Dramatic power shift

Exactly three days before Turkey launched an airstrike on northern Syria, Erdogan and Trump had connected on the phone with the former informing the latter of an imminent attack on the north of Syria and warning that the US forces in that area would be in jeopardy.

The attack was launched against the SDF (an armed wing of Kurdish-led YPG) long viewed by Turkey as a designated terrorist group with a strong connection to the PKK that had led numerous wars against the Turkish government in the 1980s and 90s.

Turkey wants to create a 30 kms ‘safe zone’ with its border connected to Syria(Northern Syria) to resettle some of 3.5 million Syrian refugees and expel Kurdish-dominated SDF from the area which it says is an ‘existential threat’ to Turkey. The US ordered troop-withdrawal on October 6, leaving stranded its war-ally SDF, which had fought alongside it against Isis in the wake of the Syrian civil war.

In isolation and panic, the SDF reached a settlement/deal with the Syrian government stating that “The worst agreement is still better than having our regions – which we have been protecting for years, and where there are millions displaced Syrians – be destroyed”. Under the deal, Syrian troops will only save the SDF from the Turkish offensive into Syria rather than halting Kurdish control. The key ally of the US in the war against Isis thus had to rely on Damascus for survival.

The Assad government seems to benefit the most from this. With Syrian troops rolling back into the north, Damascus gains access to lost-territory. While the SDF could find itself negotiating for the territory that includes a huge chunk of Syria’s oil wealth, the regime has an upper hand in negotiation, given the existential threat from Ankara. Assad can do what his father Hafez-al-Assad did in the 1980s and 90s – mobilize and militarize the Kurdish forces against common enemy Turkey.

Turkey, which once hoped to topple Assad’s government with the help of other Nato powers including the US, now sees the regime as less of a threat than the Kurds. On Wednesday, Erdogan told reporters that he could accept the re-emergence of Assad’s regime in the previously Kurdish-led city of Manbij as long as the Kurdish fighters were eliminated.

Israel looks more alarmed than ever in the face of the US withdrawal of troops from Syria, fearing that Iran and other allies in the region could fill in the vacuum. Iran has used Syria to challenge Israel for years, supporting Assad to gain a strong-hold next door to Israel. Former prime minister of Israel Ehud Olmert stated that “Israel’s greatest defense security failure – the greatest of all since Yom Kippur – is that we allowed Iran to penetrate into Syria”.

With the newly gained opportunities for Iran with the Turkish offensive, Israel fears and believes it can only rely on itself after noticing an impulsive pattern in the Trump administration.

Iran can manipulate the situation to its gain. The Iraqi paramilitary groups backed by Iran on the Iraq-Syria border will possibly help Assad secure control, strengthening their own supply pipelines from Tehran to Beirut.

Most importantly, for Russia its big moment might have just arrived. Though Russia supports the Assad regime while Turkey backs the rebel groups, Russia is catering to its Turkish allies and has offered to negotiate with all sides for a political solution.

Russia looks pumped to fill the vacuum created by the US-withdrawal, thereby exerting its influence over Middle-Eastern affairs. This has stirred worry among members of the Trump administration as well. US Senate majority leader Mitch McConell, an otherwise staunch Trump ally, tweeted “A precipitous withdrawal of US from Syria would only benefit Russia, Iran and the Assad regime”.

With election season on in the US, Trump has only done what he had promised in his election campaign – bring US forces back home, even at the cost of leaving allies stranded without due notice.

Erdogan’s offensive has undeniably gained him immense support from home. But the future mainly lies in the hands of stakeholders like Russia and Iran to choose between mediation and exploitation.

The writer is a freelance contributor.