David Lesch

The Game Above the Game
by David W. Lesch
For Syria Comment – Sept 21, 2018

The various combatants in and around Idlib seem to have hit the pause button for the time being.  What just a short time ago appeared to be an imminent onslaught by Russian and Iranian supported Syrian government forces to take back one of the last areas outside of the control of Damascus, accompanied by widespread civilian casualties and refugees fleeing the battleground, now has given way to high stakes diplomacy.

The key is Turkey.  The Turks have been the dominant power in northwestern Syria along the border and down through the province of Idlib for a number of years since the fall of Aleppo to the opposition early in the Syrian civil war.  Indeed, in some ways, with Turkey establishing shared power grids, training local police forces, rebuilding and staffing schools, and investing in the local economy, northern Syria functionally looks more like southern Turkey nowadays. This process actually started years before the beginning of the civil war when a honeymoon in relations between the two countries led to heavy Turkish investment in Syria, economic integration, and an expansion of Turkish cultural markers.

Since the civil war began, however, Ankara has supported the many stripes of the anti-Assad coalition in this part of Syria, including elements of the Free Syrian Army and a plethora of jihadist groups.  At first, Turkey was committed to the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As it became clear, certainly since the Russian military intervention on behalf of the Syrian government in 2015, that Assad was going to remain in power, Turkey’s objectives in Syria shifted to making sure empowered Kurdish groups, many of whom Ankara has labeled terrorists, were unable to establish autonomous zones, especially along the Turkish-Syrian border. The most powerful Kurdish fighting force has been backed by the US as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces in its attempts to roll back and eliminate the presence of the Islamic State in Syria, a dynamic that has, to say the least, complicated US-Turkish relations.

Enter Russia—or more to the point, Vladimir Putin.  The Russian president’s foray into Syria has proven to be quite successful in the short term.  He was able to keep Assad in power and, therefore, maintain, indeed significantly enhance, Russian strategic assets in the heartland of the Middle East.  By way of this intervention, he has orchestrated Russia’s return as a major diplomatic player in the region, probably even more so than the US at the moment.  And because the US early on decided to team with the Kurds, who had the best available indigenous fighting force to take on the Islamic State, therefore alienating an increasingly autocratic Turkish President Erdogan, perhaps he could even find the holy grail and pluck a disenchanted Turkey away from the US and NATO and into Russia’s orbit—a potential strategic coup of enormous proportions. As a result, Russian-Turkish relations have greatly improved in recent years after some early hiccups, to the point where Russia, Iran, and Turkey have become the working group in the so-called Astana process, which for several years has monopolized attempts to de-escalate the war in Syria.

What has emerged is a very tense diplomatic game focusing on Idlib.  Everything would be much easier if Turkey would have just withdrawn from the area.  Certainly, this is what Russia and Syria were hoping for, especially as it appeared the Turks had backed themselves in a corner with no easy way out.  The Syrian government and the Russians would like nothing better than to just batter Idlib into submission, a strategy that has worked elsewhere in the country. But Turkey abandoning Syria was never going to happen. Erdogan has invested too much political capital—and two full-fledged offensives—in northern Syria to just give up.  His domestic position politically is not as solid as it once was, especially as his economy continues to plummet, so admitting defeat by leaving Syria is not an option.

Perhaps this is why the Syrians and Russians built up their forces in the area and began a targeted aerial assault, i.e. to intimidate Turkey into taking the path of least resistance out of Syria. Instead, it appears that Erdogan, stiffened by the timely support of and tough talk from the US and some of its European allies, has called the Russian bluff.  He has sent more men and materiel to reinforce existing observation posts in Idlib and moved more forces toward the border.

Erdogan is basically saying the following to Putin:  if there is an all-out Syrian-Russian offensive, Turkish troops will be killed, with possibly a direct Russian-Turkish military confrontation that could even involve the US in support of its recalcitrant NATO ally.  This would all but end Putin’s dream of reeling in Turkey and perforce push Ankara back toward the US—the Kurdish issue notwithstanding.

Putin blinked.  And now there has been a Russian-Turkish agreement to find another way to resolve the situation in Idlib short of war.  He’s giving Erdogan a face-saving way out of his morass while possibly solidifying his relationship with him.  Somehow Turkey will fudge the separation of legitimate Syrian opposition forces from the jihadists, such as the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, after which time perhaps there can be a joint effort to eradicate the “terrorists.”  This will be easier said than done as the estimated 10,000 jihadists in Idlib have nowhere to go and will dig in.

I can’t imagine Assad likes this deal at all, as it consecrates Turkey’s position of influence in the north. He wanted to pummel Idlib and gain more territorial control over his country, but his depleted forces can’t do it without substantial Russian help.  He has to go with the Russian diplomatic game right now, perhaps waiting until it might inevitably breakdown—or until the next UN General Assembly session is over in September, when international diplomacy focuses elsewhere while he incrementally picks away at the edges of Idlib both militarily and through reconciliation agreements. Maybe this is also what the Russians have in mind. They too would like nothing better than to eliminate jihadists in Idlib, a number of whom are Chechen and from other areas in Russia who have caused problems for Moscow in the past.  They want to dig the graves of these hardened jihadists in Syria rather than have them return to Russia.

Right now, though, the diplomatic games are being played above those in Idlib itself, many of whom are anxiously awaiting their fate—and are at the whim of leaders who have anything but their fate in mind.

David W. Lesch is a the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor of Middle East History at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX and author of the upcoming book, Syria (Polity Press).