Taha Özhan
On November 29, 1924, on the basis of the Sykes-Picot agreement, the French, who sharedOttoman Mesopotamia with the League of Nations, appointed General Maurice Sarrail as High Commissioner for Syria. Exactly a century after Sarrail, who destroyed the ancientpolitical and social fabric of Syria, on November 29, 2024, the Syrian opposition, with the offensive launched two days earlier against the Assad regime, liberated Aleppo, which wouldopen the door to Damascus. The minority regime in Syria has fallen. An anomaly born of the geopolitical opportunity created by French colonialism has disappeared. For half a century, the Assad family’s rule, which was based on a system of pure torture, was able to survive because the Cold War allowed the seeds sown during the French colonial period to flourish. The same period also coincided with the emergence of an Israel-centered Middle East order, allowing this minority rule to survive into the 21st century. On December 8, when Bashar al-Assad fled Syria, not only the unimaginable torture regime of the Baath regime collapsed, but also the century-old minority order collapsed, bringing Syria back to the brink of post-Ottoman dissolution. In Syria, where a century ago the future of minorities, mandate rule, and different religious and sectarian groups were being debated, the way for a genuinegeo political and political correction has been reopened after a century. In a way, in 2024, Syria returned to 1918 with a century of experience.
The importance and magnitude of this revolution will be better understood in the years to come. The aftershocks of preventing Syria, the epicenter of Islam’s historical imagination, political memory, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean world, from experiencing a secondAndalusia will be better understood in the years to come. When history is written tomorrow, after a century of instability and half a century of a brutal regime in Syria, no matter how fragile and even partly chaotic the period may be, the consequences of the historical anomaly that was built in Syria a century ago and the strong possibility of its re-growth will be better understood and evaluated than today. The end of the historical anomaly in Syria will be promising for a new beginning and peace order. In other words, the center of the pain in Syriais how an inclusive structure will be established with a paradigmatic change. After more than half a century of atrocities committed by the minority regime, the main axis of the debate or the main base of possible vulnerabilities will be inclusion. While the source of legitimacy will increase for approaches that strengthen the possibility of coexistence, it will decrease for any actor that pushes the opposite.
The significance and value of the revolution that emerged at the moment when Assad’stransfer of legitimacy in the last year and his re-establishment of diplomatic relations with all countries in the region, except Türkiye, was a clear defeat for those who wanted the Baathistregime to disappear and the feeling that history had frozen is priceless. In this respect, them agnitude of the trauma suffered by those trapped under the rubble of the collapsed regime cannot be compared to the disillusionment experienced by Syrians over the last eight years.
To better understand this situation, it is enough to imagine a scenario in which Türkiye has given up hope on Syria. Of course, this is not how history is written and life does not flow this way. But let’s go back to 2012 and 13. On the one hand, let us remember the language formedin the hatred that is mistaken for politics by various kinds of nationalism that tries to relievethe pain of not being able to openly curse the geography and the history from which it comes, accompanied by a fictional history that satisfies itself. Let us imagine that the mind that seesthe Middle East as a swamp, that instead of facing the horrors of World War I, behaves as if it were in another part of the world with a traumatic romanticism, and that is extremely uncomfortable with the fact that the region it calls a swamp constitutes 1,850 km of the country’s 2,750 km land borders is effective. Let us also remember the marriage of this mind with the focus that stopped the MIT trucks traveling to Syria in the same years. Let’s not forget that it also shaped the discourse of the entire opposition, almost regardless of party affiliation, which at the time was voicing its sectarian hatred as realist Middle East politics. Within this whole picture, let us also add to our equation the pressure function of the global geopolitical consumption of the ISIS scourge combined with the discourse within the country. Let us also see that the most rabid cadre above meets in the army, the most powerful focus of the tutelage regime. In other words, while the Sykes-Picot order is being established in Syriafor the second time in a century in front of our eyes by different actors, let’s remember that themind that sees the region as a swamp and the mind that serves MIT trucks to the West as ISIS operations meet in the same place, let alone confronting the threats this new order will pose toTürkiye and the region.
