The crisis in Syria is the result of President Bashar al-Assad’s refusal to engage in political dialogue with the opposition, and not external interventions, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said after meeting his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, for emergency talks in Ankara.
Araghchi, by contrast, blamed intervention by Israel for the crisis. But the two sides appeared to agree on the need to convene an urgent summit between Turkey, Iran and Russia, the three main external powers inside Syria.
These three powers have been meeting to discuss Syria’s political future as part of the Astana process since January 2017. A total of 22 meetings have been held in that format, but Turkey believes Syrian intransigence has led to a lack of progress.
Araghchi said he wanted the Astana process to be revived as quickly as possible, reflecting the need on all sides to reassess their diplomatic positions due to the Syrian Islamist militia the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Syrian National Army (SNA) – the coalition of Turkey-linked rebels formerly called the Free Syrian Army – seizing swathes of territory from the control of Assad, including Syria’s second city of Aleppo. Turkey supports the SNA, and is refusing to call for any withdrawal from Aleppo.
Iran and Russia, Assad’s key backers, are urging Turkey to persuade the forces it supports to end the offensive before it leads to the breakup of Syria, the fall of Assad, or the country falling into the hands of extremist Islamists.
It is not clear what Turkey’s ultimate objectives in Syria will be, but it is striking how many other regional actors, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, do not want Assad to fall even if they would like Iranian influence to be reduced. Most Gulf states have normalised relations with Syria but received little in return.
Fidan said at the joint press conference: “It would be wrong to explain recent developments in Syria with foreign intervention. The latest developments show the need for Damascus to reconcile with its people and the legitimate opposition.”
Calling on the Assad government to come to the negotiating table, he added: “We don’t want to see cities falling into ruin; we don’t want to see people displaced. Stopping refugee flow and having people returning to their homes is essential.” But he also warned against excessive external interventions, and said Turkey could act as a mediator between the armed opposition groups and Assad.
Araghchi said “terrorist groups in Syria had connections to the United States and Israel”, and this “caused mistrust” in Syria. He was referring to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a mainly Kurdish group operating in eastern Syria that Ankara insists is linked with the PKK, a Kurdish group operating inside Turkey.
Fidan said Turkey and Iran had agreed to coordinate their actions against the SDF, but it was unclear if this was more than rhetoric. Araghchi – who had been in Damascus the day before – said his talks with Fidan “were very direct, transparent, constructive and friendly”.
Discussing Syria’s political future, Araghchi did not directly criticise Assad’s intransigence, instead saying: “Necessary measures must also be taken for good governance in Syria.”
Iran is concerned that its position inside Syria, including its supply routes into Lebanon and into Syria, will be weakened by the unexpected surge of the largely Turkish-backed forces that have seized Aleppo and moved towards Hama, farther south.
Iran’s position has already been weakened inside Gaza and Lebanon, and Tehran cannot afford to see its influence reduced further by Assad being toppled.
The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, expressed their unconditional support for Assad and “restoring constitutional order” after speaking by phone on Monday. Iran and Russia have been working together to prop up Assad since the surprise Russian military intervention to protect Assad in 2015.
It is widely assumed Turkey broadly approved of the HTS-led offensive in advance, but Turkey denies this, and at minimum insists it did not expect to see Syrian army defences collapse as fully they have. In the hurriedly arranged talks in Ankara, Fidan said he did not want the crisis to escalate or the territorial integrity of Syria challenged.
But Turkey has a motive to back the offensive, since it feels for months Assad has rebuffed its efforts to secure a political settlement inside Syria. Such a deal would open the way for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees inside Turkey to return to their homeland. More than 2 million people fled to Turkey during the civil war in 2011.
But Turkey feels Assad has spurned talks by setting preconditions such as demanding Turkish troops leave Syria or Ankara end its support for groups such as the Syrian National Army. Instead, Assad had continued to target Idlib, the stronghold of the opposition inside Syria, pushing thousands of people toward the border with Turkey. This in turn had only deepened Ankara’s fears regarding the acute refugee crisis in Turkey, which has cost the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his party significant political support.
The danger for the Syrian opposition groups is that they find themselves marginalised by the three great powers. Critics say the Astana process has become a mechanism for normalising the military presence of its three sponsors, while minimising interstate friction, and leaving the opposition out in the cold.
The last meeting of the Astana process in Kazakhstan in November, for instance, made no progress over the basic issues of the composition of a committee to draw up a new Syrian constitution – or even the venue where the committee would meet.
