News headlines announcing Syria’s return to the Arab League and impending normalization with its Arab neighbors exposed the obvious last week: the government of Bashar al-Assad is here to stay. Less flashy – but equally important to al-Assad’s longevity – have been Damascus’ domestic reconciliation initiatives, which were launched in earnest after 2018.
Two striking exceptions risk derailing al-Assad’s total victory: the opposition-held northwest and the autonomous northeast. Tied to these issues, Damascus has yet to make any significant inroads in rapprochement with Turkey, which backs the Syrian opposition, and, to a lesser degree, the United States, which gives meaningful support to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Moreover, Turkey has repeatedly attacked the autonomous northeast, occupying Kurdish-majority Afrin in 2018 and the cities of Tel Abyad and Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ayn) in 2019.
How has the interplay of these three actors – the Syrian government, Turkey and its Syrian proxy militias, and the Kurdish-led autonomy project in the northeast – shaped Syria? And what would a future settlement look like?
When two quarrel…
Damascus-Qamishli
The relationship between the Syrian government and its Kurdish minority is complex. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were made stateless or alien in the 1960s, their language and culture were outlawed, and the predominantly-Kurdish Jazira region was subjected to ethnic engineering when the government forcefully transferred thousands of Arabs to the northeast. Yet Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, also hosted and outfitted the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) during their campaigns against the Turkish state in the 1980s and 1990s. When the Kurds joined anti-government protests in 2011, government forces treated them with kid gloves, relatively speaking. In 2012, the Syrian army and security forces exited Kurdish-majority regions altogether, leaving them in the hands of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a political party that has adopted the ideas of the jailed Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK, in democracy, women’s liberation, and national coexistence, and has rejected secession and the overthrow of al-Assad as a goal in itself.
Diplomacy between the PYD as well as the People’s/Women’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) and Damascus never ceased, even as the country descended into war. Despite occasional clashes between both, the two had generally favorable relations, at least compared to other groups in opposition to the government. Their relationship soured after 2014, when the US began arming the YPG/YPJ – later rebranded the SDF – in their war against the Islamic State (ISIS). The US established a presence in Jazira and Deir ez-Zor regions, which are home to most of Syria’s oil and gas wealth, to the chagrin of Damascus.
The SDF and the government security forces have feud on a number of occasions, including in the cities of Hasakah and Qamishli. However, faced with repeated threats by Turkey to invade the Kurdish-dominated north, the SDF has allowed the Syrian Arab Army to man positions across the frontlines with Turkey and Turkish-backed factions on their territory. Al-Assad has attempted a slow encroachment into the region based on Ankara’s threats. Yet this will only go so far – Syrian officials know that they cannot take the northeast, which boasts of over 100,000 soldiers and security personnel, by force.
Negotiations, mostly overseen by Russia, have been ongoing. Since 2012, the YPG/YPJ have been approached to form a codified regional defense force by integrating into the Syrian army. In 2017, a delegation of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), which runs northeast Syria, was even offered limited autonomy in exchange for the ‘return’ of Arab-majority regions it had captured during its anti-ISIS campaign. It was rejected. After talks in February 2020, Ilham Ahmad, president of the Executive Committee of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the SDF’s political wing, said Damascus was open to the possibility of forming a “higher committee” to introduce a local administration law throughout the country based on the AANES system. This has yet to materialize.
According to multiple officials from northeast Syria, they are open for a solution ‘through Damascus’ but are unwilling to reach any agreement as long as the government exhibits a ‘pre-2011 mentality‘. Symbolically, a draft for northeast Syria’s new ‘social contract’, akin to a constitution, places the AANES in a political relationship with the ‘Democratic Republic of Syria’ – a currently non-existent national entity.
Damascus-Ankara
The relationship between the governments in Syria and Turkey has been fraught. Finding themselves on opposite sides of the Cold War divide, and beset by disputes over waterways and al-Assad’s support for the PKK, the two sides did not normalize relations until the late 1990s. In 1998, Syria and Turkey signed the Adana Agreement, a set of promises to cooperate on combating terrorism – particularly against the PKK. The agreement was controversial, as Ankara later argued that an unpublished annex allowed it to enter 5km deep into Syrian territory in order to pursue terrorists, which Damascus denies. It is also unclear whether the two governments signed a legally-binding agreement or a statement of intent. Neither of the two parliaments ever ratified it.
Bashar al-Assad and Turkey’s Islamist head of state since 2003, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had a generally favorable rapport before 2011. In 2010, the two signed another counter-terrorism treaty and cross-border trade grew. However, in 2011, Turkey quickly became a safe haven for Syria’s opposition, and Erdogan began calling for al-Assad’s ousting. Between 2011 and 2016, Turkey offered limited support in the US-led programs to arm and train opposition groups to fight both the Syrian government and ISIS. In 2016, faced with the possibility of the YPG/YPJ consolidating their control over nearly the entire Turco-Syrian border, Ankara invaded the Arab-dominated cities of Azaz, al-Bab and Jarablus together with Syrian proxy factions, pushing back the government forces.
