May 14, 2023 - 8:00am
With Syria’s return to the Arab League this week after more than a decade of suspension, we can say that Bashar al-Assad’s victory is almost sealed. The long and bloody civil war, now almost entirely frozen, is soon to draw to its formal conclusion. But not quite: the formal end to the Syrian war will only come with Turkey’s withdrawal from the conflict.
At the beginning of the war, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once an ally of Assad, was so enraged by the Syrian President’s slaughter of predominantly Sunni civilians that he turned his country into one of the war’s main external sponsors. Arming and hosting both Sunni rebels and their ineffective civilian leadership alike, and taking in 3.6 million refugees, the war would have taken a very different shape without Turkey’s involvement. Large swathes of northern Syria are now under Turkish control, whether in a hands-off overlordship that leaves day-to-day management to jihadist groups, as in Idlib, or in a soft annexation to forestall or roll back Kurdish autonomy, as in other conquered areas of the north and northeast.
The Turkish presidential election, whose first round is today, looks set to upset this dynamic. Erdogan’s secular-nationalist rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the frontrunner, has pledged to “turn Turkey’s foreign policy around 180 degrees”. Further, he declared that “within a maximum of two years, we will reconcile with Syria, and we will fully restore our normal relations with it, and we will reopen embassies between the two countries, and we will return the Syrians residing in Turkey, who numbered more than 3 million people, to their country.”
But how different will Turkish foreign policy actually be, in Syria and elsewhere? Kilicdaroglu’s CHP party, uneasily balancing support from the pro-Kurdish HDP and nationalist IYI parties, may be liberal on social issues compared to Erdogan’s Islamist AKP, but it is still, as is the norm in Turkish politics, deeply nationalist and with strong veins of anti-American sentiment coursing through its body.
As the Turkish analyst Guney Yildiz observes, “Balancing between Russia and NATO has been a long-standing strategy in Turkish politics. Nationalism has been a consistent determiner of the country’s foreign policy.” For Yildiz, while “a new government under Kilicdaroglu could bring greater institutionalization and cooperation with the West… entrenched factors such as the Kurdish issue and anti-Western sentiment will ensure continuity remains dominant.”
Similarly, Kilicdaroglu has followed Erdogan in furious diatribes against Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as threatening Greece over the Aegean islands, saying, “Let [Greece] keep fighting with Erdogan, it’s almost time. Then we will talk about arming the islands and pointing guns at our citizens.”
With Turkey, Russia, Syria and Iran meeting in Moscow earlier this week to explore a tentative rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus, Kilicdaroglu’s proposed normalisation policy may not veer too markedly away from Erdogan’s own grudgingly realistic new path. In any case, winning an election and actually taking power are, in Erdogan’s Turkey, two entirely different things. Whatever happens this weekend, it seems likely that for Turkey, the decade-defining Syrian war is almost over.
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Subscribe“Bashar al-Assad’s victory is almost sealed.”
Heaven be praised! And good luck to Mr Assad, he has certainly earned it.
As a frequent visitor to Syria before the blatant attempts to destabilise it, by the US & others in order to reward the loathsome Saudis for their ‘loyalty’, I can only but rejoice.
Syria was the cultural jewel of the Middle East, it had no peer. Now thanks to this totally bogus Arab Spring, Palmyra and its museum lies in ruins, the city of Aleppo and is fabled covered Souk has been devastated, and the once fascinating’Cities of the Dead’ are strewn with anti personnel mines. No serious archaeological work has been undertaken for years, and scholarship is effectively dead.
And all for what? …..Nihil!
Syria is NOT an oil rich Arab hell whole, with homicidal pretensions, nor was it a threat to the peace of the Middle East. It has been reconciled to the loss of the Golan Heights for years, and has few if any serious territorial ambitions unlike its avaricious neighbours. The damage inflicted over past ten years will take a generation if not longer to repair.
In short the whole Syrian Adventure’ has been an outrage, for which the West and its its lickspittle allies should be thoroughly ashamed.
