Turkey’s Persistent Problem of its Syrian Border
By Benjamin Lutz
Turkey’s southern border with Syria has been tumultuous at best over the past 9 years. The Syrian civil war has seen the Turkish government ramp up its military and geopolitical influence in the region, as it has been coordinating attacks against Daesh; collaborating with regional militaries; and serving as an intermediary to Russia. However, this regional engagement has seen Turkey become ever-more intertwined with the further intractability of the Syrian conflict. In the first 10 days of February 2020 alone, 13 Turkish military personnel have been killed in Idlib, prompting a deadly response from Ankara, amplifying concerns over an escalation of violence in Syria’s continual war. This is an immense development in the trajectory of the Syrian conflict as Erdogan now vigorously vows to “strike Syrian government forces anywhere” to ensure no more Turkish casualties.
Turkey and the Syrian regime have stopped fighting purely through proxies, and instead taken to directly attacking each other. This radically changes the dynamic in Syria as Turkey has been seen, until February 2020, as a mainly stable and reliable leader of the fight against Daesh and separately Bashar al-Assad. Turkey also maintains a close relationship with Russia, which supports and props up al-Assad’s rule. This relationship is a fascinating dynamic as they are directly opposed to a the sides fighting in Syria but have a similar goal of regional stability and control.
However, a burgeoning standoff between Russia and Turkey is demonstrating a large shift in the dimensions of Syrian conflict. The main focus of contention is the control of the Idlib province, the last stronghold of Turkish-backed rebels resisting the regime of al-Assad. Recently, Turkey has reached out to Russia to facilitate another round of talks aimed at forging a ceasefire agreement in Syria after several failed talks in January 2020. Despite repeated phone calls between Ankara and Moscow, Russia has not stepped up to negotiate a pause, or even a new ceasefire to this newest incursion in Idlib.
Idlib is the devastated and destroyed final frontier of the Syrian war, of up to four million residents effectively quarantined in a small parcel of land with a three-front proxy conflicts occurring from the parties of the Russian-backed Syrian military, the Turkish-backed Syrian rebellion, and al-Qaeda-loyal extremists. Relief agencies warn that this deadly vortex of proxy wars is causing the worst humanitarian disaster in the nine-year conflict. The exponential expansion of violence in Idlib has surged a new, even more devastating humanitarian context, which has displaced 900,000 people since the start of December 2019, according to the United Nations, which warned that the “horrifying” crisis was forcing a new kind of displacement, internally displaced internally-displaced people.
The method of operation from Moscow and more specifically the al-Assad regime in Idlib has been solely a land grab tactic through bombing everyone in it, including hospitals, and pushing the entire problem north into Turkey. In countering this tactic, Turkey is now directly countering the Syrian government’s offensive in Idlib. It is “a whole new level of state-on-state conflict,” said Charles Lister, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “And given Erdogan’s domestic considerations, it’s still hard to see anything but more escalation on the horizon.”
Erdogan is lurching between a series of appalling options on his long southern border. Attempting to contain the spread of al-Qaeda while simultaneously halting the al-Assad military from further encroaching on Idlb and ensuring the Syrian Kurdish population does not grow has put Turkey is a tough spot. All meanwhile, Turkey’s relationship with Russia is souring over Erdogan’s decision to directly counter the Syrian government. Against this multifaceted and impossible backdrop, the United States, NATO, and Western allies (although all still upset over the attack on the Syrian Kurds last year) have clearly sided with Turkey. Washington specifically has long been trying to break the Ankara-Moscow alliance in Syria, and now the United States has an opportunity to re-envelop Turkey into its alliance. The question now is whether Moscow can once again turn the situation in Syria to its favor.