While the other side of its 1,000-kilometer border was being turned upside down, those whothought they could watch the humanitarian catastrophe with their “let’s not get involved” approach thought that they were insulting the minds trying to manage the Syrian crisis withtheir arrogant sentences that started with the obscene “our Syria policy” for years. Many of them kept saying “Our Syria policy…” on behalf of other capitals, some of them dragomanizing what they heard from the West as if they were local informants, some of them masking their sectarian fanaticism with geopolitical analysis. They did not care about theunimaginable brutality of the Baath regime, nor about the risks to Türkiye. After all, what would have happened if they had surrendered to this mindset? This is a question worth pondering. Türkiye’s passive watch on Syria could have led to a human tragedy perhaps morethan twice the size of the refugee crisis of the last 10 years. Türkiye could have become the most ineffective and perhaps the most meaningless actor in the geopolitical order in its region.
Without the Idlib sanctuary that was the fruit of the Astana process after the fall of Aleppo, Syria’s demography could have been ethnically cleansed from top to bottom, never to recover. The 59-year-old Assad’s minority regime could have turned into an open field for Tehran’s demographic interventions that would have changed its “minority” characteristic, establishedan order that would have allowed him to stay in power for 15-20 years and hand it over to a member of his family, and paved the way for Russia’s positioning in Syria beyond a few military bases. The PKK’s positioning and how this situation would be reflected in Iraq could have built a plane where many things that were said to be impossible could be realized. It is also worth discussing how such a Syria would transform our region and how Israel would be fortified. In short, not only did a revolution take place in Syria on December 8, but we alsosaw the fruits of the approach that kept Türkiye away from the world of chaos and risks above.
Syria Litmus Test
Syria was both a moral and geopolitical litmus test. Very few people passed it. Moreover, it was expected that many would pass one of the two, at least the moral test. They (a)did not. They did not have enough conscience to pass the Syrian moral test. They used empty geopolitical clichés to suppress their conscience. They mistook the Syrian “myths and clichés” that had been consumed for years as truth only because the oppressed Syrians wereweakened and lost ground and positions. They called it the axis of resistance, they talk edabout the great Israeli projects, they said that Russia was on the side of the regime to the pointof putting everything on the line, they claimed that the whole region would be turned upside down if Syria got involved, they said that the West wants to topple Assad and Israel wants to topple Assad. They could not be convinced that the oppressed Syrians wanted to overthrowthe Baathist torture system.
Türkiye has been rewarded for its refusal to give up on Syria despite the pressure of the axis of evil that was constructed on Syria by groups inside the country that do not stand side by side on any other issue. President Erdoğan, in particular, has been rewarded for his efforts inside Syria to preserve the ground that liberated Damascus on December 8, while resisting strong racist pressure on Syrian refugees. Erdogan’s refusal to give up on Syria is not only an exception in our region during his rule. In this respect, it is also one of the notable exceptions of the last two centuries, when the years of dissolution or “withdrawal” of our own history began. On the other hand, Hakan Fidan, whom they directly targeted through the MIT trucks, did not lose his motivation for 13 years and built the ground and victory that brought about the revolution in Syria by somehow protecting the opposition in a very difficult geopolitical delicate balance that shaped almost his entire career.
Of course, a post-Assad Syria is fraught with many vulnerabilities and risks. But no period ahead for Syria can be worse than the destruction wrought by the Baathist torture system in Syria. Syrians are convinced of this first and foremost. At this point, there are four clear areasof risk for Syria and the possibility of a period of fragility. The possibility of a period of fragility means the chaotic period expected after every revolution. The first signs of the Syrian revolution, which has not yet completed one month, show that no one in Syria has the power and motivation to turn the century-old fatigue and fragility into chaos. Moreover, it gives the feeling that the joy of getting rid of the Assad regime has the energy to suppress the new terrorist images that may emerge.
