Twelve years ago Rami Jarrah, a young Syrian with dreams of a democratic future, began tweeting about protests in Damascus. Soon President Assad was being condemned for his violent crackdown, and countries from the US to Qatar were throwing their weight behind the opposition.
Within five years, however, Syria’s revolution was engulfed by infighting and extremism. Former supporters drifted away, quietly conceding that Assad was staying put even as the war churned on.
Now Turkey, the Syrian opposition’s last powerful ally, is also changing course, moving towards reconciliation with Damascus. The Turkish and Syrian defence ministers met in Moscow last week, the first ministerial-level meeting since 2011. The foreign ministers are expected to meet this month, and President Erdogan has hinted that he is ready to meet Assad.
The turnaround is “not a surprise, but it is still a huge slap in the face for those who aspire to a free Syria”, said Jarrah, who is now in exile in Germany. He believes, though, that the Syrian diaspora in Turkey has also made mistakes. “Syrian politicians, activists and journalists treated Turkey as a one-party state and ruled out building relations with the Turkish opposition parties. This created resentment towards Syrians from Turks who oppose Erdogan, and ultimately left their fate in the hands of one very pragmatic politician.”
Although President Putin of Russia is pushing for the détente, Erdogan has his own domestic motivations. There is growing anger in Turkey over the 3.6 million Syrian refugees it is hosting, and opinion polls show that an overwhelming majority of Turks want them gone — something Turkey’s secularist opposition parties, more sympathetic to Assad by inclination, have long campaigned on.
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Erdogan, a political Islamist, was initially welcoming to the Syrians and other Arab Spring exiles and they, in turn, largely deified him, even as he slid towards his own kind of authoritarianism. Turks believe that if Syrians remain and take Turkish citizenship, as several hundred thousand already have, they will become an electorally significant bloc that will swing future votes in Erdogan’s favour.
As Turkey’s economic woes have mounted and the region’s political tides turned against him, Erdogan has sought to rebuild bridges with his neighbours and present himself as the leader who will return the Syrians in Turkey to their own country. In recent months he has met the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE and has made overtures to Egypt, all countries that had denounced his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the global Islamist network that rose to the fore of the Arab Spring protest movements.
Erdogan has also restored diplomatic relations with Israel, after years of disputes over Turkey’s links with Hamas and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Syria is the real prize.
Omer Onhon, Turkey’s last ambassador to Syria, who left his post in 2012 when diplomatic ties were cut, said: “Reconciliation with Egypt makes the diplomats happy, but for ordinary people it is not significant. Syria is unique because its problems affect people on the street in Turkey directly, particularly the refugee issue. This may even affect how people vote.”
The depth and complexity of the rift, spanning Turkey’s support for Islamist militias and Assad’s co-operation with Kurdish fighters, means that full reconciliation will be a lengthy and difficult process. The refugees are unlikely to leave Turkey quickly or willingly, even if a deal is struck.
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“It is not up to Turkey to determine when and how they should go back. Syria is the source of the problem, and would also be the source of the solution. But the regime and mindset there is the same as it was in 2011,” Onhon said.
Perception is what politicians of all stripes are banking on. Umit Ozdag, a veteran nationalist, recently established the Victory Party on the sole issue of expelling refugees. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition party and Erdogan’s probable rival for the presidency, will attend a “repatriation ceremony” in Istanbul this weekend as Syrians board a bus to return to their homeland, in front of the television cameras. If Erdogan manages to meet Assad before the polls in June, he will have seized the ultimate photo opportunity.
Mustafa Gurbuz, a senior adjunct faculty at American University and non-resident fellow at the Arab Centre Washington, agrees that Erdogan is selling “an idea, not a reality”. He said: “The Turkish opposition was portraying him as a rigid Islamist who cannot overcome his ideological boundaries. To win these tight elections, Erdogan aims to prove that he is a pragmatic populist who can deliver anything, including opposition leaders’ promises to address the refugee crisis.”
Syria’s political opposition, which is based in Istanbul, has been stuffed with pro-Turkey figures in recent years, and did not respond to a request for comment. In the last patches of opposition-held Syria, many militias come under the umbrella of a Turkish-backed coalition.
Both will lose their patron if Erdogan and Assad reconcile, and ordinary Syrians will be left with a country in economic, social and physical ruin, with an estimated half a million people dead, seven million living outside the country — and the regime still in place.
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“It means we are alone facing the regime,” said George Sabra, leader of the political opposition to Assad from 2012 to 2013. “To find a real solution to the Syrian problem, to make peace between the Syrian people and other neighbours, we have to give justice to the victims. Any talk of reconciliation and amnesty cannot be accepted, because of the depth of the crimes that Assad and his regime have committed.”
