After Assad’s demise, Turkey is emerging a winner in Syria

Turkey is emerging as the outside power with the strongest hand in steering Syria’s political transition

by Ishaan Tharoor

In a fit of pique after sustaining a major geopolitical blow, Iran’s supreme leader wheeled out the usual suspects. “The main plotter, the main planner, the main agent, the main command room is in the United States and in the Zionist regime,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday to a crowd in Tehran, blaming Israel and the Biden administration for orchestrating the uprising that recently toppled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a staunch Iranian ally. Both Iran and Assad’s other enabler, Russia, are stewing in humiliation as the dramatic changing of the guard in Damascus unfolds.

But Khamenei left out another country in his tirade that’s arguably benefited far more from Assad’s fall. Turkey, whose militant proxies have surged through Syria in recent days, is emerging as the outside power with the strongest hand in steering the country’s political transition. On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, the Turkish capital. The meeting reflected the central role Turkey will play in the weeks to come, as U.S. officials focused on the development of an “inclusive” political process in Syria that preserves key state institutions and protects civilians.

Turkish officials are pressing ahead. Turkey reopened its embassy in Damascus on Thursday, appointing a temporary ambassador after years of severed relations. Lawmakers from Erdogan’s ruling party have already taken Turkish businessmen on scouting missions to Syrian cities like Aleppo, where lucrative construction contracts may soon be on offer. Ankara is also encouraging more than 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to eventually return home, when conditions permit.

On Thursday, Turkish spy chief Ibrahim Kalin appeared in Damascus for meetings with rebel leaders. He was reportedly spotted being driven around by a top figure within ascendant Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and praying in the city’s famous 8th century Umayyad Mosque. Ten years ago, Erdogan, in a scathing attack on the Assad regime and its massacres of Syrian civilians, vowed to one day pray in the courtyards of that mosque. That dream will soon be a reality.

If Turkish leaders are feeling triumphant, their apparent successes in Syria follow years of defeat and disappointment. Erdogan went from being a firm supporter of Assad to one of the most outspoken figures clamoring for his ouster. He was frustrated by Western governments that ruled out a repeat of the 2011 operations that led to the collapse of the Moammar Gaddafi dictatorship in Libya, and then by a ruthless Russian intervention in 2015 that reinforced Assad’s counterinsurgency and further sidelined Turkey.

In 2011, Erdogan, a religious nationalist, had tried to champion and cheerlead the pro-democracy uprisings that scorched through the Arab world. He touted his nation’s model of democracy as an example for Arab states to follow; with visions of expanding Turkish soft power and influence, ideologues in his government touted the Turkish leader’s “neo-Ottoman” bona fides.

The counterrevolution that swept Egypt and the civil wars that convulsed Libya, Yemen and Syria snuffed out Erdogan’s grand ambitions in the region. His own rule turned increasingly autocratic. As Assad looked secure in more recent years and other Arab states started to normalize ties with Damascus, Erdogan, too, tried to forge a softer understanding with the seemingly entrenched regime in Damascus.

Still, he had “kept his options open, putting together a rebel force dubbed the Syrian National Army (SNA) and tacitly supporting the jihadists that became Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),” explained Steven Cook and Sinan Ciddi in Foreign Policy. “The SNA was primarily a tool Turkey used to fight Syrian Kurds who wanted to set up a state on Turkey’s doorstep. HTS was useful against the Russians and the regime, but Russian arms confined them to the Idlib province.”

It’s unclear how direct a role Turkey played in the stunning campaign launched by HTS, which led to the Islamist group installing itself as the de facto authority in post-Assad Damascus. But their advance has changed the geopolitical equation that once governed Syria, and which previously favored Russia and Iran.

“Today, with Assad gone, this balance of power has rapidly shifted in Erdogan’s favor,” wrote Gonul Tol, director of the Turkish program at the Middle East Institute. “Not only does Russia’s loss give Turkey freer rein in Syria, but it will also damage Moscow’s standing in other places where the two countries compete for influence.”

That may include Libya, whose eastern warlord Khalifa Hifter, an enemy of Ankara, had courted Assad’s favor and received military aid from the Kremlin. On Thursday, in a separate move that seemed to reflect Erdogan’s clout in Africa, Turkey brokered a diplomatic breakthrough between Ethiopia and Somalia over the construction of a port in the breakaway republic of Somaliland.

Iran, too, now sees a regional rival in Turkey potentially displacing its influence in Syria, while also strengthening cooperation with Azerbaijan — an Iranian neighbor in the South Caucasus that is friendly with Israel. “To Iran, this could look like a reconstitution of the Ottoman Empire’s hold over the Caucasus and Levant that Iran grappled with between the 16th and 20th centuries,” wrote Vali Nasr, a professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

Then there’s the issue of Syria’s Kurds. Turkey may seek to press its advantage to dislodge the Syrian Kurdish forces that have held sway in areas of the country’s northeast, much to Ankara’s chagrin.

Erdogan’s government sees the chief Syrian Kurdish faction as an extension of a separatist outfit in Turkey deemed a terrorist organization by both Ankara and Washington. But the United States, even under the incoming Trump administration, may push back on attempts to undermine their Syrian Kurdish allies, who were crucial in the battles against the extremist Islamist State.

“An unresolved Kurdish problem would invite continued instability in northern Syria, with the potential to spill over into Turkey,” noted Tol, while also gesturing to the possible regional backlash should HTS and its allies pursue a more overtly Islamist agenda in Damascus. “And if the rebels fail to enshrine equal rights for all Syrians in law and practice, the new Syria might not look that different from the old one. That outcome would not be good for Ankara.”

By Ishaan Tharoor

Ishaan Tharoor is a foreign affairs columnist at The Washington Post, where he authors the Today's WorldView newsletter and column. In 2021, he won the Arthur Ross Media Award in Commentary from the American Academy of Diplomacy. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.follow on X@ishaantharoor