“Normalizing” Relations between Türkiye and Syria
Hafez al-Assad was the 18th president of Syria from 1971 until he died in 2000. He was the number one regional enemy of Türkiye. Starting in the mid-1980s, Syria provided the PKK and its leader Ocalan with safe havens from where they launched terrorist attacks against Türkiye across the 910-kilometer border. President Assad, despite irrefutable evidence provided by Ankara over the years, constantly denied support. Türkiye’s patience finally ran out. In the fall of 1988, the Turkish land forces commander delivered an ultimatum on the border saying that either Syria deported Ocalan or the Turkish army would move in. Hafez al-Assad complied. On October 20, 1988, Türkiye and Syria signed the Adana Agreement which was essentially a commitment by Damascus to end its support to terrorism.
On July 17, 2000, Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father as president. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer attended his funeral in Damascus in a remarkable display of goodwill. This marked the turning of the page. With the AKP’s coming to power in 2002, Turkish-Syrian relations witnessed hitherto unseen warmth between Bashar al-Assad and the AKP leadership. Political and economic cooperation flourished. Assads and Erdoğans became family friends.
In December 2009, the communique issued at the end of the Damascus meeting of the “Turkish-Syrian High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council” referred to a “strategic partnership”, a fashionable label for Türkiye’s close foreign relationships. It mentioned common threats and challenges confronting the two countries. Today, Ankara no longer has any partnerships worth such a title.
A year later, Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu, in remarks to the press with his Syrian counterpart in Latakia, underlined that the exemplary relationship between Syria and Türkiye was serving as a model for regional partnerships and that the two countries were aiming at total economic integration with neighbors.
Two years later, in the heyday of the Arab Spring, it dawned upon democratic Türkiye’s AKP government that Assad was a dictator. Thus, aspiring to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Damascus the government grabbed a leading role in the regime change project in Syria. Ankara joined hands with the US, other Western countries, and Gulf states to oust President Assad from power. Forgotten were the common threats and economic integration. Mr. Assad was castigated as “the enemy of his people”. He called this reversal of policy a betrayal.
The rest is a sad story and I will stress for the umpteenth time that Türkiye’s involvement in the Syrian conflict has been the greatest foreign and security policy blunder in the history of the Republic. We must keep this in mind, not only in the context of Türkiye-Syria relations but also as a lesson in foreign and security policy. The lesson is that if you have a mutually beneficial relationship with a neighbor, think more than twice before wrecking it, particularly in cooperation with others with an entirely different set of interests. In the case of Syria, none of the other interventionists were after bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Syria. Moreover, the destruction of Syria was a great gift to Israel. Yet today, the AKP government is the number one public enemy of the Netanyahu government. So, the AKP should explain to the Turkish people if the different dimensions of Ankara’s Middle East policy have any coherence whatsoever, and how our leading role in the regime change project in Syria rhymes with our current attitude toward Israel. Otherwise, the popular Turkish saying, “Two wrongs don’t make a right” will once again prove right.
On June 26, President Erdoğan answered questions from the press. This was the essence of what he said on Syria:
“There is no reason why diplomatic relations between Türkiye and Syria should not be re-established. In other words, we can act together as we did in the past because the Syrian people are a brotherly nation. We kept our relations with Syria very, very active in the past, including family meetings and this may happen tomorrow, it will happen again. We have no intention whatsoever of interfering in the internal affairs of Syria.”[i]
Soon after, on July 7, 2024, on his return flight from Germany, in response to a question he said:
“Now we have reached a stage where, if Bashar al-Assad moves to improve relations with Türkiye, we will reciprocate with a similar approach. We were not adversaries of Syria yesterday; instead, we were meeting with Assad and our families. We will extend our invitation. We hope that this invitation will restore Turkish-Syrian relations to their previous level. We can extend an invitation at any moment. Regarding a meeting in Türkiye, Mr. Putin has a plan. The Prime Minister of Iraq has plans for this issue. We discuss mediation everywhere; why not with our neighbor, with the one on our border?”[ii]
On August 25, President Assad addressed Syria’s People’s Assembly on the start of the fourth legislative term.[iii]
On relations with Türkiye, President al-Assad said “… the current situation is critical globally, and its repercussions in the region push us to work faster to fix what can be fixed without the pain of wounds from the stab of a friend. Thus, we dealt with the initiatives regarding the relationship with Türkiye that were presented by more than one party – Russia, Iran, and Iraq.”
After pointing out that past initiatives did not achieve any significant results on the ground despite the seriousness of those who offered them, he said:
“We did not occupy the territory of a neighboring country in order to withdraw, nor did we support terrorism in order to stop supporting it. The solution is to be frank and identify the location of the defect, not arrogance. How can we address a problem whose real causes we do not see, restoring the relationship requires first removing the reasons that led to its destruction, and we will not abandon one right of our rights.”
“Syria constantly stresses the necessity of Türkiye’s withdrawal from the lands it occupies and stop its support for terrorism.”
He added that at this stage Syria is talking about principles because the normalization of relations depends, above all, on an agreement on principles, and respect for countries’ sovereignty.
In brief, President Assad displayed a certain readiness to normalize relations with Türkiye but, understandably, could not help referring to “the pain of wounds from the stab of a friend”.
Thus, the first challenge in normalizing relations in practical terms is bridging the gap between, President Erdoğan’s stressing that Ankara has no intention whatsoever of interfering in Syria’s internal affairs and President Assad’s prioritizing respect for Syria’s sovereignty, in other words, “the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syria.”
The second is finding common ground in combatting terrorism. On this point, in a reversal of the picture of the 1980s, Damascus will insist on Türkiye’s stopping its support of terrorists, that is the Islamist groups in Syria.
The Turkish media has been referring constantly to the return home of the Syrian refugees in Türkiye. This will remain a very long shot, if ever. And any suggestions by Ankara about the rights and the security of the returnees will only prove a stumbling block.
The normalization of relations between the two neighbors is the dictate of reason. But if the AKP government believes that the relationship that existed thirteen years ago can soon be restored, it must be daydreaming.