Major diplomatic victory: Assad found himself with the ‘upper hand’ against Erdogan

At first glance, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist and nationalist, has little in common with Dou Perincek, a mischievous socialist, Eurasianist and militant secularist and Kemalist.

But Erdogan is asking Perincek — a man with a world of contacts in Russia, China, Iran and Syria, whose conspiratorial worldview identifies the United States as the center of all evil — to help resolve sensitive geopolitical issues, says James Dorsey in an article in the Algemeiner trying to outline what’s next between Erdogan and Assad.

Seven years ago, Perincek brokered a reconciliation between Russia and Turkey after relations soured following the downing of a Russian fighter jet by the Turkish air force.

Now, Perincek is heading to Damascus to establish a Russian-backed rapprochement with Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose overthrow Erdogan has encouraged for the past 11 years, since mass anti-government protests erupted across the Arab Spring that turned into a bloody civil war.

Chances are Perincek’s effort will be more successful than the last time he tried in 2016 to mend the differences between Erdogan and Assad, but ultimately stumbled over the Turkish leader’s refusal to give up his insistence that the Syrian president go.

Erdogan has suggested as much in recent days, insisting that Turkey should maintain a dialogue with the Assad government: “We don’t have such a question as to whether we will defeat Assad or not. … You have to accept that you cannot cut off political dialogue and diplomacy between states. There should always be such dialogues,” Erdogan said. He went on to say that “we are not looking at Syrian territory. … The integrity of their territory is important to us. The regime must know that.”

Erdogan’s willingness to “bury the hatchet” follows his failure to muster Russian and Iranian consent to a renewed Turkish military operation in northern Syria. The operation was intended to ensure that US-backed Syrian Kurds, whom Turkey considers terrorists, would not create an autonomous Kurdish region on Turkey’s border like the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

Turkey had hoped the operation would allow it to establish a 30km buffer zone controlled by its forces and Syrian proxies on the Syrian side of the two countries’ border.

The refusal of Russia and Iran to support the plan, which would undermine the authority of their ally Assad, forced Turkey to limit its operation to bombing Kurdish and Syrian positions.

The apparent reluctance of the United States to offer the Kurds more than verbal support, and only that sparsely, has drawn the Kurds closer to Damascus and, by extension, Russia and Iran, as Syria quietly expands its military presence in region. The US has long relied on the Kurds to counter the Islamic State in northern Syria.

The rekindling of relations and alliances in Syria is happening both on the diplomatic and military fronts.

The Turkish attacks, and the responses of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), appear to be both military and political battle lines pending a change in Turkish and Kurdish relations with the Assad government.

By targeting Syrian military forces, Turkey is signaling that it will not sit idly by if Syria supports or provides cover for the Kurds, while the unprecedented targeting of Turkish forces by the Kurds suggests that the Kurds have adopted new rules of engagement.

Both Erdogan and the Kurds are making risky bets.

The Kurds are hoping against all odds that Assad will return the favor by allowing the president to advance his goal of gaining control of parts of Syria held by rebel forces and forcing the withdrawal of US forces from the region by granting Kurds a measure of autonomy.

With elections in Turkey looming next year, Erdogan hopes Assad will help him cover nationalist anti-Kurdish and anti-immigrant sentiment by taking control of Kurdish areas.

Turkey wants to start repatriating some of the four million mostly Syrian refugees there. In early August, Turkey’s interior ministry announced that it had completed the construction of more than 60,000 homes for refugees returning to northeastern Syria.

Concern over a possible deal with Assad, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s call for reconciliation between opposition groups and Damascus, sparked anti-Turkish protests in Turkish-held areas of northern Syria as well as in Idlib, which is controlled by rebels.

Turkey also expects Assad, who wants to regain not only territorial control but also maintain central authority, to finally crack down on Kurdish armed groups and efforts to preserve autonomous Kurdish regions.

As a result, Perincek, along with Turkish-Syrian intelligence contacts, has a lot of work to do. The gap between Turkish and Syrian ambitions is wide. Assad wants the complete withdrawal of Turkish forces and the return of Syrian control to Kurdish and rebel areas.

Both the Kurds and Erdogan are caught up in their own plans that do not bode well for either.

The Kurds may have no choice if a Turkish-Syrian rapprochement succeeds, or face a Turkish attack if it fails. Similarly, conciliation on terms acceptable to Erdogan can be tantamount to trying to pull a rabbit out of your hat.

Whether he makes a deal with Assad or escalates violence in northern Syria, Erdogan risks igniting a new wave of refugees heading to Turkey at a time when he economically and politically cannot afford it.

In the words of analyst Kamal Alam, Erdogan’s problem is that the Turkish president is “eating up time before the next election to untie the Gordian knot that is Syria. For his part, Assad can wait, because after Turkey will have once again failed to find a way out of Syria with the bombs, Erdogan will be in a position to need Assad far more than the other way around.”

Petros Kranias