Syria has been the source of much strife between Washington and Ankara over the past decade. But a new window has opened, offering the United States and Turkey an opportunity to return to cooperation on Syria.
The US and Turkish strategies for managing the war in Syria sharply diverged in 2014, with the former paring down its strategy to battle the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) while the latter maintained political and military support to forces opposing both the Assad regime and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). This created a zero-sum game for the two treaty allies: US anti-ISIS operations exacerbated the top threat to Turkish security by strengthening the People’s Defense Units (or the YPG, the controlling component of the SDF and an affiliate of the transnational, anti-Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party terror network). Meanwhile, Turkish anti-YPG operations threatened to destabilize tenuous security conditions in areas where US forces operate.
The United States and Turkey managed the tensions arising from this counteralignment through careful diplomacy, but the ten years of bitterness badly damaged bilateral trust. Syria may not be the only reason that US and Turkish officials and people have come to see putative partner as regional antagonist, but it has been a leading cause. Trust will improve slowly if at all, but there is one reason for guarded optimism: The major factors driving this counteralignment have fundamentally changed, opening a window to shift back to the cooperation that prevailed in the early days of the Syrian revolution (specifically from 2011 to 2013).
Those key factors included a) the lack of a recognized central government in Damascus, b) the notion that a provisional local administration with US military backing could continue indefinitely, and c) a sense that other regional actors had greater influence over events in Syria than Turkey. In consolidating control, the Syrian transitional government still faces significant challenges from domestic and foreign forces, but the status quo formed by those three factors has been shattered. Whatever else happens in the country from 2025 forward, Syria’s salience as a driver of US-Turkey alienation will almost certainly decline.
Confounded assumptions
Few predicted a month ago that by the end of 2024, Bashar al-Assad would be moving into a Moscow flat or that the Turkish foreign minister would be drinking coffee with a new Syrian leader while watching Damascus from Mount Qasioun. Aside from a few Syria watchers (including the Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister and former US Envoy to Syria Joel Rayburn), most failed to appreciate the fragility of late-stage Assad rule.
Most regional actors designed strategies assuming Assad’s survival. The Gulf and some European countries were inching towards normalization with Syria. Many in Israel considered Assad the proverbial “known devil,” preferring his regime—or at least a fractured state not under opposition control—to the unknown prospect of a post-revolution regime. Russia and Iran counted on the prospect of a brutal but loyal dictator in perpetuity. The United States and Europe had reconciled themselves to a long-term compromise of offering palliative care for Syrian refugees, tolerating an Iran-oriented Assad in Damascus, and conducting an anti-jihadist experiment with leftist Kurdish militias in northeast Syria.
Only Turkey thought the Syrian opposition could survive and obtain some share of political control of Syria, and Ankara made its investments accordingly. The Turks hosted millions of Syrian refugees at significant domestic political cost. They trained and coordinated the armed Syrian opposition when the West said it was not willing to fight or was unable to unseat Assad. Turkey hosted the political opposition and planned for the economic, political, and diplomatic revitalization of a post-Assad Syria. The Turks helped deconflict and coordinate the two largest strands of the opposition, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian National Army, when other external powers would not engage with them in a serious way. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his advisors may have been surprised by the pace and timing of change in Syria but had clearly prepared for the eventual result.
Shifting ground
The key factors behind Turkey and the United States’ counteralignment have now changed with surprising rapidity. After a decade and a half of suffering, civil war, foreign intervention, and Assad’s apparent immovability, eleven days of combat brought the collapse of Assad’s rule and a transitional government. A few weeks after leading a coordinated offensive in northwest Syria, proscribed militant-turned-transitional-government-head Ahmad al-Sharaa (also known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani) was receiving delegations from Turkey, the United States, the Gulf, and Syrian minority communities. Sharaa’s prominent role and the speed of regime collapse meant that a considerable degree of political and military control over Syria was centralized before rival factions or external actors could prevent it. This changed the first factor in a fortnight.
The second factor shifted due to the US presidential election as well as the opposition offensive, and the effects were complementary. President-elect Donald Trump and his pick for national security advisor, Mike Waltz, have indicated that they will not sustain US military presence in Syria or support a separatist region there, placing an expiration date on the heretofore open-ended subsidy for the YPG. The Biden administration’s Middle East team has acknowledged that a “managed transition” away from YPG control over sensitive areas in northern Syria is the “best way ahead.” Persistent protests against YPG control in Arab areas such as Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa demonstrate that local populations prefer unity with the new transitional government to open-ended de facto autonomy enforced by the YPG and backed by US airpower. The second factor has decisively changed, and it seems likely that the reunification of these areas with Damascus and the withdrawal of US troops will soon follow.
The end of Iranian hegemony and Russian guardianship in Damascus has amplified Turkey’s weight as a diplomatic, security, and economic partner for the new Syria. There is genuine gratitude among millions of Syrians for the role Ankara played in ending the Assad nightmare. Millions of Syrians now have done business in Turkey and learned the language and culture; they provide a natural constituency for economic integration and joint ventures. Projects in the fields of energy and transport are already in the works. Turkish military and intelligence services, having previously trained and built institutional capacity in dozens of countries, will almost certainly reprise that role for the new Syria’s security sector. Ankara has made clear that it does not seek to replace Tehran’s dominion of Syria, though, and has communicated to Gulf partners that the country can only rebuild with strong Arab support as well as Ankara’s assistance.
Benefits of reconverging
With the end of the past decade’s status quo, the counteralignment of US and Turkish policy on Syria may—and should—come to an end. Now, the allies’ long-term interests overlap on quite a few matters related to Syria. Those interests include establishing Syria’s stability and security, preventing ISIS’s resurgence, fostering inclusive and effective governance, returning displaced people, stopping regional captagon trafficking, and ending the use of Syrian territory as a military or terror threat to Israel or any other neighbors.
These shared interests comport well with the agenda of the incoming Trump administration. Trump’s priorities include promoting US business and trade deals overseas, bringing an end to wars in the Middle East, deterring Iranian aggression and nuclearization in the region, and fostering normalization between Israel and its neighbors. The new paradigm in Syria means that Turkey is a crucial contributor to realizing each of these and that US-Turkey cooperation is essential for foreign policy success. Trump has assessed Turkey as the key player in Syria in recent remarks, a good sign that such cooperation can emerge.
The United States and Turkey’s reconvergence will require patience, trust building, and careful construction of cooperative approaches. Frosty relations between Jerusalem and Ankara may require a helping hand from Washington, for which there is precedent. There are signs the Turks understand the need to reach an acceptable modus vivendi with Israel in order for Syria to experience stability and peace moving forward.
Sorting Syria’s future will be a slow and arduous process compared to the lightning-fast military denouement. But the end of the old status quo offers significant benefits and opportunities for the United States and Turkey, as well as for the Syrian people. Primary among these are a possible end to the US-Turkish counteralignment and a big potential boost for the Trump administration’s Middle East agenda.
Rich Outzen is a geopolitical consultant and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Turkey Program. He has thirty-two years of government service in uniform and as a civilian, including over a decade focused on Turkey and the Levant. Follow him on X @RichOutzen.
The views expressed in TURKEYSource are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
