As you may know, the next presidential elections in Turkey will be held on June 18, 2023, as part of the general elections, along with the parliamentary elections scheduled for the same day. The winning candidate will be the country’s president for the next five years.
Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdağ confirmed the election date, as the opposition is not in a position to make that choice. These elections have a substantial impact on the various parties that seek to attract voters to their side and win. It comes to the fact that a number of parties and their leaders have started a U-turn to maneuver and change their previous policies. And Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself is overdoing it in his foreign policy to such an extent that he seems to be gambling everything on these elections to remain president for another five years. This is particularly evident and characteristic in Turkey’s policy toward Syria and the United States.
For example, recent decisions in Ankara have surprised most observers of Turkish-Syrian relations. The normalization of relations between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad was something that could not have been on the agenda just a few months ago. It was expected that “contacts would remain at the level of simple meetings directly mediated by Moscow or Tehran. Or at best, direct contact on security and intelligence issues,” Egypt’s Al-Ahram believes. However, the Turkish president announced that he could meet with his Syrian colleague “when the time is right.”
There are several reasons that have forced the Turkish president to change his course towards Damascus, think pragmatically and deviate from the policy he has adhered to for more than a decade. Of course, the upcoming elections are the main reason for the change in Turkey’s position, based on the need to increase the popularity of the Turkish president, who has let emerge and not solved a number of economic and domestic problems. Turkey’s attitude towards the presence of millions of Syrian refugees in the country has changed from an “open door” policy to skepticism and the assumption that they have caused the economic crisis, the growing discontent among Turks, and concerns about internal security.
It appears that this is the aspiration and demand of the ruling Justice and Development Party to knock the trump card out of the hands of the opposition, which has blamed the ruling party for the influx of refugees. It is believed that the new relations between Ankara and Damascus will open the door for refugees to return – voluntarily or under pressure – to northern Syria, where the Turkish army controls a large region. There is no doubt that Turkey wants to create housing settlements there in order to reduce the number of refugees on its territory and at the same time impose new demographic changes that will decrease the Syrian Kurds’ control over northern Syria. Obviously, the ruling party will not hesitate to use this step, if it is done in the context of the election campaign, as a great victory over the opposition, which is against the presence of refugees. Creating residential areas in the so-called “safe zone” in northern Syria requires protection from any military escalation that could force refugees to return to Turkey. Therefore, “Ankara, in coordination with Russia, believes that an improvement in the international situation of the Syrian regime will mean an end to the military confrontation between Ankara and Damascus,” Saudi Arab News reckons.
This is true; nonetheless, there is another reality, which is that Ankara’s desire to end the war with Damascus and the Kurds, in Turkey’s opinion, does not mean an end to hostilities entirely. Contrary to that, there will be a war, but of a different kind. The Turkish president wants to score points by launching battles and special military operations in northeastern Syria against the influence of the Syrian Kurds there and to weaken their ability to build a federal state system inside Syria. These measures may also encourage Turkish nationalists to vote for Erdoğan in the elections, as they oppose any Kurdish influence in the region. A truce between Erdoğan and Assad, if this were to happen, will further encourage the part of the population that opposes the war in Syria as a whole to vote for the current Turkish president.
The Syrian regime’s openness will make it possible to “improve Russian-Turkish relations on the Syrian issue by reducing Iran’s influence,” Arab News writes. Moscow is somewhat concerned about Iranian expansion while successfully opposing the West, which unleashed the Ukraine war and armed neo-Nazis to the teeth, and presently Ankara shares this concern. Therefore, Russia is “exerting some pressure on the Syrian regime,” Iran’s Tehran News notes, “without preventing Turkey from pursuing a new course and without insisting on the withdrawal of the Turkish army from northern Syria.”
It is evident that the general shift is aimed at the de-escalation and the freezing of disputes and disagreements rather than a full normalization of the Syrian conflict, for several reasons. The most important of them is Turkey’s continued refusal to withdraw its troops from Syria, which is a demand of Damascus. Although the full normalization of relations with the regime of Bashar al-Assad will have a positive impact on Erdoğan’s popularity among conservatives and, of course, supporters of the Justice and Development Party and all those who are close to the ruling regime.