Areas of Risk in Syria
The first of the four risk areas for Syria is the re-formation of the “status quo axis” after the desire for change of the Arab uprisings that started 14 years ago was realized in Damascus with a heavy price and a clear victory. Just like 13-14 years ago, the actors who came to gether to maintain the status quo in the face of the pressure for change in the region are once again in the same uneasy situation. From Israel to Iran, from Egypt to the Gulf, from the US to Jordan, they may react in panic in order to keep the outdated geopolitical order of the region alive with different motivations. However, they will have difficulty finding actors to carry the sereactions within Syria. 13 years ago in Syria, the dynamics that brought Israel and Iran, Russia and America, Iraq and Jordan on the same line do not exist. On the contrary, there aretwo dynamics that were instrumental in the realization of the Syrian revolution. The first is Türkiye’s success in maintaining a protected zone with the support of diplomatic, military, economic and state capacity. While the Syrian opposition was flourishing in this protected zone, the Syrian regime was decaying at the same time. This new dynamic has rendered the elements that sustained the Assad regime 12-13 years ago virtually meaningless today.
The second dynamic is that those who sustained the Assad regime also created the ground forits collapse. After 2022, four of the five actors involved in Syria (Iran-Israel, US-Russia, Iran-US) went to war with each other, changing the geopolitical and military status quo on the ground. Russia’s geopolitical muscles began to weaken in the Syria file the day it began itsinvasion of Ukraine. Iran, with its Hezbollah and other militias, embarked on a major adventure on the Syrian scale for the first time, losing the organizational seriousness it had maintained for years and turning into disorganized sectarian legionaries. During this period, Hezbollah exhausted all its credibility in the Islamic world and unwittingly disintegrated its organizational strength. The extent of this disintegration became more evident in the face of the Israeli attacks. The government in Damascus, which Israel had positioned as a “comfortable enemy” for years, and which, according to official documents released afterAssad, had become an ordinary tool of the Israeli army, turned out to be nothing more than a useful apparatus for Tel Aviv to spy on Hamas and Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s presence in Syria was directly affected when Israel continued its genocide in Gaza and took the war to Lebanon. By de facto admitting that it could not afford an open conventional war, Iran not only realized that the “Axis of Resistance” it had been investing in for years was useless in the absence of a civilian or weak military force against it, but also suffered heavy military, economic, diplomatic and geopolitical costs.
Similarly, Israel saw the collapse of its de facto policy of “my neighbors must be autocracies”. America has entered a period in which its geopolitical perspectives in the region, as well as in Syria, are completely bankrupt. It is enough to recall that the lastAmerican ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, and his special envoy to Syria, Frederic Hof, publicly expressed this bankruptcy by saying “America’s Syria policy is indefensible” to understand the situation in which Washington finds itself. However, at a time of increasing political instability within the US, and 50 days before Trump’s inauguration, Washington surrendered to the Syrian crisis by failing to develop a policy. Knowing that the PKK, on which it had invested for years, was an actor that could neither socially nor militarily stand against the Syrian revolution, it preferred a “wait and see” policy. Therefore, for Washington, the PKK is no longer an opportunity or a tool, but rather a burden that it must get rid of or carry. It is not possible to protect the SDF in an equation where its “Syria” no longer exists, where it is already impossible for an actor whose only legitimacy is weapons to be labeled“Democratic”, and where the term “Forces”, invented to preserve the image that there are actors other than the PKK, has become meaningless with the withdrawal of Arab elements.
The above chaotic picture has the potential to generate risks for Syria. Some of these risks may manifest themselves in the form of terrorism and others in the form of steps taken by different Syrian factions to bottleneck the transition process. Israel, acting ahead of all actors, has not only expanded its occupation to delay the democratic transformation and stabilization of the new Syria, but has also largely destroyed what was left of the decayed Assad military capacity that could never pose a threat to it. It is no secret that Jordan and the Gulf, which border Syria geographically, are aligned with Israel in fearing the regional repercussions of a legitimate Syrian government based on popular consent. There is also the possibility thatIsrael’s fear of a stable Syria could eventually meet up with the Gulf and Tehran, which has invested for years in the Assad regime’s bankrupt stocks, as it did 13 years ago. But in a country and crisis zone of Syria’s scale, this “axis of destruction” does not have it as easy as it did 13 years ago. The difficulty of threatening Europe with a new wave of migration, the clearsupport of the new regime in Damascus both at home and from the peoples of the region, Iran’s growing internal crisis and the deepening of its undeclared silent transition, Türkiye’s continued active transfer of state and security capacity, the fact that Iraq is now as exhaustedas Syria, and Lebanon is in a spiral of crisis all change the picture and the calculations significantly. Put simply: Those who did not save Assad and the establishment as it collapsedwill find it difficult to find elements that they can transfer trust to and use for an Assadism without Assad.
