Turkish pro-government circles are euphoric – not solely as a result of an Islamist-led coalition toppled the dictator they detested, but in addition as a result of they consider that their president orchestrated the entire operation. In the earliest days of the Arab Spring, the AKP’s calculation was that the uprisings would produce just a few governments that might undertake the ‘Turkish mannequin’, combining conservative faith, formal democracy and neoliberal governance. Syria’s Islamists appeared to suit the invoice. Yet after Assad’s violent crackdown in opposition to civilian protests made such a transition not possible, Turkey started to arm a collection of insurgent militias, becoming a member of Western powers, Russia and Iran in a race to militarize and sectarianize the battle. This resulted in a de facto partitioning of the nation into separate Shia, Sunni and Kurdish areas. At least 4 million Syrians crossed into Turkey, fueling anti-immigrant sentiment there. The stalemate seemed to be limitless, till Islamist-led forces lastly captured Damascus final week.
Since then, Islamist newspapers have hailed Erdoğan because the commander of the ‘Syrian Revolution’, ‘the Conqueror of Syria’ and ‘the best revolutionary of the twenty first century’. While some on the Turkish proper had begun to doubt the federal government’s Syria coverage, holding it liable for the refugee disaster, now the Erdoğanists appear vindicated. With Assad toppled, they’re anticipating each a home reconsolidation of energy across the ruling AKP and a large enhance in Turkish affect throughout the area – with many saying the efficient finish of Western management.
The opposition, in contrast, views the autumn of Assad as the end result of an American sport through which Erdoğan and the jihadis had been pawns. Whereas Erdoğanists anticipate a democratic and Islamic Syria underneath Turkish affect, Kemalists and different centrists worry its de jure partition and the emergence of a Kurdish state – for which they might blame Erdoğan. Over the previous week, each side have sought to amplify the proof that helps their place and bury that which contradicts it. The actual image, nevertheless, is extra advanced. There remains to be important uncertainty about who is asking the photographs in Syria, and essentially the most essential info may take years to emerge. The following ought to due to this fact be learn as an preliminary sketch of Turkey’s position within the occasions, topic to modification as new particulars come to gentle. But one factor is already sure at this early stage: although the stability of forces has shifted in Erdoğan’s favour in the meanwhile, we will comfortably say that Erdoğanist fantasies a few Turkish imperial restructuring of the area are unfounded.
Turkey controls a number of armed factions in northern Syria, that are organized underneath the coalition generally known as the Syrian National Army (SNA, previously the Free Syrian Army). Turkey’s hope is that the SNA will wipe out the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and subordinate the Syrian Kurds to an Islamic authorities in Damascus. Erdoğanists additionally desires to see SNA-affiliated officers within the post-Assad cupboard. However, Turkey’s impression on Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – the group that led the advance on Damascus – is proscribed. During the primary days of December, Turkey was having conversations with Russia and Iran with the obvious intention of ending hostilities moderately than deposing Assad. Earlier, in mid-November, Erdoğan was making public requires Assad to be included in some transitional regime. Far from masterminding the marketing campaign, then, it appears as if Erdoğan was merely pressured to provide the greenlight after HTS took the initiative. SNA participated within the offensive however didn’t lead it. There are additionally experiences of friction between the HTS and SNA, and even – tellingly – the arrest of some SNA cadres for abusing Kurdish civilians.
All this poses the query of what HTS actually represents. With roots within the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, and a spot on Washington’s official record of terrorist teams, it appears an unlikely darling of the West. Yet the US and EU have made comparatively optimistic noises about its seizure of Damascus, which has additional unravelled the ‘Axis of Resistance’, weakening Iran’s regional position. In Turkey, opinion concerning the group is split. The opposition is adamant that HTS is a creation of the US and Israel, whereas Erdoğanists insist that Turkey has armed and educated them over the past a number of years. Another rumor is that HTS was educated by British intelligence. Some consultants declare that the assault on Damascus couldn’t have been profitable with out the involvement of Western intelligence companies; others argue that these companies had been tricked or outflanked by HTS. Salih Muslim, a distinguished Kurdish chief from the Democratic Union Party (PYD), in the meantime describes HTS as merely ‘part of Syria’, with whom the Kurds want to co-exist.
At this level, there is no such thing as a strategy to know which of those narratives holds extra water. But we can’t ignore the truth that Islamists have gained sympathy among the many area’s peoples, a few of whom understand them as the one efficient opposition to the established order. Many on the left are prepared to acknowledge this with regards to Hamas; certainly, there’s a sure tendency to magnify Hamas’s anti-imperialist credentials (regardless that its origins are something however) whereas downplaying the favored attraction of most different Islamist outfits. Whoever the precise sponsors of HTS is perhaps, the group is clearly an expression of a long-term development: the mainstreaming and partial taming of jihadi organizations, their infiltration or seize of establishments, and their popularization. These three dynamics typically undermine one another, however the newest twist within the Syrian drama has seen them mix within the type of HTS.
