IN SYRIA, TURKEY MAKES ITS MOVE / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

In Syria, Turkey Makes Its Move

Someone was going to fill the vacuum left by Iran in the Levant.

By: Kamran Bokhari

It was only a matter of time before Turkey would try to capitalize on the hole Israel punched into Iran’s sphere of influence after the Oct. 7 attack. 

Apparently, the time has come. 

After an eight-year hiatus, Syrian rebels backed by Turkey took control of Aleppo on Nov. 30 and pushed into the city of Hama, putting them roughly halfway between Aleppo and the capital of Damascus. 

Not even at the height of the Syrian civil war were rebels able to accomplish this. 

Meanwhile, Russian aircraft are for the first time in years striking rebel positions as President Bashar Assad takes an unplanned trip to Moscow in search of support.

The Syrian civil war effectively ended in December 2016, when Syrian government forces regained total control of Aleppo. 

Assad had survived the conflict, but when the dust settled he was little more than a warlord. 

His regime lost important areas in the north and east to a host of forces: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (which led the raid on Aleppo this weekend), Turkish troops, the Islamic State and Kurdish separatists. 

His victory, such as it was, owed to Russian air support and to Iran and Hezbollah, on which he had become entirely dependent.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it was unable to pay as much attention to Syria as it had before. 

Moscow took comfort in the knowledge that Iran was still able to militarily support the Assad regime and Turkey was not in a position to revive a rebel movement. 

Assad, meanwhile, understood Russia’s dilemma and knew that with Iran putting down roots in Syria, he needed other options – hence his reconciliation efforts in 2023 with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. 

Though important, these relationships alone were not enough to extricate the Assad regime from Iran’s orbit. 

He knew that the brewing conflict between Iran and Israel could – and likely would – spill over into Syria.

Such was the broader context in which the Oct. 7 attack took place. 

It ignited a regional conflict that has hurt Iranian interests in Syria and Lebanon and has thus left an opening for aspiring replacements. 

Turkey and its network of rebel forces had been tracking the situation closely and had planned accordingly. 

Ankara was engaged in its own efforts to normalize relations with the Assad regime. 

It saw how the Arab states were mending fences with Damascus, and it, too, wanted to benefit from the Syrian regime’s desire to diversify its regional relations.

But Turkey will find it difficult to fill the void. 

For one thing, Syrian interests don’t align as neatly with Turkish interests as they do with Saudi and Emirati interests, which include a shared opposition to Sunni Islamists and the need to reduce Iranian influence. 

Syria and Turkey agree over such issues as countering Kurdish separatism, but more broadly Turkey is far more a threat than an ally. 

Turkish forces are occupying extensive tracts of Syrian territory in the north. 

Ankara is the principal backer of the Syrian rebels. 

Most important, Assad does not want to distance himself from Iran only to become vulnerable to another country with regional ambitions. 

This explains why Assad in July rejected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s offer to normalize ties and placed the withdrawal of Turkish forces from his country as a precondition for any such a move. 

The rebel offensive over the past few days has validated his concerns.

Ankara knew that its diplomatic outreach probably wasn’t going to work. 

Still, it pushed ahead because it didn’t know that Iran and Hezbollah would be so weakened so quickly. 

Their devastation was a historic opportunity that Turkey simply could not pass up. 

The speed at which Turkish proxies were deployed suggests Ankara had prepared for the opportunity well ahead of time. 

And that they were able to take Aleppo so quickly likely reflects just how weak Iran now is in the Levant. 

Israel had been pounding Iran and Hezbollah for months, forcing them to direct resources in such a way that it created holes in Syrian defenses that the rebels exploited.

For Israel, this is an unintended consequence of its war against Iran. 

Put simply, it doesn’t want the Assad regime to fall because it would create a strategic vacuum that Sunni jihadists of various types would fill. 

Iran may be the more urgent challenge, but Sunni insurgents would be a challenge nonetheless. 

Saudi Arabia and the UAE feel similarly. 

They want to see an end to Iran’s monopoly of influence in the Levant; they just don’t want Syria to fall in the process. 

The problem is that this is a difficult balance to achieve, much less maintain, given the landscape of forces in Syria. 

Iran and Russia may be weak and distracted, but they have no intention of allowing Syria to fall.

The critical question is how effectively Tehran and Moscow can help Syrian forces counter the Sunni rebel offensive. 

The rebels have always been highly factional, a factor that limits their ability to take Damascus and its strongholds on the Mediterranean coast. 

Even if they somehow manage to topple the regime this time, the country will be thrust into a state of anarchy with different armed factions backed by different regional powers. 

What we know for sure is that Iran’s dominance in the Levant is ending and Turkey wants to replace it. 

A renewed Syrian civil war will likely consume a great deal of bandwidth for President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration.