Turkey’s reflections on October 7, 2023, were different from the perspective of the Bashar al-Assad regime, which relied on Iran and Hezbollah’s survival and maintaining its own head and regime despite successive defeats and deep setbacks. The certainty in Ankara is that the surrounding world of Israel will change, and that those who do not respond to these profound changes will be swept away by the flood. For this reason, President Erdoğan insisted tirelessly and on several occasions on meeting Assad, but all of this was in vain and appeared more like diplomatic folly in the face of Assad’s stubbornness, who believed that these successive statements were merely deception or an attempt to cover an internal Turkish crisis raging against his (Erdoğan’s) enemy. Furthermore, this ambiguous Syrian-Turkish path may affect the historic alliance between Damascus, Tehran, and Moscow. Additionally, the unconditioned Arab rapprochement with Assad has strengthened his internal and regional position in facing Turkey. This rapprochement might be one of the issues that made Assad feel overpowered and thus unwilling to pursue reconciliation with Ankara under any condition.
Assad continued to insist on reading the scene incorrectly, stemming from the weakness of his political senses within the corridors of Turkish politics. He did not connect Ankara’s keenness to save him and the offered temptations with Turkey’s shift from a phase of expansion and balancing between Turkey and Iran, to a phase of protecting Turkish interests in the region—a plan dictated by the collapse of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in everything expected. Considering Israel’s military and technological superiority since Operation Bagger and the precise, deadly strikes against Hezbollah and the IRGC leadership in Lebanon and Syria, Turkish incentives reached unprecedented levels. Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler explicitly stated in November 2024, about a month before Assad’s regime fell, that “the Syrian National Army will be part of Syria’s future.” This statement was understood as implying that the prospects for integration between Turkish-backed factions, aside from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and Assad’s army are achievable—that these factions could become part of Assad’s military capabilities to counter Israeli expansion.
From a pragmatic and perhaps defensive perspective this time, Erdogan seemed keen to explore a meeting with Assad based on an alternative plan: Turkey’s inheritance of the declining Iranian role in Syria, possibly replacing the Iranian turban with a Turkish Tarboush.. Accordingly, Ankara might form a new protective shield for Assad’s regime in the absence of Iran’s role. Within this context, Turkey’s efforts to improve its relations with Syria and Egypt in early September 2024 were interpreted as aiming to “form a solidarity line against the increasing expansionist (Israeli) threat,” meaning that the conflict with Assad has become secondary in light of the potential and more significant conflict with Israel, and Tel Aviv’s rising influence in the region, along with broad European and American support for Netanyahu’s government and its exceptional military and security measures.
The gap in experience, assessment, and information played a role in Erdogan’s realization that Syria without Assad would be more divided and fragile, and that Israeli strikes would be relentless. These strikes would be more like a pen drawing the boundaries, shape of power, and distribution of influence. He also knew that the alternative would not be one of Turkey’s men in the People’s Palace, and that the Iranian era, which is soon to pass, would take with it Turkey’s presence—based on the idea of balancing between Russia and Iran on one side, and the United States and its allies in Syria, including Turkey, on the other. Turks have always believed that Iran’s presence on Syrian soil was a point of advantage for them. This presence and influence allowed Turkey to control anti-Assad militias, occupy Syrian territories, and establish a form of strategic balance.
In other words: The Turks may have realized that a replacement for Assad would, in some way, be subject to American and Israeli dictates, and that Turkish involvement in efforts to overthrow Assad would ultimately prevent them from controlling Syria, using it as a deterrent against Israel, or even maintaining its previous role under Assad’s rule and the extensive Iranian influence. All of this happened, and Assad still has not understood how the Turks think after October 7, or what motivates them to beg for a meeting with him and reach a compromise.
Similarly, there is a subsequent Syrian weakness in understanding Turkish policy. Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and his Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani seem unaware of the profound changes occurring in Turkish strategies. They believe that Turkey can deter the presence of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and pressure them to accept Damascus’s demands before next year. They also think that military confrontations along the front lines with the SDF could serve as an effective tool for both Turkey and Damascus—a third option between a broad war and a frozen conflict. Realistically, skirmishes and mobilizations along the front lines cannot make a long-term difference, as the SDF can adapt to this pattern of distraction and pressure. Moreover, such hostile actions will only increase its rigidity and suspicion of Damascus’s intentions.
The authority of al-Sharaa, like the Assad regime, has not carefully considered the Turkish developments, including the nature of the peace process between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish state. This is all in light of the statement made by the founder of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, that if Turkey does not seek to resolve its problems, it will “confine itself within Anatolia.” In fact, Turkey’s efforts to avoid becoming a prisoner of Anatolia require reconciliation with the Kurdish world inside and around it. The implication here is that the perseverance of the Turkish-Kurdish peace process hampers Turkey’s war on the SDF, despite the ongoing threats and rhetoric from Turkey.
Damascus has yet to understand that Turkey is incapable of waging a war and making a fourth intervention in Syria without U.S. approval. The American “formula” for managing the situation in Syria is based on the principle of a little bit of Turkey and a little bit of Israel, in exchange for significant internal political engagement. Allowing Turkey’s military expansion will inevitably lead to a corresponding Israeli expansion, which could accelerate Syria’s disintegration and turn it into an enduring regional conflict that exhausts Washington.
One can also observe the idea of expanding the “vital sphere” being discussed by Turkish voices. This concept suggests that if Syria cannot be governed and its rulers subjugated, the best approach is to expand Turkey’s control in Syria to create a balance with Tel Aviv. Aleppo may be within Turkey’s sights. Therefore, it is noteworthy that pro-Turkish Syrian militias, formally integrated into the Ministry of Defense, are deployed along and within the administrative borders of Aleppo Governorate.
Over the past week, Aleppo has experienced security tensions following the imposition of a siege on the Ashrafiah and Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhoods, the erection of earthen barriers to encircle them, and the outbreak of armed clashes. Damascus appears unconcerned with maintaining the terms of the April 1 agreement, which had established a state of coexistence between the Internal Security Forces (Asayish) and the General Security. It is perhaps useful to recall that provoking a war against Kurdish neighborhoods would repeat the mistake made in Sweida. If emotions and anger drove the Assad regime to commit massacres in Sweida, which in turn prompted a surgical Israeli intervention that extended Tel Aviv’s control over the entire south of Syria, then war and the regime’s inability to control the situation in Aleppo could lead to Turkish intervention under the pretext of controlling the area, possibly with U.S. approval. From this perspective, Syria would become subject to two authorities: an Israeli one in the south and a Turkish one in the northwest.
It is not accidental that some official departments in Aleppo are written in Turkish. Devlet Bahçeli previously described Aleppo as “Turkish to the core” and “the 82nd Turkish province.” Erdogan also told the well-known Turkish journalist Cengiz Çandar at the beginning of the Syrian protests in 2011 that his country would not stand idly by, as it had “Aleppo and Qamishli” in Syria. If these statements and similar declarations by opinion leaders, Turanist theorists, and those seeking to expand Turkey’s “vital sphere” are not enough to reveal Turkey’s next steps in Syria, then we are faced with an authority that lacks the “sensors” to detect alternative Turkish plans to seize control of all Syrian territory.
It appears that the Assad regime, which lost southern Syria because it failed to understand how Israel thinks, will also lose other areas in the northwest because it failed to grasp the core of Turkish policy. More importantly, it mistakenly believes that Syria’s internal problems can remain internal and be immune from external intervention. This, however, is a mere illusion.
