UNITED IN WAR ON KURDISTAN

A rapprochement between Syria and Turkey is on the table. Here’s what it might mean for the region

Syrians cross into their country from the Turkish crossing point of Cilvegozu, in Reyhanli, southeastern Turkey, on Feb. 18, 2023. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar Assad have recently signaled that they are interested in restoring diplomatic … more >

By Abby Sewell and Suzan Fraser - Associated Press - Friday, July 12, 2024

ANKARA (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar Assad have recently signaled that they are interested in restoring diplomatic ties that have been ruptured for more than a decade.

Erdogan has said that he hopes to arrange a meeting with Assad soon for the first time since the countries broke off relations in 2011 as mass anti-government protests and a brutal crackdown by security forces in Syria spiraled into a still-ongoing civil war.


Speaking at a NATO summit in Washington on Thursday, Erdogan said he had called on Assad two weeks ago to either come to Turkey for the meeting or to hold it in a third country, and that he had assigned Turkey’s foreign minister to follow up.

Turkey backed Syrian insurgent groups seeking to overthrow Assad and still maintains forces in the opposition-held northwest, a sore point for Damascus.

This is not the first time that there have been attempts to normalize relations between the two countries, but previous attempts failed to gain traction.

Here’s a look at what might happen this time around:

Russia, which is one of the strongest backers of Assad’s government but also has close ties with Turkey, has been pushing for a return to diplomatic relations.


In December 2022, the Turkish, Syrian and Russian defense ministers held talks in Moscow, the first ministerial level meeting between rivals Turkey and Syria since 2011. Russia also brokered meetings between Syrian and Turkish officials last year.

However, the talks fizzled, and Syrian officials publicly continued to blast Turkey’s presence in northwest Syria. Assad said in an interview with Sky News Arabia last August that the objective of Erdogan’s overtures was “to legitimize the Turkish occupation in Syria.”

Russia appears to once again be promoting the talks, but this time around, Iraq - which shares a border with both Turkey and Syria - has also offered to mediate, as it previously did between regional arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Aron Lund, a fellow with the Century International think tank, said Iraq may have taken the initiative as a way to deflect pressure from Turkey to crack down on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that has waged an insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s and has bases in northern Iraq.

By pushing rapprochement with Syria, Baghdad may be trying to “create some form of positive engagement with the Turks, kick the can down the road, and deflect the threat of an intervention,” Lund said.

The geopolitical situation in the region has also changed with the war in Gaza and fears of a wider regional conflict. Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, an analyst on Turkey and director of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara, said that both countries may be feeling insecure and seeking new alliances in the face of the war’s potential regional ripple effects.

From Erdogan’s side, Unluhisarcikli said, the attempt to engage is likely driven in part by the increasing anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkey. Erdogan is likely hoping for a deal that could pave the way for the return of many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees living in his country.

From the Syrian side, a return to relations with Turkey would be another step toward ending Assad’s political isolation in the region after more than a decade as a pariah due to his government’s brutal crackdown on protesters in 2011 and alleged war crimes afterward.

And despite their differences over Turkey’s presence in northwest Syria, Damascus and Ankara both have an interest in curtailing the autonomy of Kurdish groups in northeast Syria.

Turkey may be concerned that the security situation in northeast Syria could deteriorate in the event that the U.S. withdraws troops it currently has stationed there as part of a coalition against the Islamic State militant group, Unluhisarcikli said. That could require Turkey to “cooperate or at least coordinate with Syria, to manage the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal,” he said.

Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian researcher and visiting professor at the European University Institute in Florence, said the two governments likely hope for modest “economic gains” in a rapprochement. While trade never completely stopped, it currently goes through intermediaries, he said, while restoring diplomatic relations would allow official commerce to resume and make trade more fluid.

Analysts agreed that the talks are unlikely to bring about the full Turkish withdrawal from northwest Syria that Damascus has called for or any other major shift in conditions on the ground in the near term.

Although the two countries’ interests “actually overlap to a large degree,” Lund said, “there are also major disagreements” and “a lot of bad blood and bitterness” that could impede even “lower-level dealmaking.” Both Erdogan and Assad may also want to wait for the outcome of U.S. elections, which could determine the future American footprint in the region, before making a major deal, he said.

In the long run, Lund said, “The logic of the situation dictates Turkish-Syrian collaboration in some form. … They’re neighbors. They’re stuck with each other and the current stalemate does them no good.”

Unluhisarcikli agreed that a “grand bargain” is unlikely to come out of the present talks, but the increased dialogue could lead to “some confidence building measures,” he said.

Daher said the most probable outcome of the talks is some “security agreements” between the two sides, but not a full Turkish withdrawal from Syria in the short term, particularly since the Syrian government army is too weak to control northwest Syria by itself.

