Turkey’s plan implies political dimensions, serious impacts on Syrian north
ERBIL, KRG, Iraq (North Press) – Local and international experts see that Turkey intends to implement a plan of political dimensions and serious impacts on the geography and demography of the northern part of Syria.
On May 3, Turkish President revealed preparations for a new project that would allow the voluntary return of one million Syrian refugees to the Turkish-controlled areas in northern Syria.
He referred to these areas as “safe” which extend from Afrin in northwest Syria to Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) in the northeast.
Turkish official statistics say that about four million Syrians live in Turkey.
However, these refugees, whom Turkey intends to deport to the Syrian north, are not indigenous people of the targeted areas mentioned in the plan, which will be subjected to a large scheme of the demographic change.
“This Turkish step poses a real threat to the Syrian demography especially the northern part, which lies under the Turkish control,” Medhat Hammad, professor of Iranian and Gulf Studies at Egypt’s Tanta University, said.
In an interview with North Press, Hammad said, “This step reminds us of the Iranian policy during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 when Iran deployed Iranian-backed militias in east and southeast Iraq, to be turned, later, to Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).”
However, the case in Syria is “broader, more complicated and dangerous” because Syria witnesses more than a conflict including that with “Israel in the south, another with Turkey and let alone the war against the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) in addition to the internal conflict,” according to the Egyptian expert.
Areas of concentrated resettlement
“In case Turkey manages to create areas of concentrated resettlement inside Syria, this will be more serious and the biggest threat,” Hammad said.
These concentrated resettlements will be loyal to Turkey and “they may be run by quite a few number of Turks who will be deployed in these areas in a similar way to what Iran did in Iraq through deploying its agents, who operate in Quds Force,”
However, Turkey did not hide its intention regarding the direct intervention in northern Syria on the pretext of preserving its “national security” against a threat, according to Turkey, posed by the Kurds who laid the foundation for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) project in cooperation with multi-ethnic communities and organizations.
Turkey aims to establish a “human wall” down near its southern border in the depth of the Syrian territory and it allocates large amounts of money for projects with a clear goal to demographically change the region, and this will poses a real threat to the future of the region, Dr. Jawad al-Baydani, a Professor of History at University of Baghdad, said.
Resettling Syrians from different Syrian areas in an area in Syria’s north bears a clear goal for Turkey which is the demographic change because a small percentage of the refugees come from this region in the country, according to al-Baydani, who is also the head of the Iraqi Institution for Kurdish Studies.
Last week, the Turkish Minister of Interior, Suleyman Soylu, stated that Turkey had prepared 13 projects that include building 250,000 houses in the Turkish-controlled areas in northern Syria, i.e. in Jarablus, Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain), Tel Abyad and al-Bab.
These projects will be funded by international relief organizations, and target Syrian refugees with temporary residency in Turkey.
Defensive line
“Most of the Syrians in Turkey are pro-hardline forces, otherwise they would have been present in their headquarters and organizations within the Syrian regions, in particular in the SDF-controlled areas, for example, as it is a safe area and opposed to the Assad regime at the same time,” al-Baydani said.
Al-Baydani explained that the refugees that will be included in the Turkish government’s plan and will have a foothold in northern Syria are the Turkish-backed factions which will act as a “defensive line” along Turkey’s southern border, which Erdogan has long called for.
With the rise of the nationalist voices rejecting the presence of refugees in Turkey, whom Erdogan used as a pressure card on the West, al-Baydani believes that this card is no longer useful because of the war in Ukraine. It is difficult for Erdogan to pressure the West in light of the axes of conflict between Russia and the West over the Crimea region.
Furthermore, al-Baydani reiterates that the Turkish project will serve Erdogan’s AKP in the elections, as AKP is suffering from internal pressure as well.
Syrian government, however, has issued no actual deterrent positions toward the announced project so far. The researcher, Hammad attributes this to the weak economic capabilities of Syria and the absence of the Arab role and support for Damascus, and this increases the problem at the strategic level.
Hammad went further deep through “linking these areas and the settlers to the Turkish economy. In fact, Turkey may be able to destabilize the national stability of Syria by forming a kind of autonomy in those Syrian areas that are actually subject to the Turkish authorities.”
However, he believes that such developments “may be reflected on the nature of the Syrian political system, so it finds itself obliged, in order to preserve the unity of the Syrian territories, to accept a kind of power-sharing with these population blocs that will be resettled in Syria in the new areas planned by Turkey.”
“It is exactly what we see actually applied in Iraq and Lebanon,” he added.
This settlement project also, according to the Iraqi expert, Jawad al-Baydani, provides Turkey with areas of economic exchange with Syria that alleviate its internal economic crises, as it did in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.