The PKK Problem in Syria
The third area of risk comes from the United States. What America will do in Syria is stillun known. Just a few years ago, the same people who aggressively asked the US defense secretary in the Senate how the PKK terrorist organization could be America’s partner and criticized it harshly, are now presenting a bipartisan bill to the US parliament to impose a harsh embargo regime against Türkiye if the PKK is harmed. Similarly, it is hard to predict what Trump, who will become president in the third week of January, will do. The favorable scenario is that Trump will implement his policy of withdrawal from Syria, which he failed to accomplish in his first term and which he considers to be unfinished. However, it is important to keep in mind that if this scenario does not materialize, the PKK, as the last surviving apparatus of the Assad regime, will turn into a useful element for all actors who do not want stability in Syria. Taking into account the most powerful function of the PKK’s theology, “the nature of a timeshare organization”, it is possible to say that this situation will pose risks for both Syria and Türkiye.
After the collapse of the Baathist torture system in Syria, Assad left the country. Baathelements have been pacified for now. While Assad left the country dishonorably, they have neither the strength nor the courage to take the stage conventionally again in the name of a regime that left them in the middle. Moreover, the Syrian revolution, with its patience in the face of the Baathist regime’s brutality and its preference for historical justice over transition aljustice, has dealt a much bigger blow to these elements. However, there is an old element of Baathism that, despite being with the Assad regime, did not disappear with the fall of Assad. This is none other than the PKK. The PKK, the ideological and instrumental partner of the Baath for 40 years, is the only element that continues to exist in post-revolution Syria despiteits open collaboration with the Assad regime.
Syria seems to have no other way out than a new social, political and administrative contractbased on constitutional citizenship, given the scale and structure of its population, its social dynamics and its centuries-old post-Ottoman experience. Neither an overt quota system like in Lebanon, nor a de facto division system like in Iraq, will lead to stability in Syria. Moreover, the PKK, which has refused to be a part of the Syrian revolution, which has seen no harm in being under the wings of the Assad regime’s Mukhabarat for years, without once caring about the Kurds who have been living for decades under the most severe oppression and humiliation of the Baath regime in Syria, where its leader left in July ’79, has no ground to speak on behalf of the Kurds in Syria, nor is there any ground on which its dream of taking over the fate of the new Syria rests. To put it more bluntly, while even the Alawite minority that the Assad regime relies on – for whatever reason and motivation – makes an effort to appear in the ranks of the revolution, it is not possible for an organization that has no problem with a torture regime that has been inflicting Sednaya life on the whole of Syria for decades, especially one that has spent the last seven to eight years in active cooperation with it, just like before 1999, to exist in the Syrian equation.
This situation on the ground, however, does not negate the fact that the PKK, which has beenin the throes of politicization for years, is living in a geopolitical fantasy world. This perspective, which evaluates the entire Syrian, Turkish, Middle Eastern and global geopolitical matrices with an activist frivolity that cannot even be considered a naiveapproach, has the capacity to produce problems in the short term, but it is obvious that it willnot be able to establish a sustainable position in the medium term. In an environment wherethe overwhelming majority of Syria has signed a new contract within the framework of constitutional citizenship, there will be no ground for a structure like the PKK, despite allkinds of external military and geopolitical support.
