Why Is Turkey Cozying Up to Syria?

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent the better part of the last decade attempting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. This came after Erdogan cultivated a personal relationship with Assad between 2007 and 2010, an integral part of Ankara’s aspirational policy of “zero problems” with its neighbors. At one point in 2007-08, Erdogan even worked to mediate peace talks between Syria and Israel.

All this ended abruptly when Syria’s civil war began in 2011 and Assad refused to heed Erdogan’s calls to relinquish power. Thirteen years later, Erdogan now, suddenly, wants to make friends again. This raises the question: Why is there a push to normalize ties, and who would stand to gain or lose from the process?

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From 2012 onward, Turkey actively backed anti-Assad groups inside Syria to topple the regime, coalesced loosely under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Turkey provided funding, weapons, and training to the FSA, a hodgepodge group of mercenaries. And Ankara did not stop there.

Under Erdogan’s direction, Turkey, a NATO member, established a working relationship with radical extremist militias with direct ties to al Qaeda. Jabhat al-Nusra, a now-defunct Salafi-jihadi organization, was one such entity (among many) armed and supported by Ankara. Turkey also stands accused of permitting foreign fighters, wishing to join the ranks of the Islamic State, to freely transit through Turkey, to join the group’s forces in Syria. The common link that bound Ankara to all these groups was their joint commitment to topple the Assad regime.

Despite such initiatives, Erdogan ultimately failed to achieve what would have been the Turkish government’s first attempt to carry out regime change in a foreign country. This failure was not through lack of trying but due to a false set of assumptions. Erdogan assumed that the Assad regime would collapse in a matter of months, much like Hosni Mubarak’s in Egypt and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s in Tunisia. What he failed to anticipate was the lifeline thrown to Assad by Russia and Iran, allowing the regime in Damascus to survive.

By 2020, Erdogan was forced to abandon what turned out to be a pipe-dream pursuit and has increasingly been pressured by Russia, Assad’s major ally, to rebuild ties with Damascus. This will be hard to achieve, however, and not only because Assad is understandably hesitant to establish a dialogue with a neighboring leader who tried to overthrow him.

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For Ankara, the pressure to engage with Damascus is clear. Erdogan is under tremendous pressure to placate Turkish voters, who want to see more than 4 million Syrian refugees repatriated as soon as possible. This cannot happen without Assad’s cooperation. In the early days of Syria’s civil war, Turkey employed an open-door policy to shelter Syrians wanting to escape the horrors of war. Since 2012, Turkish citizens have grown weary and angry with what they perceive to be uncontrolled flows of refugees, who have privileged access to all the benefits that the state has to offer them, from free health care to housing and education.

Turks feel that citizens’ welfare rights should be prioritized by the government and instead they are being passed over—and that Erdogan is to blame. Citizen resentment is compounded by the worst economic downturn Turkey has ever experienced, typified by high inflation and matched by soaring housing and consumer costs, declining incomes, and exorbitant taxes.

Although Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek assures citizens that conditions will improve, they are skeptical. It isn’t clear whether Syrian refugees residing in Turkey want to return to their homeland, however. Despite technically being term-limited, Erdogan plans to run for president again—and he seems to believe that unless the number of refugees is reduced, his chances of reelection in 2028 are in jeopardy.

For Assad, any incentives to work things out with Ankara are not apparent. Since 2022, Damascus has insisted on a precondition that for any direct negotiations to even begin, Turkey would not only have to withdraw its support for anti-Assad militias seeking to overthrow the regime but also withdraw its own military presence in northern Syria, where Turkish forces have been since 2016, coordinating and overseeing militia group operations. Turkey’s main reason to station troops in Syria is to prevent Syrian Kurdish groups from building a “terror corridor,” as the Turks call it, along the Syrian border.

In July, Assad relaxed his insistence on preconditions, as direct communication between Erdogan and Assad to schedule a meeting date and venue was reported by mainstream media. Erdogan called on Assad to let go of old grievances and stated that he was ready to host him in Ankara or a third country. While Damascus didn’t immediately accept the offer, it also did not turn it down.

The most likely reason for the current rapprochement is political uncertainty. Put simply, there is no telling what the dynamics facing the region will look like after January 2025, following the November U.S. presidential election. No one can accurately foresee what U.S. foreign policy toward the region will look like under a Kamala Harris or second Trump administration. It is also unclear if the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza will spread to Lebanon or whether Iran would seek Assad’s help to transfer weapons to Lebanon.

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A rapprochement could yield several wins for Ankara and Damascus. For Assad, the removal of Turkish troops from Syria may also come with the added benefit of an end to the existence of opposition groups. With no Turkish backing, their ability to survive may be undercut. In turn, Assad could accommodate Erdogan’s goal to repatriate Syrian refugees from Turkey, which would reduce domestic public pressure on the Turkish president. Such a compromise would also please the European Union, which has leaned on Turkey to block the passage of Syrian refugees from Turkey to Europe.

As far as Washington is concerned, the prospect of a negotiated settlement would almost guarantee that the U.S. support mission to the counter-Islamic State effort, conducted alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), would have to be terminated. The greatest winners are likely to be Moscow and Tehran: Both have long worked to see the survival of a friendly Assad regime reasserting total control over its territory.

All these possibilities carry risks, however. One rumor that has been floated about the possibility of Ankara’s rapprochement with Damascus is said to hinge on a joint Syrian-Turkish military operation against the SDF. Ankara has long sought to decimate the U.S.-backed Kurdish-majority fighting force put together to defeat and contain the Islamic State. Erdogan has long identified the SDF as a terrorist organization and a direct offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Such a development would see a key U.S. partner routed, with little pushback from Washington. In the event of a second Trump administration, there is a decent chance that Erdogan could again convince Washington to pull out its forces, something that he accomplished in December 2018. Following a phone call between Erdogan and Trump, Trump instructed a drawdown of U.S. troops, triggering the resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis.

After the calamitous U.S. pullout from Afghanistan in 2021, lack of U.S. support for a key regional partner would be interpreted as a further sign of U.S. decline in the Middle East. This does not bode well, as indicators suggest that the Islamic State is reconstituting its presence in Syria once again.

Finally, normalization of Turkish-Syrian ties is not likely to be problem-free. If Turkey stops backing opposition groups in Syria and stops paying their salaries and providing them material support, how would they respond?

Turkey likely does not have an answer to this. In early July, days after Erdogan said he would be willing to meet Assad, violence erupted in Syria, specifically against the Turkish military and Turkish supply trucks, representative of anger toward Erdogan by Syrian militias, based on their perception that Erdogan was throwing them under the bus. Given the affiliation of some of these militia groups to jihadi movements, there is little to stop them going further—for example, by carrying out terrorist attacks inside Turkey or other countries.

Many members of anti-Assad militias (including Islamic State members) have Turkish residency, and some even have citizenship, allowing them freedom of travel. The potential to gain Turkish citizenship is one reason why anti-regime fighters in Syria opt to join the militias. In return for their military service, fighters hope and believe they will gain the right to reside in Turkey.

Erdogan and Assad are no longer just willing to procrastinate. Both sides are likely anticipating a change of guard in Washington and are interested in capitalizing on what satisfies their interests, without waiting to see how a second Trump administration might seek to shape the region.