It has been a good few weeks for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. All current indications suggest that the Turkish leader is making notable advances in his effort to place Turkey at the center of regional strategic affairs. As Erdogan’s Turkey builds its power and influence, its opposition to and agitation against Israel is continuing unabated.
Observe: this week, Erdogan hosted Ahmed al-Sharaa, the current interim president of Syria, at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul. This was Sharaa’s third visit to Turkey since he assumed power in Syria. The Syrian leader thanked Erdogan for what he called Ankara’s “critical support” in securing the lifting of international sanctions against his country.
The US and European decisions to lift sanctions against Syria open the way for Sharaa to acquire critical funds for reconstruction in Syria, and potentially to consolidate his own rule.
While US President Donald Trump acknowledged the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in securing this decision, Erdogan has been arguing consistently for the removal of economic restrictions against Syria in recent weeks, including, according to reports, in his conversations with the US President (with whom he enjoys “great relations,” in Trump’s own words.)
The new Syrian leader is clearly keen to maintain good relations with Riyadh and avoid the impression that he and his organization owe their position in its entirety to the Sunni Islamist axis of Turkey and the Emirate of Qatar. At the same time, it would be difficult to exaggerate the centrality of Turkey in recent events in Syria.
Crucially, it was the Turkish decision never to entirely abandon the Syrian Sunni Islamist insurgency that provided Sharaa with the territorial incubator in which he could maintain and grow the force that would eventually march to Damascus.
In this regard, it is worth remembering that just a year ago, the regional and global consensus was that the Syrian civil war was over and Assad had won it. Erdogan’s decision to stand outside this consensus has earned him the central role in determining the direction of Syria.
Turkey appears set to develop a military infrastructure in Syria in cooperation with the new regime. This is likely to be framed as part of the ongoing struggle against ISIS.
Such a framing is entirely disingenuous, given the former relations of de facto cooperation between Ankara and the Sunni jihadi organization, and the complex relations of ISIS with Sharaa and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Nevertheless, with Sharaa’s new regime gaining in legitimacy, it may prove difficult to challenge these claims effectively.
Sources I spoke with recently in Washington emphasized the determination of the Trump administration to wind down the American presence in Syria in the course of this year. The US presence formed an effective containment to the ambitions of both Iran and Turkey in Syria. Should it be removed, Erdogan and his allies are likely to be the main beneficiaries.
Additional developments on the Kurdish front
ALONGSIDE DEVELOPMENTS in Syria, things appear to be moving in a positive direction for the Turkish leader on the crucial Kurdish front. According to a report in al-Monitor, the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) announced earlier this month that it had held a congress in its area of control in the mountains of northern Iraqi Kurdistan, in response to the movement’s leader Abdullah Ocalan’s call for the end of its 40-year insurgency against Turkey.
On May 12, the movement announced its decision to disarm and disband. The details still remain to be settled, and the chance that this process may break down remains. But if it is carried through, as appears possible, the Turkish leader will be able justifiably to present it as a historic achievement.
Meanwhile, on the home front, Erdogan has secured the incarceration of his most serious political rival, former Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. The arrest of Imamoglu appears to be the latest milestone on Turkey’s road to undisguised autocracy. Notably, and in a sign of the times, Erdogan’s suppression of political opposition at home appears to have been met with indifference in the West.
Erdogan also spoke this week with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Sharif thanked Erdogan for Turkey’s support during its brief standoff with India after Islamist terrorists, who probably have links with Pakistan, murdered 26 people near Pahalgam, in Kashmir. This stance reflects Turkey’s ability to combine strategic and pan-Islamic objectives, and translate these into influence both in the Middle East and beyond.
It all appears to be going well for Erdogan: burgeoning relations with the US, central influence in Syria, the apparent eclipse of a major security challenge, the successful repression of internal opposition (met with international indifference), and the casting of influence beyond the region. Clearly, he is remaking Turkey as an Islamic and neo-Ottoman power. But what challenges and adversaries remain?
In this regard, it should be noted that success is not serving to moderate Erdogan and his allies, in particular in their enthusiastic support for Hamas, and the near-hysterical tone of much of their opposition to Israel.
A headline in the Yeni Safak newspaper this week caught the tone of the Erdogan government’s rhetoric in this regard. Yeni Safak is a Turkish language publication known for its close relations to the government. Its headline on Tuesday, May 27, referred to what it claimed were Israeli attacks on children in Gaza. The headline read: “There will be no peace for humanity until these vile murderers are destroyed.”
The headline joins similar utterances by Erdogan in recent months, in which he has variously compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler, claimed that Israel was planning to invade Turkey, and called for Israel’s destruction.
Erdogan’s commitment to Israel’s destruction combines geo-political and Islamic ideological elements in the manner by now familiar. For the Turkish leader, Israel is a symbol of both Turkish and Muslim weakness. Its establishment in a former Ottoman territory is testimony both to imperial retreat, and to Islamic inability to prevent territory held by Muslims from falling back into the hands of its pre-Islamic custodians.
At the same time, Israel represents a formidable real-world adversary to Turkey’s advance, able to challenge it on the strategic level in the eastern Mediterranean, in Syria, and on the diplomatic front in Washington and other Western capitals.
Erdogan also fears the possibility of Israel finding its way to Turkey’s other enemies. Halil Karaveli, a Turkish analyst writing in The New York Times this week, noted that “above all, Turkey fears a Kurdish alliance with Israel.”
It’s undeniable that the Turkish challenge is set to be central in the period ahead for all those elements, in the region and beyond it, who are opposed to political Islam and its advance. The strategic and diplomatic contest between Israel and Turkey looks set to be one of the central regional dynamics in the period now opening up.