Turkey has exploited Damascus’ displeasure over the SDF’s cooperation with Washington to invade Kurdish-majority regions in Syria’s north with little pushback. However, Turkish forces have also fortified the position of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda-linked group, in Syria’s Idlib region. Turkey furthermore administers occupied Syrian territory from nearby Turkish provinces, has imposed a policy of ‘Turkification’ over education and culture, and tied the region’s trade, telecommunications, and electricity provision to the mainland. It also continues to fund and provide cover for the armed Syrian opposition – notably, HTS, as well as the Syrian National Army (SNA), a kaleidoscope of militias directly dependent on Ankara for wages and weapons.
Even as other Middle Eastern governments are on the path to rapprochement with al-Assad, the Damascus-Ankara relationship has made little headway in the past few years. Intelligence chiefs of both countries have continued to meet throughout to war, though. In mid-2022, Erdogan revealed that the two agencies have cooperated on counter-terrorism measures in what has been termed ‘Adana II’. Turkey has also come to several agreements on Syria with Russia, al-Assad’s largest backer. However, they have had little effect on al-Assad’s stance towards Turkey’s occupation. Notably, Russia and Syria denied Turkey a fourth incursion targeting the Kurdish-held town of Tel Rifaat in 2022.
Still, that same year, Russia attempted to bring both countries to the negotiating table. Initial talks between both foreign ministers were held secretly in October 2021 at a summit in Belgrade. Almost a year later, the head of Turkey’s national intelligence services, Hakan Fidan, travelled to Damascus to meet his counterpart, Ali Mamlouk. The two intelligence chiefs met again, together with the respective defense ministers, in December of 2022. Plans were then made for Turkey’s and Syria’s foreign ministers to meet in January 2023, with the goal of working towards an eventual meeting between al-Assad and Erdogan.
However, the foreign minister’s meeting was pushed back repeatedly as Turkey threatened to invade northern Syria in mid-January, Turkey’s foreign minister was dissuaded from rapprochement with al-Assad during a visit to the US on January 18, and both countries recovered from disastrous earthquakes after February 6. On January 31, Russia’s foreign minister said Iran would join coming talks between the countries’ deputy foreign ministers, which would be held soon. On the day of the talks, March 16, however, al-Assad visited Moscow, where he told Russian media that he would not sit down with Erdogan before Turkey’s occupation of Syria ended. “We did not set conditions,” the Syrian president told reporters, “raising the issue of withdrawal is fixed and will not change. It is a national issue, not a political one.” A meeting of the foreign ministers of Syria, Turkey, Russia and Iran, scheduled for April 4, was recently postponed to early May. This would give the Turkish government only days before parliamentary and presidential elections in the country on May 14.
According to insiders, al-Assad is in no rush to meet with Erdogan. Much of the rapprochement experienced so far has instead been Russia’s doing. Russia sees a valuable ally in Erdogan. Despite Turkey’s membership in NATO, Erdogan has repeatedly defied the Western consensus and attempted to balance Western and Russian interests – including on Ukraine. The Kremlin is eager to give Erdogan a pre-election boost, which may otherwise bring a more Western-aligned government to power. For the same reason, Damascus is unlikely to give Ankara the satisfaction. The competing Turkish opposition coalition has thus far seemed uninterested in continuing a costly occupation; it is likely to seek some understanding with al-Assad in order fulfil its election promise of returning some 4 million Syrians currently living in Turkey.
Ankara-Qamishli
Since the beginning of the Syrian war, Ankara has made no distinction between the YPG/YPJ and the PKK, even as the former became Washington’s main partner force in Syria. Turkey has invaded Kurdish-majority areas twice – in 2018 and 2019 – and threatened to do so repeatedly since then. It has also upped drone attacks against regional officials. According to the Rojava Information Center, 130 strikes killed 87 people and wounded 151 in 2022 alone. In November 2022, Turkey launched an air campaign against northeast Syria over what it claimed was a YPG-organized bomb attack in Istanbul; analysts said there is no evidence to suggest this.
For the PYD, the Erdogan government, more so than al-Assad, is an existential threat to the northeast’s political project. A peace settlement with Turkey – particularly one that does not return Afrin and Sere Kaniye to Kurdish control – is thus unthinkable. The status quo could be upended in little over a month, however, were Erdogan to lose the presidency. Current polls show a narrow lead for his main opponent. Besides the moderate opposition’s lack of appetite for continuing to support Islamist Syrian militias, their victory at the polls will also depend highly on the mood of Turkey’s own Kurds. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a Kurdish party in Turkey with sympathies for their Syrian brethren, will likely command around 10% of the vote and is neither part of governing coalition nor the main opposition alliance. It has thus been called the ‘kingmaker’ of the coming election. In a bid to overthrow Erdogan, the HDP has chosen not to field its own presidential candidate, but it will expect something in return.
However, a second significant change within the Syrian intelligence branch will also likely have major ramifications for these trilateral relations.