“On its own, it’s not able to take back the whole of the northwest - it needs to deal with Turkey,” he said.

In Turkey and in government-controlled Syria, many view the prospects of a rapprochement positively. In northwest Syria, on the other hand, protests have broken out against the prospect of a normalization of relations between Ankara - which had previously positioned itself as a protector of the Syrian opposition - and Damascus.

Kurds in Syria have also viewed the potential rapprochement with apprehension. The Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria said in a statement that the prospective reconciliation would be a “conspiracy against the Syrian people” and a “clear legitimization of the Turkish occupation” of previously Kurdish-majority areas that were seized by Turkish-backed forces.

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Sewell reported from Beirut.

Syrian armed groups divided over Turkey-Syria normalization push

Analysis

July 11, 2024
Bilal Samir

In recent days, widespread protests have erupted across many Turkish-controlled towns and cities in the countryside to the north of Aleppo and around Idlib. Some protests have escalated into violence, as clashes have broken out between local armed groups and Turkish forces, resulting in multiple casualties among both protesters and Turkish soldiers. The unrest followed racist attacks against Syrians that started in the Turkish city of Kayseri on June 30, destroying several Syrians’ properties.

While the racist attacks served as the catalyst for the protests in northern Syria, they were not the sole cause. In fact, these protests stem from growing public dissatisfaction over recent discussions about the potential normalization of relations between Turkey and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. On June 28, 2024, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan indicated his country's willingness to restore diplomatic ties with the Assad regime. For his part, the head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, Özgür Özel, has said he is planning to travel to Damascus to meet Assad as well.

Statements by Turkish officials have coincided with what many Syrian activists view as preliminary and practical steps toward normalization. These steps include the opening by the local council of al-Bab in Aleppo's eastern countryside of the Abu al-Zandein crossing, which connects regime-controlled areas in Aleppo City with opposition-controlled areas, as a first step toward making it a permanent and official crossing. During this same period, Turkish immigration authorities launched a campaign to deport illegal Syrian refugees in Gaziantep and Kilis, resulting in the forced deportation of hundreds of refugees to northern Syria.

Despite their popular nature, the protests have exposed the rifts and divisions between various opposition factions. Some have showed support for Turkey's push toward normalization with the Assad regime, while others have adopted opposing and independent stances despite Turkish influence. This article aims to highlight the positions of the major military factions in Turkish-controlled areas during the protests and assess how closely they align with Turkey's policy.

Divided opposition

The map of military and security influence in northern Syria reveals six main Syrian National Army (SNA) factions operating in Aleppo’s northern countryside, while Idlib remains under the control of the Sunni Islamist group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Despite sharing the same ideology, the SNA factions differ in their structure and roles, leading each to adopt a distinct stance during the recent protests.

One notable faction in this context is the "Eastern" Liberation and Construction Movement, led by Abu Hatem Shaqra. This group mainly comprises fighters displaced from Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria and controls Jarablus and parts of al-Bab. It is one of the factions that actively participated in the protests. Its fighters stormed the administrative building of the Abu al-Zandein crossing and blocked commercial trucks from passing just days before the popular protests erupted. Members of the Liberation and Construction Movement also directly joined the protests in al-Bab and Jarablus, led a campaign of rioting and violence against government buildings, prevented Turkish employees from performing their duties, assaulted Turkish truck drivers, and shut down the Jarablus border crossing with Turkey.

The Sham Front, active in A’zaz, showed more restraint in its support for the protests. While it encouraged its base in A’zaz to join them, its armed members did not directly participate. Instead, they focused on protecting government buildings by establishing a security cordon and preventing protesters from breaching it. However, they were unable to fully control the crowds at the Bab al-Salamah crossing, where protesters stormed the building, resulting in numerous casualties. Eventually, the Sham Front managed to restore calm after local residents appealed to protesters to reduce tensions and avoid violence.

Meanwhile, the stance of HTS, which controls Idlib and wields significant influence over security in Afrin, remains ambiguous. While it has banned large protests in Idlib and its affiliated media outlets have labeled the racist attacks against Syrians in Turkey as an effort to incite “strife” by those with bad intentions, the situation in Afrin tells a different story. Masked gunmen, likely linked to HTS, infiltrated protests in Afrin and Jindires, escalating the unrest into an armed confrontation with Turkish forces near the Serail building in Afrin.

In contrast to the roles of the previously mentioned groups, the Sultan Murad faction, led by Fahim Issa, the al-Hamzat faction, headed by Sayf Abu Bakr, and the Sultan Suleiman Shah faction, under the leadership of Mohammad al-Jassem, have maintained a neutral position while working to contain the protests. They have deployed forces to safeguard government buildings within their areas of influence and engaged in suppressing the protesters.