While not as enthusiastic as Charles, I worked in North East Syria in the 1990s, visited the incredible ruins at Palmyra when you could just walk in and wander around , and always hankered to see Aleppo.
Latterly, I often stayed with an apartment rental company in Australia, managed by an expat/refugee Syrian from Aleppo who I cumulatively spent many hours chatting with, and he advised me not to bother trying to get to Aleppo because it has been destroyed. By “criminals” as he put it.
As soon as the tyrannical and repressive grip of the Assad family was relaxed in the naively-named “Arab Spring”, these “criminals” rose up and fought over control of the city, as they did in Palmyra and elsewhere. ISIS/Da’esh were just one faction.
Then later the weakened regime tried to dislodge them with aerial attacks etc and things got even worse.
Wow, I knew if i was patient, my inoffensive comment would appear, but I didn’t expect it to take over 24 hours.
I thought of replying to your last, but frankly this is hopeless!
Well, thanks for the down vote anyway!
Not guilty! I rarely EVER vote!
What is the point?
Not guilty! I rarely EVER vote!
What is the point?
Well, thanks for the down vote anyway!
I thought of replying to your last, but frankly this is hopeless!
Wow, I knew if i was patient, my inoffensive comment would appear, but I didn’t expect it to take over 24 hours.
While not as enthusiastic as Charles, I worked in North East Syria in the 1990s, visited the incredible ruins at Palmyra when you could just walk in and wander around , and always hankered to see Aleppo.
Latterly, I often stayed with an apartment rental company in Australia, managed by an expat/refugee Syrian from Aleppo who I cumulatively spent many hours chatting with, and he advised me not to bother trying to get to Aleppo because it has been destroyed. By “criminals” as he put it.
As soon as the tyrannical and repressive grip of the Assad family was relaxed in the naively-named “Arab Spring”, these “criminals” rose up and fought over control of the city, as they did in Palmyra and elsewhere. ISIS/Da’esh were just one faction.
Then later the weakened regime tried to dislodge them with aerial attacks etc and things got even worse.
“Bashar al-Assad’s victory is almost sealed.”
Heaven be praised! And good luck to Mr Assad, he has certainly earned it.
As a frequent visitor to Syria before the blatant attempts to destabilise it, by the US & others in order to reward the loathsome Saudis for their ‘loyalty’, I can only but rejoice.
Syria was the cultural jewel of the Middle East, it had no peer. Now thanks to this totally bogus Arab Spring, Palmyra and its museum lies in ruins, the city of Aleppo and is fabled covered Souk has been devastated, and the once fascinating’Cities of the Dead’ are strewn with anti personnel mines. No serious archaeological work has been undertaken for years, and scholarship is effectively dead.
And all for what? …..Nihil!
Syria is NOT an oil rich Arab hell whole, with homicidal pretensions, nor was it a threat to the peace of the Middle East. It has been reconciled to the loss of the Golan Heights for years, and has few if any serious territorial ambitions unlike its avaricious neighbours. The damage inflicted over past ten years will take a generation if not longer to repair.
In short the whole Syrian Adventure’ has been an outrage, for which the West and its its lickspittle allies should be thoroughly ashamed.
BEWARE! DRACONIAN CENSORSHIP APPLIES TODAY.
Charles, is this one of those situations where it could be either conspiracy or incompetence ? I suspect there’s an element of randomness to the “checks” where your post gets singled out for approval. It’s almost as if after so many posts or so many days, they just pick one out at random to check. But really, who knows ?
Back to the article – I very much doubt that the Syrian or Kurdish situations are sorted or even stabilised. A friend of a friend has been trumpeting last week about “peace breaking out in the Middle East” and the supposedly fantastic prospect of the “Americans leaving”. A lot of short term judgements are being offered right now. Not convinced.
Yes, well obviously the Americans can never leave, as they are effectively “shackled to a corpse “ as Moltke would have said.
However I suspect most Syrian minorities including their extremely ancient Christian community are heartily relieved that this barbarism is drawing to an end.
