Syria: will Turkiye prove the big winner?

Nine days ago, in Syria glimpsed through the fog of war, I spoke of:

… the well meaningly clueless, and the less well meaningly calculating, [who] celebrate the fall of the region’s last Ba’athist government to Turkish, Israeli and Western backed terrorists risibly referred to as “rebels” …

I went on to say:

• As Israeli air strikes pound western Syria – and a serial liar wanted for crimes against humanity tells the incurably credulous he has no desire to “meddle” there – the Greater (Biblical) Israel project is advanced:

The land grabs of Israel’s religious Right don’t stop at West Bank settlers who deem the bible a Deed of Entitlement to trump international law.  Take Genesis 15:18-21, defining the land granted by Jehovah (a self-avowedly “jealous God” given to psychotic episodes and not above such collective punishment as visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation) as extending “from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates“.

• And insofar as Zionist advancement is US Neocon advancement, so too – on the face of it  – is the empire of slash and burn.

• Since that Biblical Israel, and Turkiye’s revanchist vision of Ottoman Empire Mark II, both covet the entity we know as Syria, the scene is set for two regional powers armed to the teeth to clash head on.

• A third regional power, Iran, is weakened. Since half China’s oil flows through the Hormuz Strait, US regime change in Tehran would bring the world to the brink of WW3. 

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Syria’s Balkanisation has deepened. Israel dominates the southwest and Turkiye the northwest, while the continuing illegal US occupation in the east allows the theft of this once successful ¹ but now impoverished nation’s oil reserves (small but not vanishingly so) to pay its Kurdish SDF proxy. Since this angers Turkiye, far more valuable to Washington than the SDF, the Kurds have cause to be nervous.

Far more important is my third bullet point. The stage is set for a clash, at what point it bursts into the open not yet clear, of epoch shaping proportions. In one corner, Greater Israel lunacy walks lockstep with US Neocon insistence on maintaining global supremacy at any cost. In the other stands Turkish revanchism. Erdoğan’s refusal to walk the talk – hurling verbal thunder at a Zionist regime whose genocide Ankara profitably abets by, inter alia, routing Azeri oil to it from Baku –  draws anger within Turkiye and beyond. As usual, Palestinians and Syrians are pawns in a longer game explored this morning by Simplicius the Thinker in a post of three parts. ²

Simplicius writes:

Syria-Turkey-Israel

As the reformation of Syria takes shape, opinions continue running the full gamut as relates to who exactly benefits most, and who is in the driver’s seat. Russia’s Lavrov himself recently remarked that Israel stands to be main beneficiary, with many in agreement with that angle.

But I continue to contend that this is merely a short-lived phenomenon. The ultimate winner is the burgeoning Ottoman Empire revival.

Jolani has been getting chummier and chummier with top Turkish officials—last time it was head of Erdogan’s MIT—the main Turkish intelligence agency. This time Jolani hosted Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who was also previously a director of the MIT. Jolani likewise drove Fidan around Damascus, and they took in the sights, sipping coffee together from the top of Mount Qasioun overlooking the capital city:

Now a Turkish national has been appointed as the first female senior official in Jolani’s new government:

Ayşe Seyidoğlu is new Women’s Affairs Minister in Jolani’s cabinet

And this comes amid reports that Turkey will be establishing its presence in the military academies of Aleppo and Damascus:

Turkey will send military advisers to train the new Syrian army at academies in Aleppo and Damascus, the Turkish resource ClashReport writes, citing its sources.

There is also mention of the possible deployment of a Turkish army unit in Homs to train air defense operators for the new Syrian authorities.

If that wasn’t enough, Erdogan’s son Bilal was seen in a video calling for a large pro-Palestine gathering on the Galata bridge in Istanbul for January 1st, just as they did last New Years, from which the video footage is pulled. But the big shift lies in their gathering under the banner of an interesting new slogan:

“Yesterday Hagia Sophia, today the Umayyad Mosque (Damascus), tomorrow Al-Aqsa (Jerusalem).”

This appears to be the official poster for the event, with the slogan even printed on top.

(Only the first of the holy places Erdoğan Junior speaks of lies within Turkey’s current borders. See this explainer of the significance of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia. As for the second, Umayyad Mosque in Damascus once stood within an Ottoman Empire carved up by Britain and France given (a) oil’s rising importance, (b) Arabia being, like Persia, on the cusp of a Eurasia in which the West has for 500 years sought to sow division, and (c) a consequent drive to keep Arabs (after China’s Han, the world’s second largest ethnic group) in perpetual disunity. Hence the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. The third site, Al Aqsa Mosque, needs no introduction but do see today’s news on what that lovely chap at Israel’s Ministry of Security, Itamar Ben-Gvr, was up to yesterday.)

Simplicius continues:

As can be seen, a nationalist fervor is slowly building up for the recapture of Jerusalem. Israel now has its hands full with a seriously armed, notoriously tenacious NATO member with its sights set on a modern reconquista of its former lands. The way things are going, Turkey may soon control virtually everything that happens within Syria by proxy, and Israel will face its greatest ever challenge directly on its doorstep.

With the US backing Israel, I could foresee Turkey being forced to forge closer ties with Russia and perhaps Iran as backstops, in order to surround Israel and keep it under pressure. Russia is already slated to sign the big comprehensive strategic partnership with Iran on January 17th, just as it did with North Korea recently:

Tass yesterday, December 26

Newsweek, December 24

1. In Syria and other artificial Arab entities whose ruled line boundaries betray the intent of their Anglo-French architects, success is a relative term. A ruthless Ba’athism, inspired by Nasser’s Pan-Arabism, fought the western backed Muslim Brotherhood while negotiating a degree of autonomy. (Like that other Ba’athist, Saddam Hussain, Hafez al-Assad here collaborated with imperialism, there stood in its cross hairs.) It allowed a secular state, despite religious and ethnic fault lines baked in London and Paris, which in turn allowed state control of key sectors. Was there cruelty? Of course. Was their corruption? Same answer. Was a third way – neither imperialism nor Ba’athism – possible? I doubt it but a balanced reckoning of fifty-three years of Assad rule is not only overdue. It may soon be possible.
2. The other topics Simplicius covers today are (a) a globalist and deeply anti-democratic European leadership shuffling key players, like Josep Borrell and Jens Stoltenberg, around despite their incompetence; (b) his core terrain of war in the Ukraine.