In reality, the divides among military factions and the varying degree to which they comply with Turkish orders and directives are not new, nor are they the consequence of the recent protests. Over the past few years, their relationship with Turkey has led them to refuse certain directives. For instance, in 2018, fighters originally from Deir ez-Zor, who are currently members of the Liberation and Construction Movement, raided the town of Tadif, controlled by Assad regime forces, despite Turkey’s objection. Similarly, the Liberation and Construction Movement and the Sham Front factions have refused to send fighters to countries like Azerbaijan, Libya, and Niger in recent years. As a result, Turkey has withheld support from these groups during certain periods.

By contrast, the Sultan Murad, al-Hamzat, and Sultan Suleiman Shah factions have so far demonstrated greater willingness to comply with Turkish directives. For example, they have sent fighters to Libya, Azerbaijan, and Niger at Turkey’s request. Additionally, Turkey has repeatedly opposed leadership changes in these groups or attempts to diminish their influence.

The factors driving the differences in approach

The varying levels and forms of compliance with Turkey's directives can be attributed to each faction’s history, leadership, the social background of its members, and the extent of its popular support. The Sultan Murad, Sultan Suleiman Shah, and al-Hamzat factions were effectively established by Turkey during the "Euphrates Shield" and "Olive Branch" military operations. Before that, they were small remnants of battalions within the Free Syrian Army (FSA). In contrast, Turkey had no role in the establishment of the Sham Front and the Liberation and Construction Movement. They are successors to larger groups, including the al-Tawhid Brigade, al-Fatah Brigade, the Eastern Sector of Ahrar al-Sham Movement, and some FSA factions founded in 2012.

Other factors contributing to the divide between groups include the ethnic backgrounds of their leaders and the makeup of their fighters. Fahim Issa, leader of the Sultan Murad faction, and Sayf Abu Bakr, leader of the al-Hamzat faction, are of Turkic origin. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Sham Front and the Liberation and Construction Movement are of Arab origin. The social and ethnic makeup of these two factions indicates that their fighters belong to the same ethnicity and hail from the same regions, primarily Aleppo's northern countryside and Deir ez-Zor. They also enjoy strong social support rooted in regional, family, and tribal ties, which is why their positions often align with those of their social support base and local community.

As for the Sultan Murad, Sultan Suleiman Shah, and al-Hamzat factions, they are not ethnically or regionally homogenous. They include both Turkic and Arab fighters, as well as those displaced from Homs, Hama, the Damascus countryside, and other regions in Syria. Lacking strong social support, they primarily recruit fighters by offering material and financial incentives. This is evident in their fighters' readiness to engage in operations abroad.

Despite its jihadist background, HTS has adhered to international agreements between Turkey and Russia since 2017 regarding the de-escalation zone in the Idlib countryside. Its ambiguous stance on the protests masks its efforts to expand its influence into areas controlled by the SNA to the north of Aleppo. To achieve this, HTS has pushed the narrative that it has successfully maintained security and managed protests in the areas under its control, while the SNA has struggled to contain the popular unrest in the areas surrounding Aleppo. Furthermore, HTS stands to lose significantly from any rapprochement between Turkey and the Assad regime, especially as it remains classified as a terrorist organization by both the international community and Turkey.

The impact of normalization

The normalization of ties between Turkey and the Assad regime is expected to affect security and stability in different ways across various regions of northwestern Syria, as outlined below:

1. Regions of high instability: The areas controlled by the Liberation and Construction Movement in Jarablus, as well as the regions where HTS exerts influence over security in Jindires and Afrin, may face significant instability and the potential resurgence of operations by the Assad regime and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

2. Regions of moderate instability: A’zaz, al-Bab, and Idlib City, controlled by the Sham Front and HTS, fall into this category. In these regions, the two groups are more likely to incite popular unrest than to engage in direct military action.

3. Regions of low instability: This category includes areas with a Turkic presence controlled by the Sultan Murad, Sultan Suleiman Shah, and al-Hamzat factions, such as the city of al-Rai and its surrounding towns and villages.

In conclusion, the protests in northern Syria highlight the transnational impact of the Syrian conflict. They also underscore the potential repercussions of events within Turkey on the political and security dynamics in northern Syria, and vice versa. Recent developments reveal that residents in Turkish-controlled areas of northern Syria are prepared to engage in an existential struggle if Ankara chooses to pursue normalization with the Assad regime. Furthermore, the existing divide among armed Syrian factions and their varying levels of compliance with Turkish directives raise questions about Turkey's ability to control these groups in future confrontations, restructure them, and remove dissenting members and leaders.

 

Bilal Samir is a Syrian researcher who closely follows developments in northern Syria. He is currently working on a master’s in international relations.

Photo by AAREF WATAD/AFP via Getty Images

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