that Turkey may find itself obliged to cooperate with Syria in order to deal with the vacuum that will arise from such a withdrawal.

The Swiss-Syrian researcher Joseph Daher at the European University Institute in Florence says that the two countries hope for some economic gain from a rapprochement. Trade has never completely stopped, but goes via intermediaries. A restoration of diplomatic relations would mean an upsurge in direct trade and remove many of the current obstacles.

It is too early to say anything solid regarding what lies in the approach attempts. Political commentators do not believe in a full Turkish withdrawal as the regime in Damascus demands, nor any fundamental change in the power relations on the ground.

Distrust

Although the two countries’ interests overlap to a certain extent, there is still fundamental disagreement on many issues and much old bitterness. This can train the development of a more comprehensive agreement, believes Lund from the think tank Century.

It may also be that the regimes in both countries await the results of the presidential election in the United States. It might lead to changes in the American presence in the region, and the parties may want to wait for some kind of more comprehensive approach before this is clarified.

– But in the long run, logic dictates that Turkey and Syria should cooperate in one way or another. They are, following all, neighboring countries, and the current deadlocked situation does not benefit either of them, says Lund.

Unluhisarciki also does not believe in any fundamental change, but that increased dialogue will be trust-building and future-oriented. Daher from the European University Institute in Florence believes that a rapprochement will result in some form of security agreement between the two countries, but hardly a full Turkish withdrawal.

He believes that Syria is so greatly weakened that the country alone cannot control the areas in the north-west where the Kurds live, and that the regime in Damascus therefore needs a functioning relationship with its large neighbor to the north.