Bashar al-Assad’s regime is the latest casualty of Iran’s war on Israel. After keeping his hold on Syria through 13 years of civil war, Assad fled to Russia last weekend just before a new rebel offensive took Damascus. More than two decades of dictatorship ended in less than two weeks of fighting.
As Assad and his family packed their bags, foreign ministers from Turkey, Iran, and Russia met to discuss Syria’s future. The Iranians and Russians got a big helping of Turkish delight to go with their humble pie. Turkey has emerged as one of the big winners of the faltering American-led order, and others will use Ankara’s secret recipe in the future.
Since they don’t permit much public discussion, dictatorships like Assad’s usually look stable right until they collapse. Turkey tried to overthrow Assad when the Syrian civil war began in 2011, but after Iran and Russia saved him, it settled for carving out a buffer zone. Turkish troops and proxy militias fanned out into northern Syria, but they did not move on Assad.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Iran’s war on Israel doomed Assad. Russian forces are preoccupied in Ukraine, and Israel’s spectacular counterattack against Hezbollah demolished Iran’s strategic reserve, leaving Assad exposed. Turkey reportedly vetoed earlier offensives by the al Qaeda spinoff Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and, despite its official denials of cooperation, finally let HTS off the leash in November. Syria’s collapse, which stunned Ankara and its partners, shows how far Turkey has come and why other countries will follow in its footsteps.
Just before Assad assumed power, Turkey seemed poised to enter the post-historical era. Francis Fukuyama famously prophesied in 1989 that Western liberal democracy had become the dominant global ideology. Ten years later, the European Union authorized Turkey to apply for membership, and many Turks hoped that their country would be treated as an equal by Europe and enter Fukuyama’s “end of history.”
Their hopes were dashed. Fukuyama argued that only hidebound realists like Charles Krauthammer would believe that, for example, a post-Communist Russia would act like pre-Communist imperial Russia, but he acknowledged that religion and nationalism could still counter liberalism. As the Turks discovered, the EU’s professed secular, liberal values had much less weight than Europe’s actual values. Turkey was as likely to join the EU as Ukraine was to enter NATO.
The global Left was still useful to Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The path to EU membership required Turkey’s military, which had forced out the previous Islamist government, to exit politics. Before Erdogan cracked down on his domestic opposition, Barack Obama hailed Turkey as a model for Islamic democracy, even publicly welcoming Erdogan’s advice on how to raise his own daughters.
The Syrian civil war upset that happy condominium. As Assad slaughtered his countrymen, and even used chemical weapons, the Westerners stood pat. Over three million Syrians fled to Turkey, and Iranian and Russian forces effectively encircled Turkey from their new bases in Syria. Eventually the rise of ISIS forced the Americans to act, but they partnered with groups closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has conducted terrorist attacks in Turkey and left Assad alone.
Dreamy speculation is still popular in Brussels, but Ankara must deal with the harsh realities of the Middle East. Turkey had maintained the second-largest army in NATO, so it revitalized its arms industry and is now using both to good effect. Turkish troops and equipment devastated Russia’s partner in Libya, and Turkish support helped Azerbaijan beat Russia and Iran’s Caucasian ally, Armenia. When Russia attacked Ukraine, Turkish-supplied drones mauled Russian forces long before most Western arms even arrived.
Turkey is still a NATO ally, and its successes tends to hurt Iran and Russia, but it is far from an ideal partner. Its fondness for Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian branch—Hamas—survived October 7, and it is not yet clear if HTS is any better than its old al Qaeda pals. Ankara is also reducing its reliance on American weapons so that Washington will have less leverage.
As global chaos accelerates, more countries will study Turkey’s methods and try to emulate them. Great powers like the United States and China will still dominate global affairs, and many countries will stick close to them. But some will want to keep a free hand and act more independently like Turkey.
This will make the world a more violent place. Sometimes, ambush predators will win fast, as Turkey did in the Caucasus and Syria just now. But when they miscalculate, they are likely to create intractable wars, like Libya and the first decade of the Syria war, that expand and destabilize other countries.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, Krauthammer realized that American global dominance would not last long, and that its end would be ugly. Buckle up.
Original News Source – Washington Free Beacon
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