Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has come full circle and then some on Syria. At the dawn of the Erdogan era, Turkey’s then-prime minister was Bashar al Assad’s patron—once even proposing that the Erdogan and Assad families vacation together. The two leaders fell out after Assad turned his military against the uprising that began in 2011, resulting in millions of refugees streaming into Turkey.
Erdogan could never convince President Barack Obama to invade Syria and overthrow the regime, so he 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). 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.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has come full circle and then some on Syria. At the dawn of the Erdogan era, Turkey’s then-prime minister was Bashar al Assad’s patron—once even proposing that the Erdogan and Assad families vacation together. The two leaders fell out after Assad turned his military against the uprising that began in 2011, resulting in millions of refugees streaming into Turkey.
Erdogan could never convince President Barack Obama to invade Syria and overthrow the regime, so he 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). 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.
A decade after Erdogan declared that Assad must go, he shifted again, sending emissaries to Damascus to seek normalization. Assad rebuffed his old Turkish supporter, however, demanding that the Turks withdraw their forces from Syrian territory before he could consider reconciliation.
That was where things stood when Erdogan gave his blessing on what was supposed to be a limited operation in Aleppo by HTS and the SNA in late November, aimed at applying pressure on Damascus so it would be more forthcoming on normalization. Erdogan and his advisors believed this would pave the way for the repatriation of millions of Syrians—many of them Kurds—living in Turkey. The limited operation turned into a catastrophic success that led to the end of the Assad dynasty.
Regime change is not something that has traditionally been part of the Turkish foreign policy playbook, which has over the 101 years of the Republic hewed closely to Ataturk’s cautious maxim: “Peace at home; peace in the world.” Now Erdogan finds himself in a novel and commanding position to determine Syria’s future without Assad in power. There should be little doubt that the man who sees himself and his country as natural leaders of the Arab and Muslim countries is relishing the opportunity to shape the new Syrian order.
Yet for all the advantages Turkey has in post-Assad Syria, Erdogan will likely face significant challenges. Turkey’s partners are the first of these problems: HTS and the SNA. The two rebel groups have troubling histories, including HTS’s roots going back to al Qaeda and the Islamic State. While HTS’s ties to al Qaeda are well known, its links to the Islamic State remain underreported. According to American intelligence agencies, the Islamic State was critical in helping to set up Al-Nusra Front—an organization that HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani also led. He broke from Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State not because of ideological differences but because the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi wanted to subsume Al-Nusra into his organization, thereby undermining Jolani’s autonomy. This is why, despite HTS’s fairly sophisticated information effort designed to convince the gullible that HTS is “moderate,” the United States, UN, EU and even Turkey have designated it a terrorist organization.
For their part, various watchdog groups have brought attention to the SNA’s many gross human rights violations committed against Kurds, Yezidis and women. Since the liberation of Aleppo, most of the news has focused on HTS and its march toward Damascus. While those dramatic events were taking place, the SNA was attacking Syria’s Kurdish population.
The second challenge for Erdogan is an ideological one. He and his supporters insist that Turkey is a democracy that is undergirded by a strong emphasis on Muslim values. That is how Ankara will make the case as to why Turkey and not other regional heavyweights should have pride of place, helping to construct the new Syrian political order. Yet, even if the Turks were not being disingenuous, Erdogan has a problem, especially when it comes to HTS.
Jolani has spread an impressive and ostensibly reassuring message that encourages refugees to return home now that the Assad regime is gone and guarantees the safety of all minorities. He seems to have been good on his word in Aleppo and other places, but HTS’s record in Idlib is repressive, if less grisly and violent than that of the Islamic State.
There is also the eerie similarity between Jolani’s professed commitment to an inclusive Syria and early Erdogan‘s. During the early 2000s, Erdogan professed that he himself had changed and had grown in time to value democratic and secular norms of governance. He verbally abandoned tenets of his Islamist worldview by publicly embracing Turkey’s continuity in NATO and future in the European Union, two foreign policy goals that as a good Turkish Islamist he had opposed for decades.
In time, however, Erdogan’s respect for democratic norms and governance in Turkey deteriorated. After almost 23 years of Erdogan’s rule, Turkey looks less like a consolidated democracy and more like an aspiring autocracy. To be sure, Jolani—unlike Erdogan—may have indeed changed. He says he has eschewed the jihadist violence of his youth, but there is no evidence that he has broken from a worldview that is anti-democratic.
Finally, Erdogan may soon discover that with Assad gone his partners no longer want to be in partnership. Throughout the Erdogan era, the Turkish government has claimed that it has special insight into Arab societies. The claim is based on a cultural affinity that only the Turkish leader and ruling party functionaries apparently feel. Yes, Erdogan is popular in Arab countries, but that has more to do with his willingness to attack Israel rhetorically than it does with any kind of real knowledge of what makes Arab societies, like Syria’s, tick.
Over and over again, the Turks have overestimated their ability to manage and shape crises in the region. There is no better evidence of this than Syria itself. Now that HTS and the Syrian people have chased Assad out of the country, they need Erdogan a lot less than they did a month ago. It is not clear whether the Turks recognize this reality.
For well over a decade, Turkey’s approach to Syria has moved from naively believing that Ankara could encourage reform in Damascus to cynicism and violence. Now that Assad is gone, Erdogan will not be able to restrain the impulse to put his stamp on Syria. The problem is that, as Syrians have demonstrated so ably in recent days, they do not want anyone’s help.
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