Qatar has said Arab states will seek to avert the threat of a reignited Syrian civil war by starting an open dialogue with all the forces on the ground, as the Turkish foreign minister said the formation of a new inclusive government in Damascus would allow millions of refugees to return home.
Both countries were backers of the Syrian opposition in the civil war that began in 2011, and they are likely to have a key role in aspects of Syria’s future.
Qatar’s foreign affairs ministry spokesperson, Majed al-Ansari, said Arab leaders meeting this weekend in Doha were “thankful for the very limited fighting” that preceded Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow. “It makes it easier for international actors to go in and start engaging before any fighting might erupt amongst the parties on the ground,” he said.
“No one group, no one party or sect should feel unsafe or excluded in the future of Syria.”
The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, called on the international community to support Syrians and said a new administration must be established in an orderly manner. “The principle of inclusiveness must never be compromised,” he said. “It is time to unite and reconstruct the country.”
Turkey, which hosts more than 2 million Syrian refugees, has emerged as the biggest external beneficiary of Assad’s fall, though there are fears about the destabilising potential of fighting between Turkish-backed forces and US-backed Syrian Kurds.
Russia, which has a military and naval base in Syria, has been dealt a severe blow, as has Iran, which operated in Syria for 14 years as Assad’s military enforcer and ideological support.
The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, often a disempowered figure in the past few years, faces the delicate task of helping to forge a transitional government and will have to navigate regional powers that hope they can maintain influence.
Arab diplomats are eager to avoid the mistake made in Iraq in 2003, when many senior officials in the Iraqi bureaucracy were dismissed, leaving no interim administration. The opposition forces’ decision to allow the Syrian prime minister, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, to remain in place is seen as vital to stability.
Pedersen suggested that the main group involved in ousting Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), would not immediately lose its UN designation as a terrorist group, meaning recognition would be “a challenge and remain a work in progress”.
Diplomats are hoping that HTS, with roots in al-Qaida that it has previously disavowed, will sidestep the issue by simply dissolving itself and forming a new political organisation that renounces terrorism.
HTS was seen in its base in Idlib, northern Syria, as autocratic and fiercely repressing dissent and free media, but Ansari said Qatar believed the group should not be prejudged and it had so far behaved in a mature way since it began its assault on Assad-held cities last month.
“We are hopeful they will be a reasonable and rational player in the future,” he said in Doha, but added that military forces needed to be “orchestrated” in the coming weeks to avoid fighting between them.
Admitting that the crisis could become reminiscent of other failed Arab spring revolutions in countries such as Libya, Ansari said: “There is a tendency in the region for good news to turn into bad news. We would love to see a transition to a viable state that embodies the sacrifices of the Syrian people. We also know realistically that there are a lot of challenges. There are a lot of militants on the ground and there is a possibility of Syria becoming a failed state.
“No one can claim right now to know who has military superiority. We do not know the state of the Syrian national army.”
Qatar did not join other Arab states in recognising Assad and hosts a Syrian opposition group in Doha. It may play a key role in mediating issues such as the future of the Russian bases and relations between the Syrian Kurds and Turkey.
Fidan said in a press conference in Doha that the Syrian people were not in a position to rebuild on their own, and that international actors and regional powers would have to act with prudence and preserve the country’s territorial integrity.
He said Ankara was concerned that Islamic State “and other terrorist organisations … will take advantage of this process”.
He did not identify HTS as a terrorist group, but the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) rebels have been involved in clashes with the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SNA called for “the terrorist SDF militia to lay down their arms and spare the dark fate that awaits them”.
In Aleppo, where SDF troops have held the Kurdish neighbourhoods throughout the civil war, the HTS negotiated its peaceful departure from the city, weapons still in hand.
Ankara views Syria’s autonomous Kurdish regions as a creation and extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a group that has for years fought for Kurdish self-rule and is banned in Turkey as a terrorist organisation.
Asked about Assad’s whereabouts, Fidan said he was unable to comment on the issue but that he believed he was out of the country. He also said Turkey had had no contact with Assad despite a call from the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to hold normalisation talks.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, hailed the end of Syria’s “dictatorial regime”. “Today the people of Syria can seize an historic opportunity to build a peaceful and stable future,” he said.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Assad’s fall was a direct result of the blows Israel had struck to his allies in Hezbollah and Iran. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said “the barbaric state has fallen” and paid tribute to the Syrian people.
Pedersen said: “To those displaced, this moment renews the vision of returning to homes once lost. To families separated by war, the beginnings of reunions bring hope. To those unjustly detained, and the families of the detained and the missing, the opening of prison doors reminds us of justice’s eventual reach.
“The challenges ahead remain immense and we hear those who are anxious and apprehensive. Yet this is a moment to embrace the possibility of renewal. The resilience of the Syrian people offers a path toward a united and peaceful Syria.”
