Going forward, and with an eye on the country’s 2023 presidential election, Turkey will continue to use these tools to reinforce its position in the international arena. Ankara has used these tools, these lessons learned, and its new capabilities to inform its revisionist foreign policy posture. These operations have secured a seat for Turkey at the negotiating table with Russia and the United States. The strategies Turkey has employed in Syria have boosted the country’s image and international role. It has also equipped Turkey with new tools for conducting a more aggressive, nationalistic foreign policy. Overall, Ankara’s involvement in Syria has not only been a source of conflict-or rapprochement-with its traditional partners and neighbors across the region. Solving the question of Syrian refugees in Turkey has been a priority of the Turkish government since the early stages of the Syrian civil war-and a main driver of Ankara’s policies toward both Syria and the EU.įrancesco Siccardi is a senior program manager and senior research analyst at Carnegie Europe. This decision was made in the context of a strategic realignment between Turkey and Russia that has helped both countries pursue their respective objectives in Syria: the survival of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime for Moscow and the weakening of the Syrian Kurds for Ankara.įinally, Ankara’s involvement in Syria has also given Turkey new leverage over the EU when it comes to the management of refugee flows. The thorniest topic of the day in the U.S.-Turkey bilateral relation-Ankara’s decision to deploy the Russian S-400 missile system-is also deeply related to the Syrian crisis. Washington’s support for the Syrian Kurds has alienated Ankara to an extent that U.S. In foreign policy terms, Turkey’s military operations in Syria have resulted in increasingly tense relations with the United States. Finally, after the failed coup in July 2016, the Turkish government’s Syria policy played a major role in rebuilding the credibility of the Turkish Armed Forces while redrawing the balance between civilian and military power. In the following years, successive military operations in Syria have helped Erdoğan connect with increasingly nationalistic constituencies and drum up support around key electoral dates. Boiled down to its core, the Turkish government’s activism in Syria has been driven by domestic politics and has helped Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) preserve power.ĭomestically, Ankara has used the Syrian conflict as a pretext to suppress the rights of the Kurds living in Turkey and limit their parliamentary representation to secure a landmark constitutional reform in 2017. It is possible to identify the key priorities that have informed Turkey’s Syria policy over the years. Each operation has served specific objectives and was designed to respond to rapidly changing scenarios on the ground. Between August 2016 and the present, Turkey has launched four military operations in northern Syria.
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