December 29, 2024 - 4:30pm
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria earlier this month, there was a brief period of excitement in Western foreign policy circles. Now, as new battle lines are drawn and Turkey reasserts its influence in the region, such hopes are fading quickly.
This week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated that if Kurdish militias in Syria did not lay down their arms they would be “buried”. The position of the new Syrian government under Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on the Kurdish question is unclear, but it is becoming increasingly evident that the Turks wield enormous influence over the group.
Shortly after Erdoğan’s statement, his son announced a rally in Istanbul on 1 January, adding: “Yesterday Hagia Sophia, today the Umayyad Mosque, tomorrow Al-Aqsa.” The Umayyad Mosque is in Damascus, and so we can only infer from this that the Turks consider themselves the new major power in Syria. Al-Asqa Mosque is located in Jerusalem, and so its mention raised eyebrows in Israel about this resurgence in Turkish regional power.
At the beginning of the week Erdoğan’s coalition partner, nationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli, voiced similar sentiments. During a speech he stated that “conquering Damascus signifies the conquest of Jerusalem, and Israel should not forget the Ottoman slap in the face in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.” In mid-November the Turkish government cut all ties with Israel in an action which appears very different in light of the collapse of the Assad regime. It now seems that Turkish leaders were preparing for the Syrian operation at the same time as they were tearing up diplomatic relations with Israel.
Some argue that statements like these are just reflective of the excitement in Turkey at having regained major influence in Syria, which was once part of the Ottoman Empire, but policymakers in Washington, D.C. are paying close attention to developments. President-elect Donald Trump went out of his way to call out Erdoğan before Christmas, accusing him of engineering the fall of Assad, and suggested that Turkey might become a major regional power, claiming: “Nobody knows who will rule in the final. I believe it is Turkey.”
Israel is now scrambling to make sense of the new situation in the Middle East. Some Israeli commentators are speculating that Turkey may even form an alliance of convenience with Iran, and are calling on the United States to protect the Kurds at all costs — including by imposing a no-fly zone on the Kurdish-controlled area of Northern Syria. This action would put the United States in potential conflict with Turkey, a Nato ally whose air force is equipped with American-made planes.
Western foreign policy specialists have seemingly been caught flat-footed by the re-emergence of Turkish regional power. Until the collapse of the Assad government, most commentators assumed that Erdoğan was a cautious player who talked a big game but ultimately acted as a balancing power, working with whomever was convenient. When HTS started moving through Syria, Western analysts reverted to their old positions on the Syrian Civil War, seeing Assad as a Russian ally and therefore an enemy. Now, those same analysts are having to factor in a potentially resurgent Turkey — and they don’t know what to make of it. Increasingly, the Western framework for viewing geopolitical conflict appears broken and outdated.
As American hegemonic power wanes across the world, the state of affairs is apparently reverting to the sort of civilisational geopolitics that existed before the First World War. The impulses which drove the major players over a hundred years ago never really went away. Countries such as Turkey continued to view the dissolution of their regional influence in a negative light. Perhaps we will soon come to view the 20th century as an unusual interlude as the world returns to the rough geographies that held sway for the previous thousand years.
Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist and investment professional, and the author of The Reformation in Economics
philippilk
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeSo Trump is more geopolitically alert than is generally believed…or has such advisers and he takes note of them.
Israel’s current favourable position may be short lived.
Trump is unequivocal in his support for Israel.
I suspect that his awareness of increasing Turkish belligerence is more likely to strengthen his resolve to ensure the survival of Israel and the Jewish people .
Yes of course the USA will always ensure Israel’s survival, Trump most of all. My point is that the jubilation over Assad’s downfall may well be misplaced. In short, be careful what you wish for, the consequences may not be what you wanted.
An apt analogy would be Ghadaffi and Libya. There are dozens more: Mossadegh, Hussein, the Mujahadeen, etc.. Blowback.
“Misery acquainted a man with strange bedfellows..” – The Bard..
..or at least promise to do so, pretend to do so and even partially do so (?) but might do a totally different deal behind closed doors.. thus is Trump we’re talking about here!
Türkiye is going to carve up Syria like a thanksgiving ham
What West might that be? The declining US empire? The beleaguered UK? The failing EU? Busted Germany? Crazy France? ..those guys? Ha ha..
I mean, you are replying to the wrong comment but if France is “crazy”, Germany is “busted” and EU is failing, I wonder what Turkey with its 30000000% inflation, mass people exporting, Jihad funding would be. Paradise perhaps?
Unlike Turkey with 42% inflation,down from 75% in May.Interest rates at 47%,£6k per capita GDP,and an unemployment rate of 9%.Add in a leader who is economically illiterate and despite its size and geography its never going to compete with either the USA or Europe
If I were in charge of US armaments sales I would have a failsafe installed in the billion dollar+ aircraft and heavy armaments we sell to our “friends” such as Türkiye, and if they do something to make us regret the sales then I would drop them out of the sky with a button push from afar.
Unfortunately we play a short term game of greed with no real appreciation of unforeseen circumstances and consequences. I suspect China isn’t so short sighted when say, selling infrastructure like shipping container hardware to their customers. A shame.We reap what we sow.
“Some Israeli commentators are speculating that Turkey may even form an alliance of convenience with Iran, and are calling on the United States to protect the Kurds at all costs — including by imposing a no-fly zone on the Kurdish-controlled area of Northern Syria.”
Except the “Israeli commentator” who wrote the linked article is a German of Kurdish extraction, currently doing a post-doc in Jerusalem. Not exactly representative of the Israeli commentariat.
Not that the notion that, after having spilled so much blood fighting ISIS on behalf of everyone else, the Kurds are owed protection from destruction by the Turkish hegemon, is so far-fetched … wish that the Kurds had 1% of the PR savvy of the Palestinians and their allies. They deserve better.
Pretty hard to create an ally, promote them in your media, and then accuse their narrative – that you have long supported and relied on to inform your actions – as being wholly self-interested. It is well-known the Israelis are extremely shaken by what is going on. The ToI commentator is merely the best at articulating those concerns.
Erdogan may be an expansionist neo-Ottomanist – but he hasn’t been deceptive about his intensions, at least not since a while. That linked article seems like a fairly thinly veiled propaganda attempt to garner support for the Kurdish region on shaky if not outright false pretences.
“if not outright false pretences”
which pretences are false?
For a start, that article is filled with claims like this:
For anyone who knows about the Kurdish culture (and women’s severe oppression) in Turkey’s south-east the above is basically a fantasy fiction – save the extreme-left elements amongst Kurds perhaps. And the author seems very careful to dance around that topic as well, not to alienate his Israeli readers presumably.
The last sentence says it all. We return to the rough geographies that held sway for the previous thousand years. The West just needs to man up and protect it’s interests.
Hasn’t Turkey had a low level conflict with a coalition of Greece, France and Egypt with a proxy war in Libya and dispute over territory in the east Med? I would be nervous if I lived in Greece, Egypt or the Balkans.
Or, it could just be yet more disinformation all agreed between NATO (US, Türkiye etc.) and Israel in smoke filled rooms: “You say this, right snd I’ll say that, agreed. Then you do the direct opposite ok, and I do the following.. Now what lies shall be spin tothe MSM? Ha ha, isn’t this fun!
“Perhaps we will soon come to view the 20th century as an unusual interlude as the world returns to the rough geographies that held sway for the previous thousand years.”
I cannot take seriously anyone who writes such obvious nonsense.
Turkey and Isreal may grit their teeth and decide to get along. They could control the region together.
Russia will not like the return of Turkey, which has shown signs of realising it has opportunity and sides with its NATO allies (so far).