However, another pillar of the Syrian revolution and the elimination of this threat to Türkiye is the steps that need to be taken in Ankara. The initiatives that have recently started on theaxis of a radical debate need to be transformed into a coherent policy. This need is vital not only for eliminating the PKK threat, but also for Türkiye’s policy and presence in Syria. Thisis because for the last 10-odd years, President Erdoğan’s rabid perspective on Syria is the one that has prevented the realization of democratization in Türkiye. Within the framework of a genuine democratization, Türkiye must both solve the Kurdish issue and establish the rule of law at the best possible level. This is not a simple choice for Türkiye. Stabilization and a possible democratic transition in Syria is a vital issue for Ankara to maximize its geopolitical, security and economic interests. This transformation is possible by unlocking two locks. InSyria, the first door to transformation has been opened by getting rid of Assad. The mentality that prevents democratization in Türkiye must also come to an end. Under the burden of this mentality, Türkiye cannot achieve the desired success in the Syrian file in the medium andlong term. It is not possible to run a democratic deficit at home and a geopolitical surplus abroad.
After the fall of the minority regime in Syria, there is nothing realistic about confronting the overwhelming majority of the population with administrative rights other than basic human rights and some group rights (language) in a new social contract. Even if this naïveexpectation were to be realized, it is obvious that the limited Kurdish population in Syria as a whole is not sufficient for a serious administration in the region. Only a small portion of Kurds live in the region under PKK domination. Either a minority government will be established in these regions at gunpoint, or they will become part of the new Syria as constitutional citizens. The states of Damascus, Aleppo, Alawite, Greater Lebanon, Jabal al-Durzi and the Sanjak of Iskenderun, established a century ago in the 1920s, disintegrated within a few years. The calculations made on paper against the Syrian main body were confronted with the reality of “indivisible Syria”. This is because, just like Iraq, divisionalong ethnic lines in Syria hits the religious wall, while division along different religious and sectarian lines hits the wall of geographical and economic resources. The only way for those who forgot the pains of democratization in Türkiye and even the Kurdish issue and turned theKurdish issue into a geopolitical problem that they could not carry since 2013 in the hands of those who modeled the minority algorithm of the Baath regime within themselves, to get outof the trap and the vortex they built themselves today is for the new era in Syria to become an active element of democratization in Türkiye.
The fourth risk area for Syria is how the new administration will be shaped. If the lessons of a century of pain are learned, both internal Syrian actors and external powers will not be able toresist the new positive political and geopolitical energy – even if there are subversive attempts- for a long time. As long as the elements, actors and leaders who will build the new Syrialearn the most important lesson from the past. Because the regime and order they destroyed was based on the “minority” as its main basis and function. Today, an approach that avoidsthe danger of a “minority rule” in every sense, even if it has its shortcomings and mistakes, is the only way to stabilize Syria. In the new era, the “minority danger” will have two main dynamics. The first is the approach that will be created by a narrow perspective that relies on the power of the majority and will ultimately produce a reverse minority style. The second is the emergence of fragmented structures in different forms, similar to Lebanon and Iraq, which were experienced under mandate rule in the 1920s, which will make it destined to produce thes ame crises again.
Finally, another area of tension in Syria could be between the elements that carried out the revolution. Apart from the natural intra-governmental tensions, the Syrian revolution was carried out by two main strands in two distinct periods. The first vein shaped the revoltagainst the Assad regime, which started in March 2011 in Daraa and spread across Syria. Both the masses and the leadership of the first phase of the revolution paid a heavy price. Inthe same period, very strong and meritorious cadres emerged from different sectors to lead theSyrian revolution. Some of these cadres lost their lives and some of them had to disperse to different parts of the world. The actors of the second period, which started after the fall of Aleppo, changed drastically. The leadership cadres of the first period, which consisted mostly of civilians, intellectuals and politicians, were replaced by armed fighters. Ultimately, thesecadres led the revolution to victory. In the new period, it will be important to build a political bridge between those who initiated the change in Syria and those who led it to victory, andeven to bring the two different cadres of these two different periods together on a common ground. The new government in Syria will be successful to the extent that it embraces all of Syria, while on the other hand, it will be able to consolidate its governing capacity to theextent that it brings together the leaderships of different periods of the revolution in power.