Wie die Türkei den syrischen Bürgerkrieg gewann: Assads Sturz ist ein Segen für Erdogan – zumindest vorerst

[SS from essay by Gonul Tol, author of [*Erdogan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria*](https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/erdogans-war/) and Director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkish Program.]

In most capitals across the Middle East, the news of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fall sparked immense anxiety. Ankara is not one of them. Rather than worrying about Syria’s prospects after more than a decade of conflict, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees opportunity in a post-Assad future. His optimism is well founded: out of all the region’s major players, Ankara has the strongest channels of communication and history of working with the Islamist group now in charge in Damascus, positioning it to reap the benefits of the Assad regime’s demise.

Chief among the rebel forces that ended Assad’s rule on Sunday is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Muslim group that was previously affiliated with al Qaeda and is designated as a terrorist organization by [Turkey](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/regions/turkey), the United States, and the United Nations. Despite those designations, Turkey has provided indirect assistance to HTS. The Turkish military presence in the northwestern Syrian town of Idlib largely shielded the group from attacks by Syrian government forces, allowing it to run the province undisturbed for years. Turkey managed the flow of international aid into HTS-run areas, which increased the group’s legitimacy among locals. Trade across the Turkish border has provided HTS economic support, too.

-Turkey is growing a empire of investments, .milltary bases, proxies, client states (sort f like eastern europe was to the Soviets in the cold war) from the caucuses down to the middle east through the HOA to the north african region , Erodgan is practicing realism, realpolitik, soft power, covert power, risk loss gambles with a neo-Ottoman, pan-Turkic, pan-islamist flavor of course.

– Turkey cane out of the least of the losing parties in Libya

– Egypt has been pivoting towards Qatar, and Turkiye in recent tears over the Gaza-Israel issue and investments in the Hamas ruled Gaza, seeking capital investment abd loans away from Bahrain, Kuwait, and especially the UAE abd Saudi Arabia (which have been demanding more concessions, austerity, reform of the milltary monopolization of the economy, more Gulf control of egypt state run assets, more beach front property concessions, etc.), and seeking Egpyt follow their line on foreign policy

– The kurds are weakened in Syria and Iraq , without the governments of either country or the usa or Israel not doing much to help the kurds

– Following the thaw after the breaking of the Arab quartet blockcade of Qatar (much to Qatar and Turkish favor), Turkey has been making detente inroads into the Gulf states that counter Iran

– Turkey managed to still impose flight restrictions over Turkey into Armebia, gained two victories over Armenia through it client Azerbaijan at the expense of Armenia, Russia and Iran

– Assad is overthrown in Syria , and now have clients, and proxies in control of Syria , America wont be able to do much to protect the Kurds, it not clear Syria will be friendly or hostile towards Israel and Israel will have to contend with a Sunni islamist state that has Muslim Brotherhood and Turkish ties on it borders, while Jordan may do some outreach to Turkey to get the new government in Syria to allow Syrian refugees return home from Jordan and to weaken Iran position in the region, and most importantly stop destabilizing the border area with the flow of arms and capatog into Jordan

-Turkey is backing the growing Eriterean- Egyptian- Somali alliance against Ethiopia and may hope of Somaliland independence and against Emirati influence in the HOA, and seeking bases in Port Sudan and Somalia at the expense of UAE, Iran and other players in the region
From Turkish stances during the Syrian war to it stances against Israel following oct. 7th (and it strong support of Hamas), to the two victories for muslim, pan-turkic Azerbaijan against christian Armenia, as well as managing to control the bosphorus straights and it stance on Libya and it strength there, Erodgan is increasingly seen as a hero (and not a villian) in the Sunni Muslim world (and being non-Arab with lineage back to the Ottoman era) is seen as a new Sultan that will build a new Khalifah

I see Turkey is Pan-Turkic, pan-Islamist, and Neo-Ottoman and that not even getting into it pivot towards central and south asia, it growing ties to islamic bloc of Qatar, Maylasia, and Pakistan that seeks to move the Islamic world out of the arab bloc (despite Qatar being arab, but has a broader sense of Pan-Islamism from Afghanistan to the Balkans to Kashmir to Israel/Palestine to Africa to south east asia, etc.)

Turkey right now is at it peak , with America wanting out over Trump less interventionist , more realpolitik, transactional foreign policy, Israel normalization and ties with the Sunni arab states grounding to a halt after oct.7th, the gulf states focused internally in their economic vision and economic opening and diversification projects and Iran being greatly weakened, Russia bogged down in Ukraine at all costs to losing it influence in the Levent and middle east region.

I think Turkey isnt perfect at the moment, their economy still a mess, Turks arent having kids , and Erodgan has a history of taking great gambles like he did in the arab Spring, and he may even alienate the us even more abd find Putin getting tired of him eventually, but Turkey the great power at the moment, both soft and hard power from the caucuses to the mideast to the HOA to North Africa. This will proabably cause India, Greece, Greek Cyprus, Iran and Armenia to draw closer togther.