After Syria intervention flop, what’s next for Erdogan?
Ankara’s latest statements show it has dropped the idea of sending regular troops to Syria, yet it is poised for new ventures to avoid a total exclusion from the Syrian equation.
In early February, the Russian-backed Syrian army cut the route from Aleppo to Turkey, a critical move that spurred President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s desire for a Turkish military incursion in Syria. Ever since 2011, Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have unsuccessfully tried all means except a military intervention to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Yet toppling the regime was not the motive behind their latest advocacy of a military intervention. They knew this was already out of reach in September when Russia’s direct military involvement in Syria began. With the loss of the Aleppo route and the looming threat of a regime siege on the city, Erdogan’s objective shifted. He now sought to save Ankara from being totally sidelined from the Syrian equation and ensure it had some say on Syria’s future. Sending the Turkish army to Syria, he reckoned, was the only option left at hand to grab a prominent seat at the negotiating table.
However, Erdogan and Davutoglu failed to enlist any support from the United States, as they did each time they brought up the issue in the past. The Turkish military, too, signaled through the media it was not in favor of an intervention. Ankara, which has positioned itself as a “Sunni power” in the conflict, watched how its ally Saudi Arabia failed to impress the other actors in the crisis when it declared “readiness” to send ground troops to Syria, provided the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS) made “a decision to have a ground component.”
Ankara also reckoned that a unilateral Turkish incursion would generate a military response by Russia and spark a war between the two countries. According to reports, Moscow even warned Ankara it was prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons.
