Under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has lost its proxy war in Syria after being recklessly dragged into it by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Had Turkey emerged victorious — in other words, had the Damascus regime been toppled and replaced by the rule of Syrian Islamists — Sunni Turkey would have been the primary beneficiary. It would have led the building of a new Syria, reaping economic and political gains and consolidating its status as the Middle East’s new regional power and playmaker. It would have basked in the strategic feat of dealing a blow to its Shiite rival Iran’s clout and influence in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The AKP’s Turkey based its game in Syria on a big gamble, a feature typical of the foreign policy adventures commanded by Erdogan and Davutoglu. Now that it has lost the war, it should be prepared to live — possibly for a long time — in a turbulent environment of crisis and threats.
Turkey’s two southern neighbors, Syria and Iraq, are now “failed states.” Turkey holds a direct responsibility for Syria becoming such a state due to its regime-change policy. In Iraq, the Islamic State — the al-Qaeda offshoot formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham — would have been unable to grow strong enough to capture a number of Sunni Arab cities if not for the Syrian turmoil. Hence, Turkey also bears an indirect responsibility through its Syria policy for Iraq's troubles.
The combined length of Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq is 1,208 km (750 miles), including 10 border crossings — nine with Syria and one with Iraq. Only two of those crossings — Kessab (facing Yayladag in Turkey) on the western end of the Syrian border and Qamishli on the eastern end — are currently controlled by a state whose sovereignty and status is internationally recognized, and it is a failed state. Syria’s Baath regime wields only limited and isolated control in areas along the Turkish border. The actual control is in the hands of non-state actors: Syrian Islamist militants, the Islamic State and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, the Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
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