In disagreement:People protest possible rapprochement between Syrian and Turkiye in the city of Azaz in the rebel-held north of Syria’s Aleppo province, close to the Turkish border, on Friday, July 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have recently signalled that they are interested in restoring diplomatic ties that have been ruptured for more than a decade.
Mr. Erdogan has said he hopes to arrange a meeting with Mr. 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 spiralled into a still-ongoing civil war.
Speaking at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Washington on Thursday, Mr. Erdogan said he had called on Mr. Assad two weeks ago to either come to Turkiye for the meeting or to hold it in a third country, and that he had assigned Turkiye’s Foreign Minister to follow up.
Turkiye had backed Syrian insurgent groups seeking to overthrow Mr. 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 normalise relations between the two countries, but previous attempts failed to gain traction.
Russia, which is one of the strongest backers of Mr. Assad’s government but also has close ties with Turkiye, has been pushing for a return to diplomatic relations.
Previous efforts
In December 2022, the Turkish, Syrian and Russian Defence Ministers held talks in Moscow, the first ministerial level meeting between rivals Turkiye 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 Turkiye’s presence in northwest Syria. Mr. Assad said in an interview with Sky News Arabia last August that the objective of Mr. Erdogan’s overtures was “to legitimise 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 Turkiye 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 Turkiye to crack down on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that has waged an insurgency against Turkiye 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 and deflect the threat of an intervention,” Mr. Lund said.
The geopolitical situation in the region has also changed with Israel’s war on Gaza and fears of a wider regional conflict. Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, an analyst on Turkiye 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 Mr. Erdogan’s side, Mr. Unluhisarcikli said, the attempt to engage is likely driven in part by the increasing anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkiye. Mr. 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 Turkiye would be another step toward ending Mr. Assad’s political isolation in the region.
And despite their differences over Turkiye’s presence in northwest Syria, Damascus and Ankara both have an interest in curtailing the autonomy of Kurdish groups in northeast Syria.
Turkiye 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, Mr. Unluhisarcikli 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.
‘Bad blood’
Although the two countries’ interests “actually overlap to a large degree,” Mr. Lund said, “there are also major disagreements” and “a lot of bad blood and bitterness” that could impede even “lower-level dealmaking.” Both Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Assad may also want to wait for the outcome of the U.S. election before making a major deal, he said.
In the long run, Mr. Lund said, “The logic of the situation dictates Turkish-Syrian collaboration in some form… They are stuck with each other and the current stalemate does them no good.”
Mr. 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.
In Turkiye 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 normalisation 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 legitimisation of the Turkish occupation” of previously Kurdish-majority areas that were seized by Turkish-backed forces.