In different phrases, whatever the actual chain of occasions, there is no such thing as a query that Islamism – and extra particularly, its jihadi strands – has gained floor regionally. The Turkish opposition, together with the left, insists that that is an American-friendly Islamism. Yet the fluctuations of Erdoğanism itself over time present that there are dangers for the West when it performs with fireplace on this method. The AKP was initially the paragon of Americanist Islam: it appeared to mix particular person liberties, household values and spiritual conservatism with an emphasis on free markets and pro-Western realignment within the Middle East. However, because the years went on, it more and more suspended particular person liberties whereas harnessing markets, household and faith within the service of a party-state developmental mannequin with grand regional ambitions, sometimes on the expense of American affect.
Hundreds of Israeli air strikes have taken place throughout Syria since Assad’s dethronement, and Netanyahu says that he intends to show the Golan Heights into everlasting Israeli territory. Whether or not he succeeds, Israel is poised to have extra sway over the area, given its destruction of the army capacities of its northern rival – placing paid to Erdoğanist assumptions that the triumph of HTS represents a blow to Western energy or ‘the top of Israeli expansionism’. It can be incorrect, although, to foretell the rise of whole US–Israeli hegemony, if by that we imply an efficient mixture of drive and consent, moderately than domination primarily based on brute violence. It is doubtful that any actual hegemon will emerge from this chaotic flip of occasions. Nor are we prone to see a free, democratic state or a conclusive partition. The most believable state of affairs for the approaching years is a protracted however maybe comparatively contained battle, with elevated Islamist and Erdoğanist army energy, diplomatic management and enterprise enlargement. That consequence would nonetheless be a win for Turkey, however it could fall effectively brief of the present Erdoğanist fantasies.
The foremost hazard for Turkish imperialism can be the rising formalization of Kurdish energy. Any secure peace must contain autonomy or independence for the Syrian Kurds, now formally acknowledged by Western states. For the Kurds themselves, the results of this formalization can be ambiguous. They would now not be the heroes of the worldwide left, however they might additionally break away from their isolation and turn out to be a ‘regular’ a part of the decaying worldwide state-system. Turkish Kurds would in the meantime be left to their destiny, whereas additionally being emboldened by the method of normalization to their south. The AKP (together with its neo-fascist accomplice, the MHP) reached out to the imprisoned guerilla chief Öcalan shortly earlier than HTS launched its Aleppo marketing campaign, which many commentators see as proof that Turkey already knew concerning the anti-Assad operation. Yet the federal government additionally adopted up this opening with a extreme crackdown on the authorized Kurdish occasion and elected mayors, indicating that any cope with Öcalan can be on the federal government’s phrases – and would contain nice losses for the motion as an entire.
For now, the Gulf monarchies are sidelined. Their latest bid for the rehabilitation of Assad, lastly accepting Syria into the Arab League, has failed. But they’ll finally enter this energy sport too, additional complicating the makes an attempt of any single actor, be it Turkey or the United States, to say clear management. China, silent up to now, might also be part of the fray, a minimum of as a comfortable energy. As extra international locations vie for affect, making an attempt to reshape the area of their picture, Turkey will see its maximalist ambitions evaporate.
There can be an financial dimension to the unfolding inter-imperialist rivalry. Syria has been devastated by proxy wars between a number of international locations, which haven’t solely taken half one million lives and displaced greater than ten million, but in addition destroyed the nation’s infrastructure and funds. Now, the potential for funding – to rebuild from the ruins – has whet the urge for food of entrepreneurs the world over. Back in 2018, when Turkey misplaced 56 troopers in a army operation, one in every of Erdoğan’s chief advisors famously remarked that ‘We are giving martyrs, however Turkish contractors will get an even bigger share of the pie.’ The markets appear to agree, with the shares of construction-related companies rising sharply over the previous few days.
It shouldn’t be clear whether or not this sort of infrastructural funding can actually take off, nevertheless, given the unsure trajectory of the army conflicts, particularly within the north and south of the nation. The US and its allies have been capable of destroy lots of their regional enemies, however they haven’t been capable of construct practical, long-lasting preparations of their very own. Will the autumn of Assad be any totally different? This stays to be seen. But we could be sure that the place American liberal imperialism has failed, Turkish-Islamic imperialism is even much less prone to succeed.
Read on: Tariq Ali: ‘The Roads to Damascus’, Sidecar.
