Türkiye and Russia engage in delicate maneuvers over Syria after fall of Bashar al-Assad

The rapid fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has triggered a new round of delicate geopolitical manoeuvring between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

With the dust still not settled after the astonishing events in Damascus, The result for now seems to favor Ankara, which backed the victorious rebels, while Moscow suffered a severe blow to its international influence.

"In the game of tsars versus sultans, this goes to sultans 1 and tsars 0", he claimed Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank focused on analysis and research to inform U.S. policy in the region.Far from being allies, Türkiye and Russia are competitors. And in this case, Türkiye has outdone Russia.".

The fall of the Assad regime opens another chapter in the complex relationship between Putin and Erdogan, with broad implications not only for Syria but also for Ukraine and the two leaders' ties with Washington.

Russia and Turkey share economic and security interests, as well as an intense rivalry. The personal relationship between Putin and Erdogan often sees them praising each other, even as they compete for political and economic gains.

“There are only two leaders left in the world today: there is me and there is Vladimir Putin,” Erdogan said recently, reflecting his respect for the Kremlin leader. Putin, in turn, has often praised Erdogan’s political prowess.

Conflicts and agreements

Russia and Turkey backed opposing sides in Syria’s civil war that began in 2011, putting them on a collision course. Tensions escalated when a Turkish fighter jet shot down a Russian warplane near the Turkish-Syrian border in November 2015, shortly after Moscow launched its air campaign to support al-Assad.

The Kremlin responded with sweeping economic sanctions that curbed Turkish imports, drove Turkish companies out of the lucrative Russian market and cut off the flow of Russian tourists to Turkish resorts.

Faced with the massive economic damage, Erdogan apologized months later. Shortly afterward, Putin stood firmly by him when he faced an attempted military coup in July 2016, helping their ties improve quickly. In 2018, Moscow and Ankara negotiated a ceasefire and de-escalation agreement for Idlib province. - in northwestern Syria on the border with Turkey - controlled by rebels, and sought to anchor the oft-violated deal with follow-up agreements in the following years.

But even as they cooperated in Syria, Moscow and Ankara also competed for influence in Libya, where Russia supported forces loyal to military commander Khalifa Hifter while Turkey backed his enemies based in Tripoli. Turkey also aggressively sought to increase its influence in the former Soviet nations of Central Asia, in competition with Russia and China.

In 2020, Moscow pulled back when Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan defeated ethnic Armenian forces in the fight for the breakaway region of Karabakh. Although Armenia hosted a Russian military base, the Kremlin has maintained a delicate balancing act in trying to maintain a close connection with both Azerbaijan and Türkiye.

Although their political interests often clashed, economic ties flourished.:Russia has boosted natural gas exports to Turkey via a Black Sea pipeline, built Turkey's first nuclear plant and provided the NATO member with advanced air defense systems — to Washington's dismay.

Relations during the war in Ukraine

Ties with Türkiye became even more important to Putin after he invaded Ukraine in 2022, Europe's biggest conflict since World War II.

The West responded with economic sanctions that have driven Russia out of most Western markets, restricted its access to the international financial system, closed transport routes and halted exports of key technologies. Turkey, which did not join the sanctions, has emerged as Russia’s key gateway to global markets, strengthening Erdogan’s hand in negotiations with Putin.

While Turkey has backed Ukraine's territorial integrity and supplied arms to kyiv, Erdogan has adopted Putin's stance by accusing the United States and NATO of fomenting the conflict. Putin has praised Erdogan for offering to mediate a deal.

In March 2022, Turkey hosted peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul that quickly collapsed, with both Putin and Erdogan blaming the West for this.

Later that year, Ankara joined forces with the United Nations to broker a deal that opened the door to Ukrainian grain exports from its Black Sea ports, a deal that helped drive down global food prices before it collapsed the following year.

Turkey's balancing act in Ukraine is motivated by its dependence on the huge Russian market, natural gas supplies and the flow of tourists.

Russia's focus on Ukraine has eroded its clout in regions where Türkiye and other actors have sought to take advantage of Moscow's weakening influence.

In September 2023, Azerbaijan regained control of all of Karabakh in a one-day attack, while Russian peacekeepers in the region stood by. That damaged Russia’s ties with Armenia, which has increasingly shifted to the West.

Moscow's renewed focus on Syria

Focused on Ukraine, Russia had few resources left for Syria as Hezbollah withdrew its fighters amid the war with Israel and Iranian support for al-Assad weakened as well.

Russia attempted to sponsor talks to normalize relations between Türkiye and Syria, but Assad blocked them and refused any compromise.

Assad's intransigence helped spark a Turkish-backed opposition offensive in November. The demoralized and underfunded Syrian army quickly crumbled, allowing rebels to sweep across the country and capture Damascus, the capital.

Even as it offered asylum to al-Assad and his family, Russia has reached out to Syria's new leaders seeking to ensure the safety of its remaining troops there and extend the leases on its naval and air bases.

At his annual news conference on Thursday, Putin said Russia had offered Syria's new leaders the use of the bases for delivering humanitarian aid, and suggested Moscow could offer other incentives.

While Assad's fall is a major blow to Russia, some believe Moscow could navigate this rapidly changing environment to retain at least some influence.

“Syria’s opposition forces understand well that the country’s future is uncertain,” said Nikolay Kozhanov, an associate consultant with the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, a London-based nonprofit think tank that analyzes major international affairs, in a commentary. “They want Russia, if not as a friend, then at least as a neutral party.”

He also noted that “Moscow’s primary goal will be to maintain at least a minimal level of influence through a military presence, for example at its existing bases, or through contacts with other regional actors, such as Turkey.”

Cagaptay (Soner Çağaptay is a Turkish-American foreign policy analyst and expert on Turkey-US relations, Turkish politics and Turkish nationalism) said that while Turkey would like to see an end to Russia's military presence in Syria, Ankara's position will depend on how relations with Washington evolve.

“If we see a reset in U.S.-Turkey relations, where Turkey believes it can comfortably lean on the U.S. against Russia, I can see Erdogan taking a more boisterous tone vis-a-vis Putin,” he said. But if the U.S. maintains its alliance with the Kurds and opposes Turkey’s effort to push back Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria, “Ankara might decide it needs to continue balancing interests with all sides as it has done for about a decade,” Cagaptay added.

Putin said Russia understood Turkey's motives for securing its borders, but also warned that the Kurds could offer strong resistance if attacked.

Emre Ersen, a Russia expert at Marmara University in Istanbul, also noted that while Assad’s fall will diminish Moscow’s influence, “the relationship between Turkey and Russia will not be devastated by developments in Syria.”

“Obviously, they still have to get closer to each other regarding the crisis in Ukraine, but also because they have very important economic relations,” Ersen said, adding that Erdogan could be expected to seek further concessions from Russia on energy and trade issues.

(AP)
Source: INFOBAE