Until a hundred years ago, Syria – like much of the Middle East – was part of the Ottoman Empire. That empire’s successor state, the Turkish Republic, took an early decision to align itself with the secular West and was a founding member of Nato and the Council of Europe. But Turkey has always taken a close interest in its immediate neighbourhood – and it’s taking one now.
Of all the countries affected by Syria’s civil war, Turkey is best placed to support its search for peace. The reasons lie in Turkey’s history, its geography and its long and troubled relationship with the Kurds.
The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, one of several agreements intended to redraw the geopolitics of the region after the First World War, envisaged the creation of a new, independent Kurdish state. Kemal Ataturk, the hero of Gallipoli who would become president of the new Turkish Republic in 1923, rejected the terms of that treaty. For Ataturk, the priority was to create a strong, homogenous, secular and proudly Turkish state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
Kurds, who made up an overwhelming majority of the population in Turkey’s southeast, had to be called ‘mountain Turks’, and their language had no official status. With millions more Kurds living across the border in Iran, Iraq and Syria, every effort was made in all four countries to weaken the Kurdish identity and discourage the risk of separatism.
In the early 2000s then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan began a programme of outreach towards the Kurds, allowing the teaching of their language in schools and some Kurdish language broadcasting.
All this changed with the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, when the US and others supported the Kurdish YPG against Syrian President Bashar al Assad.
Erdogan had little sympathy for Assad, who had rebuffed his advice to make room in the Syrian government for representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood. But he regards the YPG as indistinguishable from the PKK, their Kurdish cousins across the border in Turkey, who had been carrying out terrorist attacks for years in their quest for independence.
Partly to reduce the impact of the YPG in northwest Syria, Turkey backed other groups opposed to Assad, loosely allied under the heading of the Free Syrian Army, allowing volunteers and military equipment to transit and in some cases train in Turkey. The forerunner of Hayat Tahrir al-Sharm (HTS), Jebhat al-Nusra, was one of the more important of these jihadi militias.
HTS subsequently broke away from al-Qaeda, and has nothing to do with the Islamic State. It has its origins in extreme forms of Islamism and remains – for now at least – proscribed as a terrorist organisation. But it has in recent years focused on demonstrating its ability to provide inclusive, competent government in Idlib province. In the last week it has looked more like a liberation movement than a band of militants.
Having grown increasingly frustrated with Assad’s rebuttal of his efforts to engage him on a political solution to Syria’s problems, Erdogan had no reason to try and hold back HTS when Abu Mohamed al Jolani began his lightning offensive a fortnight ago. But the Turks – like all the other governments engaged, directly or indirectly, with the Syrian opposition – were taken aback by the speed of their success and the implosion of the Assad regime.
Russia and Iran, both distracted by conflicts elsewhere in the region, gave up on Assad. Israel is opportunistically attacking military assets belonging to the former government in case they fall into the wrong hands, and helping itself to pieces of territory in the Golan Heights.
Which leaves the Turkish government, a Nato ally and regional superpower, in a position to play a critical role in helping guide the new Syrian revolution towards a better future for the Syrian people and away from the risk of civil war between the various factions now laying claim to a share of such spoils as the brutally corrupt Assad family have left behind.
It has every reason to seize this opportunity. Turkey needs stability on its southern border. It is hosting 3 million Syrian refugees and wants to reduce the YPG’s potential to make trouble on Kurdish issues at home. Turkish companies are well placed to win business contracts rebuilding Syria’s infrastructure. And Turkey would love to see an end to travel advisories telling foreign tourists to avoid the extraordinarily interesting and important archaeological sites waiting for them in southeastern Turkey.
Revolutions have a nasty habit of making things worse and outside involvement rarely helps. Think Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Egypt. In Syria it might just be possible to buck that trend. Turkey may be able to play a leading role.
Sir Peter Westmacott was the British ambassador to Turkey, France and the United States