Chethana Janith, Jadetimes Staff
C. Janith is a Jadetimes news reporter covering science and geopolitics.
Both states aim to utilise the regime change in ways to advance their specific – and often conflicting – regional interests, creating the possibility of widespread instability in Syria and beyond.
Turkey vs. Israel
Both Israel and Turkey have benefitted from the fall of al-Assad. While Israel wanted al-Assad’s exit to disrupt Iran’s ability to arm Hezbollah via Syria against Israel, Turkey always saw al-Assad as a stumbling block against Ankara’s ambition to decimate Kurdish resistance groups. Now that Turkey-backed Islamists are in power, the ability of Kurdish groups to militarily push against Turkey may have weakened. Israel, on the other hand, has always maintained cordial ties with the Kurds. Therefore, Turkey’s moves against Kurds go against Israeli interests.
At the same time, the fact that Islamists, otherwise internationally designated as terrorists, have taken over Syria at a time when Israel is involved in a genocidal war on Palestine, Israel has every reason to react to this development with a lot of apprehension. It is for this reason that it has not only launched land incursions into Syria to (permanently) occupy the Golan Heights and create a large buffer zone, but has also conducted a very large number of air strikes in Syria.
Just a few weeks before the fall of al-Assad, the Turkish president called for the Islamic world to unite against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has called out Erdoğan for committing the “genocide” of Kurds. Therefore, if Turkey’s interest is to consolidate the Islamist regime (Ankara immediately opened its embassy in Syria following al-Assad’s exit), Israel aims to deny the same regime any opportunity to amass enough power to be able to open a new military front. It is for this reason, Israel has been carrying out hundreds of air strikes on the military depots of the Syrian army. Israel’s foreign minister said destroying these assets – which included ammunition depots, fighter jets, missiles and chemical weapons storage facilities – was necessary to ensure they didn’t fall into the “hands of extremists” that could pose a threat to the Jewish state.
The source of this fear is not only the arrival of the Islamists, but also the shocking speed at which they were able to overthrow the al-Assad regime. If indeed, assets belonging to the Syrian military were to fall into the hands of militant groups, it could have majorly compromised Israeli interests.
Rivalry for Regional Hegemony
The Erdoğan regime’s position vis-à-vis Syria is driven by its politics of re-establishing, in some form, the contours of the Ottoman Empire. The only difference in its present-day manifestation would be the indirect nature of Turkish influence over the region. Instead of becoming a formal part of the Ottoman Empire, the target countries would have regimes depending on Turkey for survival. Erdoğan is reported to have said that if the Ottoman Empire had not been divided in the way it was divided after the First World War, many Syrian cities, including Aleppo and Damascus, would have been part of Turkey.
For Israel, the presence of a territorially ambitious state with hegemonic goals next door is nothing short of a serious security challenge. Therefore, its goal is to prevent it. In a recent essay published in Foreign Affairs written by top former Israeli security officials Amos Yadlin and Avner Golov outlined a strategy that would establish “an Israeli order in the Middle East.”
Turkey, therefore, has territorial fears. It sees Israeli (as also American) support for Kurds equally threatening, insofar as successful Kurdish resistance would end up territorially disintegrating Turkey itself. Erdoğan, therefore, is already calling, once again, for an end to foreign support for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is apparently an off-shoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Turkey understands that its support for Islamists might increase Israeli (and American) support for Kurds. Let’s not forget that the US still has 2,000 soldiers stationed in Syria, closely allied with the Syrian Democratic Forces – a coalition that majorly includes the YPG.
Prospects of Instability
Following in the footsteps of Israel, if Turkey were to initiate its own ground operation and/or air strikes in Syria on Kurdish forces, it would not be for the first time that Syria would be engulfed in a major regional geopolitical conflict as its battleground. It would not be the first time that Turkey would undertake military operations in Syria and/or elsewhere. Turkish involvement in Libya and the Nagorno-Karabakh region is only too well-known. It has already rejected American calls for a ceasefire with Kurds and has vowed to continue to do its operations.
In such a scenario, with multiple international and regional actors vying to shape and reshape Syria in ways that protect and enhance their specific interests, stability in Syria would remain a very distant possibility. Equally important is the fact that this would keep Syria territorially divided between several regional and international actors controlling different provinces. A divided Syria is not what the Syrians want. However, the ongoing rivalry between Turkey and Israel is going to deny the people they need for a secure future.
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