In turn, Turkey has also accepted Russia’s reasonable offer to improve relations with the Syrian regime, but on the principle of dividing the Syrian dossier. According to Erdoğan, this means that Ankara’s rapprochement with Damascus does not mean that a political solution will be found between the Syrian government and the opposition. The reason may be Turkey’s unwillingness to anger its Western allies, especially the United States, and not force them to block this rapprochement. As you know, Washington, with its preferred policy of “divide and rule,” is trying to prevent Damascus from improving its international positions and establishing normal relations with its neighbors.
However, if Moscow manages to put pressure on Damascus and convince the Syrian leadership to comply with Resolution 2254 (Resolution on a Ceasefire and a Political Solution) of the UN, the Turkish-Syrian rapprochement could become a prelude to a comprehensive political settlement in Syria. However, this option is highly unlikely due to the West’s criminal policy toward Russia in Ukraine. According to Arab News, “The West is now trying to put the Syrian dossier on hold to prevent Western countries from formulating a political solution that does not suit Russia.”
Of course, Turkey’s rapprochement with Syria may fail and remain only at the level of intelligence and security contacts. And the probability of such failure of negotiations is very high. Turkey is making many requests, which are now being rejected by the Syrians, who believe that, first, Ankara is making too many of its demands, and second, all of these demands in one way or another affect Syria’s sovereignty and constitute interference in its internal affairs. In other words, if Moscow does not give assurances and Ankara does not get the green light for a military operation in the areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the negotiations between Ankara and Damascus will remain at the security level without a real political horizon. Hakan Fidan, director of Turkish intelligence, and Ali Mamlouk, director of Syria’s National Security Directorate, have met intermittently more than six times in the past two years in Moscow, Tehran, Damascus, and Ankara, but the horizon of openness could remain limited to this level if Ankara does not achieve its goals. It is possible that Erdoğan, who has actively sought to topple Assad in the past, will meet with him if Ankara achieves what it wants to obtain with this openness.
The upcoming elections have also affected Turkey’s relations with the United States. With relations with Saudi Arabia recently improving, Ankara has sharply criticized Washington for its “political attacks” against the Saudis. Turkish leaders sided fully with Riyadh, calling Washington’s threats against Riyadh “intimidation” over its decision to reduce oil production in conjunction with OPEC+. The OPEC group of 13 countries, led by Saudi Arabia, and its 10 allies, led by Russia, agreed in early October to cut oil production by two million barrels per day starting in November, sparking concerns about a possible rise in oil prices. “We see that the US has threatened Saudi Arabia, especially recently. This is a mockery and wrong,” Turkish state media quoted Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu as saying. He then added: “You can criticize, you can say you are dissatisfied, and we disapprove of the increase in oil and gas prices, but we have not turned this into a language of threats.” Çavuşoğlu also criticized the United States for its sanctions against Venezuela and Iran, advising Washington to lift the embargo on countries that put products on the market if it wants to lower oil prices. “The whole world needs Venezuelan oil and natural gas… There is also an embargo on Iranian oil… If you want oil prices to fall, lift the sanctions,” he added.
The United States has imposed tough sanctions on Venezuela since 2014, accusing the country’s leaders of being involved in human rights abuses, and corruption, dismantling the rule of law and suppressing democracy. Iran is also the target of Washington’s tough sanctions. The country has the world’s second-largest gas reserves and the fourth-largest oil reserves, even so, its exports have been hit hard by US sanctions after Washington had decided to pull out of the 2018 nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic and world powers. Oil prices rose on fears of a shortage after the West had openly incited Ukraine against Russia and the US subsequently unleashed a war on Russia’s borders.
If you analyze the entire spectrum of Erdoğan’s current policies, you should realize that he has never spoken so harshly to Washington. This has been confirmed by Turkey’s experts, the current president is tense about the upcoming elections and is therefore using every trump, which he believes will ensure his victory and keep him in office for the next five years.
Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
