The Syrian regime’s takeover of Aleppo has changed the dynamics in in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
The Assad regime\u2019s military victory brought further suffering to tens of thousands of Syrian civilians and gave an upper hand to Ankara\u2019s arch-rivals in the region.<\/p>\n
This was not the outcome Turkey had hoped for.<\/p>\n
But hey, if you cannot be the king, be a kingmaker.<\/p>\n
Turkey has taken on the role of negotiating the safe exit of the Assad opponents and quickly jumped on the band-wagon of intense diplomacy, led by Russia.<\/p>\n
A tripartite meeting with Russia, Iran and Turkey will take place in Moscow on December 27th<\/sup> to look for a political solution to the Syrian civil war. Russia\u2019s ally Kazakhstan will also be hosting a new round of peace talks between the Syrian opposition and the Assad regime.<\/p>\n The evacuation deal for Aleppo and the new diplomatic push have seemed to be sidelining Turkey\u2019s NATO ally, the United States.<\/p>\n The US State Department spokesman John Kirby said they had no prior knowledge. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, also seemed ignorant of the deal.<\/p>\n European leaders, at their end-of-year summit, were discussing a United Nations Security Council resolution, unaware that both the UN and themselves have already become mere spectators.<\/p>\n For the past 5 years, the US and the European Union have failed to develop a coherent Syria policy. Thanks to the brutal practices of the Assad regime and the interventions of regional powers pursuing their own interests, the humanitarian disaster that unfolded in Syria has now become too great to dismiss any alternative initiative out of hand.<\/p>\n Any meaningful effort to end the horrors of a bloody conflict and horrendous civilian suffering in Syria must be welcomed.<\/p>\n Looking at this crisis at its doorstep, Turkey\u2019s response needs to be much more considered.<\/p>\n A mish-mash of half-baked policy decisions and a hasty change of alliances do not bode well for the country\u2019s future.<\/p>\n Russia, Turkey and Iran have divergent longer-term national interests in relation to Syria.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s involvement in the Syrian conflict is both regional and global.<\/p>\n For Iran, keeping President Assad in power is paramount for its vital regional influence.<\/p>\n Turkey had barged into the conflict with an intention of becoming a Sunni regional power, ending up having to deal with the blowback from the Syrian civil war in its cities. \u00a0At the end, regional ambitions gave way to maintaining internal security. Turkey ended up narrowing its focus to limiting Kurdish political and territorial gains on its doorstep in Syria.<\/p>\n A grand deal over Aleppo now may be a face-saving opportunity for the Turkish government, but a major pivot in foreign policy may end up being\u00a0 \u00a0more than it bargained for.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Syrian regime’s takeover of Aleppo has changed the dynamics in in the Middle East. The Assad regime\u2019s military victory brought further suffering to tens of thousands of Syrian civilians and gave an upper hand to Ankara\u2019s arch-rivals in the region. This was not the outcome Turkey had hoped for. But hey, if you cannot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28851,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28848\/revisions\/28851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}