Given the warm welcome Bashar al-Assad received at the Arab League just three months ago, one might have expected rather warmer words from Syria’s president about the state of Arab relations in a rare interview last week.
But no: “Maybe it’s the way we think,” he said, “but we don’t come up with practical solutions … we prefer to give speeches, press releases and meetings.”
It was unrealistic, he said, to expect that there would be economic results from the return to the Arab fold in mere months.
If that was his view of the members of the Arab League, it’s unsurprising that his view of the man whose troops occupy parts of his country would be much worse.
“Erdogan’s goal is to fabricate an excuse for a Turkish invasion in Syria,” he said, pouring cold water on the suggestion that he and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan might meet.
Along the pathway of a return to some semblance of normal diplomatic relations – to say nothing of “normalcy” within Syria, which is still many years away – the next logical step after rejoining the Arab League would be for Syria to resume relations with Turkey.
Yet that step is much harder than the previous one. As much as Turkey may want a rapprochement, Syria is in no rush, as demonstrated by Assad’s dismissive words.
Yet while the wait-and-see game worked so well in pushing the Arab League to normalize, an extensive period without repairing the Syria-Turkey relationship will end up damaging Damascus – and perhaps even permanently altering the geography of Syria.
For now, time is firmly on Assad’s side. Prior to the Turkish election in May, Erdogan was keen on some progress, because it could then be presented to the Turkish electorate as potential steps toward resolving the crisis of Syrian migrants, millions of whom are refugees in Turkish cities and towns.
Yet for Assad, Erdogan, despite his desire to improve ties, is actually the lesser of the possible interlocutors. Erdogan’s main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), ran on a firmly anti-Syrian platform, pledging to normalize relations with Damascus quickly and send Syrians home.
When even the ostensibly more liberal Turkish opposition is openly campaigning to send Syrians home, there is little necessity for Assad to negotiate. He can simply wait for a change of politician in Ankara, or for the pressure to build on Erdogan, and his negotiating hand grows stronger. The pressure of millions of Syrians on Turkish soil is his strongest card.
Erdogan knows this, which is why he has been more vocal in wanting to meet with Assad than the other way around. Yet his red line is the same one that Assad raised in the interview, and which Erdogan reiterated last month: no withdrawal of Turkish troops.
Resettlement question
For now, the major issue is that Ankara does not yet have an endgame that Assad can accept. Erdogan’s big idea of resettling Syrian refugees along the Syrian side of the border, protected by Turkish troops, had the twin benefits of easing the pressure on Turkish cities caused by millions of migrants, as well as pushing Syrian Kurdish militants away from the border.
But it had one major flaw: It was dependent on the Assad regime’s tacit acceptance. And while the Syrian government saw no benefit in attacking those enclaves for many years, when it comes to diplomatic recognition, accepting these enclaves is proving a sticking point.
Partly, of course, that has to do with a refusal to accept foreign troops – but partly it is also about accepting a precedent of allowing Turkish troops, which will then make it harder to get rid of the American troops still protecting the Kurdish areas.
Turkey is now locked into that outcome, or something very similar to it.
However, it is precisely for that reason the Assad regime should find an accommodation with Ankara now. Because the Turkish occupation, as hard as it is to dislodge now, will only become harder over time.
The Syrian refugee crisis is a major political issue in Turkey, to the extent that it was a major topic in the presidential election. With Erdogan in power for perhaps five more years, it is unthinkable that he would allow the issue to fester for so long that it becomes a wedge issue again.
That means that a solution might be found in the next few years, one that Ankara might seek to impose on Damascus. And with relations with Russia changing so much over the Ukraine war, it’s possible circumstances may mean that Moscow, Assad’s main international supporter, goes along with it.
This may be hypothetical for the moment, but the main leverage the Assad regime has over Turkey are Syrian bodies and time.
Damascus can always halt the return of refugees, or make life so hard they don’t wish to return, leaving Ankara with the problem. If, however, Turkey finds a solution to the refugee issue, that would flip the time leverage: Then every year that passes would entrench the Turkish solution.
With the Arab League, Assad merely had to wait, and circumstances would eventually create the conditions for a rapprochement. But with Turkey, those conditions already exist.
A delay of a year or two might be possible, but the longer Damascus waits, the more likely it will be that Ankara imposes a solution. And then the Turkish occupation will prove much harder for Damascus to end.
This article was provided by Syndication Bureau, which holds copyright.
Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on the Middle East and is a frequent commentator on international TV news networks. He has worked for news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC, and reported on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. Follow him on Twitter @FaisalAlYafai.