With Assad’s Fall, Erdogan Oversees Turkey’s Growing Regional Clout

(Bloomberg) — Of all the winners and losers from Syria’s sudden change of power, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stands out as among those with the most to gain. 

Erdogan’s clout over his southern neighbor has increased dramatically with the fall of his onetime friend Bashar al-Assad, bolstering his political standing at home and in the international arena.

Erdogan is regarded as a hero by thousands of Syrian rebels who succeeded in overthrowing Assad with Turkey’s help — as well as by many among the millions of refugees who were given safe haven in Turkey when the Syrian war broke out in 2011.

“Turkey is the key country,” ran the headline in Monday’s edition of Istanbul-based Milliyet newspaper as it hailed the country’s role in Syria. 

A NATO member and long-time American ally that has pursued an increasingly independent foreign policy in recent years, Turkey under Erdogan has proved adept at seizing on the shifting global order to extended its influence. It helped turn the tide in Libya; Erdogan is among those vying to mediate peace between Russia and Ukraine after engineering a deal to allow Black Sea grain exports; and he’s been a rare voice standing up to Israel and championing the Palestinian cause.

To those complex conflicts can now be added Syria, where Erdogan has become a hard-to-ignore powerbroker just as US President-elect Donald Trump prepares to takes office next month. 

With the Assad regime’s collapse, “Turkey has now emerged as the most influential foreign actor in the country,” said Wolfango Piccoli, the co-president of consulting firm Teneo. “While Ankara’s precise role in the surprising turn of events remains a topic of speculation, the rebel offensive could not have gone ahead without Turkey’s consent and support.” 

The question now is whether Erdogan can convert his new clout into meeting long-held policy objectives — and if the Trump administration will help or hinder him.

Turkey has already urged disparate opposition forces to work for a reunified Syria, while Turkey-backed rebels wasted no time in pushing out Kurdish forces from two northern towns to the west of the Euphrates River. The latter move is in line with a cherished Turkish goal of creating a buffer zone inside Syria across the length of their 900-plus-kilometer (560-mile) shared border. 

But that risks running into US opposition.

Kurdish forces allied with the US played a critical role in defeating Islamic State in Syria, yet Turkey regards them as terrorists and a threat to its unity because they are affiliated with the separatist Kurdish group, the PKK, which is waging a war for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham threatened Turkey with sanctions if it went after the Kurdish fighters.

“Turkey deserves to have a demilitarized buffer zone between northeastern Syria and Turkey to protect Turkish interests,” he said in a post on X. “However, if Turkey takes military action against Kurdish forces in Syria, it will jeopardize America’s interests dramatically.”

A major bone of contention is the US arming and training of those forces. In an attempt to resolve the issue, Turkey has proposed that its army, the second-largest in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after the US, take over the fight against Islamic State in Syria if the US pulls out its troops and ceases military support to the Kurds, Bloomberg News reported last month. 

Turkey was also prepared to take over the responsibility for tens of thousands of Islamic State jihadists and their relatives detained by Kurdish forces. 

While there is as yet no official response from Washington, the offer might appeal to Trump, who proposed removing US forces from Syria during his first term. The plan created an outcry at the time over effectively abandoning America’s Kurdish allies, and was subsequently walked back: About 900 US troops remain, according to the Pentagon.

The way Trump decides to handle the PKK presence in Syria will be decisive in how his administration’s relations with Ankara evolve, according to Turkish officials familiar with Erdogan’s strategy who asked not to be named discussing sensitive security matters. 

Libya offers a precedent from the Turkish perspective. There, a Turkish intervention blessed by the US proved decisive in a complicated proxy-war, defeating the Russian-backed forces of General Khalifa Haftar and saving a government endorsed by the United Nations.

In Syria, the irony is that Erdogan and Assad were once close, holding family vacations together before the war broke out in 2011. The collapse of Assad’s regime came after a failed attempt to normalize ties this year at a time when the Syrian leader’s military backers, Iran and Russia, were stretched thin by other conflicts.

With his success, Erdogan’s vision moves closer of carving out an area under Turkish influence, free from jihadists and Kurdish groups, in what would be the largest foreign intervention since the Ottoman Empire. To achieve it, Turkey needs to stabilize and rebuild parts of Syria, especially the major northern city of Aleppo, in the hopes of sending back 3 million Syrians, the world’s largest refugee population. Turkey’s embrace of those in need started to go cold amid an economic decline that makes what few jobs there are harder to come by. 

Turkey worked with Moscow to avert the risk of a Syrian government assault on the rebel stronghold of Idlib that could have triggered a new refugee crisis. Ankara, which controls a major migration tap to the West, is now turning to Western allies, especially in Europe, to finance the reconstruction of Syria to enable the return of refugees. 

There’s a potential economic upside, too. If successful, the plan may be a boon to Turkish contractors: Turkish cement firms surged Monday on the prospect that they’d play a key role in reconstruction efforts. One appliance company, Sanica, said that one of its executives would establish dealership agreements and sales contracts to meet infrastructure needs in Syria.

“We expect international actors to reach out to the Syrian people and support the formation of an inclusive government,” Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Monday. “Turkey continues its contacts with all parties for a Syria where different ethnic and religious groups live together.” Turkey Fidan added, will continue to work “to ensure safe and voluntary return of Syrians and rebuilding of the country.”

While Erdogan has moved to repair strained ties with Arab heavyweights from Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, he needs to win their tacit approval to allow Ankara to establish itself as the key outside power in Syria.

That, too, may encounter resistance, according to the Soufan Center, a risk advisory company.

“The various loyalties and fragmentations of rebel groups can give these countries ample chance to hinder what they see as Turkey’s proxies,” it said on its website. Arab states have historically opposed Islamist movements within their borders, it said, and might “seek an alternative to Turkish dominance.” 

–With assistance from Firat Kozok.

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