After a long estrangement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, may be edging towards a meeting, but analysts say normalization will likely be gradual due to thorny issues.
Ankara initially sought to topple Damascus after the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011 with the suppression of anti-government protests, and Erdoğan branding Assad a “murderer.”
As Damascus regained territory, however, Erdoğan reversed course. Since 2022, top Syrian and Turkish officials have met for Russia-mediated talks, with Moscow pushing for a detente.
Erdoğan said this month he could invite Assad to Turkey “at any moment,” while Assad said any meeting would depend on the “content.”
Mona Yacoubian, vice president of the Middle East and North Africa center at the United States Institute of Peace, said any normalization “is not going to happen overnight … even if there’s an Assad-Erdoğan meeting.”
Given the complexities, she said, This will be a very gradual and drawn-out process.”
But “even the semblance” of normalization “is something that Erdoğan is looking for,” she added.
Since the war began, Syrians including opposition figures have flooded into Turkey, which now hosts about 3.2 million refugees.
Anti-Syrian sentiment and economic woes have piled pressure on Erdoğan for their return.
“Syria and the Syrian refugees have become a massive liability for Erdoğan,” said Aaron Stein, president of the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.
“Ankara’s investment in the Syrian opposition, from a military standpoint, is a complete failure,” he added.
‘Takes two to tango’
A Turkish defense ministry source said Thursday that “Turkey is in Syria to eliminate terrorist attacks and threats against its territory … and to prevent the establishment of a terrorist corridor in northern Syria as a fait accompli,” referring to Kurdish forces.
Turkish troops and Turkey-backed rebel factions control swaths of northern Syria, and Ankara has launched successive cross-border offensives since 2016, mainly to clear the area of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Assad said this week he was open to meeting with Erdoğan but noted “support for terrorism, and the withdrawal from Syrian territory” of Turkish troops were the “essence of the problem.”
According to Stein, if Erdoğan says an encounter with Assad is possible, it may happen.
“But in this process, it takes two to tango, and his dance partner is a murderer who hates him,” he said.
The US-backed, Kurdish-led SDF spearheaded the battle that dislodged Islamic State group jihadists from their last scraps of Syrian territory in 2019. The Kurds have established a semi-autonomous administration spanning swathes of the north and northeast.
Assad accuses the Kurdish administration of “separatism” and views US forces in SDF-held territory as an “occupation.”
Turkey sees the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it considers a “terrorist” group.
Any Syria-Turkey rapprochement raises serious concerns for the Kurds, who risk seeing hard-fought gains during years of war wiped out.
Soner Çağaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, said Ankara “wants Assad to snuff out the PKK so the organization will go dormant.”
This would start “the real normalization in the northwest, with Turkey gradually committing to withdraw troops,” he said.
‘Tricky part’
A transitional arrangement could see Erdoğan recognize Assad’s authority in northern Syria while keeping security “in Ankara’s hands,” with Turkey’s eventual goal being to repatriate Syrian refugees there, he said.
But “the tricky part” is that many civilians in Turkish-controlled areas of Syria do not want to live under Assad and could turn against Ankara, Çağaptay added.
North and northwest Syria have seen anti-Turkish protests in recent weeks and witnessed demonstrations in 2022 when ties began to thaw.
In the Kurdish-controlled northeast, Stein noted the US presence would make any Syrian-enabled Turkish offensive against PKK-linked groups more challenging.
“The one tool available is the Adana Agreement … which sanctions Turkish operations within a few kilometers of the border,” Stein said.
Under the 1998 accord, Damascus agreed to withhold support for the PKK and to expel its fighters from Syrian soil after Turkey threatened military action.
Yacoubian said it remained to be seen whether the Adana agreement could be “repurposed” now, with the Kurds controlling large swaths of territory.
Moves towards normalization could “be in anticipation of a potential shift in American policy” concerning Syria and troops there, she noted, with US elections on the horizon.
© Agence France-Presse