The Kurds off course have much to fear from the Turks, but were not, as I recall persecuted by the Syrians,
Some Kurds were working with me in the 1990s and they were indeed persecuted by the Syrian government (unable to get passports, or tenure at University etc) , who no more wanted a separatist faction within their country than Turkey does.
The vast majority of the population (75%) are Arabic speaking Sunnis who feel they deserve a “ free lunch” because of it.
5%-10% are belligerent Sunni Kurds who are despised by the rest, and thus suffer spiteful discrimination but NOT full scale persecution.
Interestingly the Christians also make up about 10% of the population and up until the so called ‘Arab Spring’ and its ‘manufactured’ uprising suffered little or no persecution.
Sadly I have no idea of the present situation.
The vast majority of the population (75%) are Arabic speaking Sunnis who feel they deserve a “ free lunch” because of it.
5%-10% are belligerent Sunni Kurds who are despised by the rest, and thus suffer spiteful discrimination but NOT full scale persecution.
Interestingly the Christians also make up about 10% of the population and up until the so called ‘Arab Spring’ and its ‘manufactured’ uprising suffered little or no persecution.
Sadly I have no idea of the present situation.
Some Kurds were working with me in the 1990s and they were indeed persecuted by the Syrian government (unable to get passports, or tenure at University etc) , who no more wanted a separatist faction within their country than Turkey does.
I think there is a random element to the checks, and also noticed a pattern where frequency of posting seems to kick in. I had a comment posted 15 hours after it’d been made the other day, so not censored as such (there was no reason for it to be). I’m inclined to think there’s a degree of incompetence involved, but probably not the whole picture.
It isn’t random. Someone is just repeatedly reporting his posts.
I wonder who?
That’s the thing about having forthright opinions, and the ability to express them – it’ll get the backs up of those whose inability to express themselves in response renders them impotent; unsurprising that their tactic is also flagging.
That’s the thing about having forthright opinions, and the ability to express them – it’ll get the backs up of those whose inability to express themselves in response renders them impotent; unsurprising that their tactic is also flagging.
I wonder who?
I often have posts to certain articles blocked by the anti-webbot system reCaptcha which tells me that my ‘score threshold has not been met'(?!). When this happens all my attempts to comment on the article in question are blocked regardless of content.
I have complained to UnHerd support about this who inform me that the ‘tech team is working hard on fixing this issue”.
It isn’t random. Someone is just repeatedly reporting his posts.
I often have posts to certain articles blocked by the anti-webbot system reCaptcha which tells me that my ‘score threshold has not been met'(?!). When this happens all my attempts to comment on the article in question are blocked regardless of content.
I have complained to UnHerd support about this who inform me that the ‘tech team is working hard on fixing this issue”.
Yes, well obviously the Americans can never leave, as they are effectively “shackled to a corpse “ as Moltke would have said.
However I suspect most Syrian minorities including their extremely ancient Christian community are heartily relieved that this barbarism is drawing to an end.
The Kurds off course have much to fear from the Turks, but were not, as I recall persecuted by the Syrians,
I think there is a random element to the checks, and also noticed a pattern where frequency of posting seems to kick in. I had a comment posted 15 hours after it’d been made the other day, so not censored as such (there was no reason for it to be). I’m inclined to think there’s a degree of incompetence involved, but probably not the whole picture.
Charles, is this one of those situations where it could be either conspiracy or incompetence ? I suspect there’s an element of randomness to the “checks” where your post gets singled out for approval. It’s almost as if after so many posts or so many days, they just pick one out at random to check. But really, who knows ?
Back to the article – I very much doubt that the Syrian or Kurdish situations are sorted or even stabilised. A friend of a friend has been trumpeting last week about “peace breaking out in the Middle East” and the supposedly fantastic prospect of the “Americans leaving”. A lot of short term judgements are being offered right now. Not convinced.
BEWARE! DRACONIAN CENSORSHIP APPLIES TODAY.