Abstract
Turkey is an important actor of the war in Syria. After the first months of the conflict the Syrian neighbour began supporting the opposition forces in the war and took a very critical approach to Bashar al-Assad’s regime, based on the assumption that the Syrian president must definitely resign from the office. It was a substantial change of the Turkish policy towards Syria in comparison to the first decade of the 21st century. The main goal of this article is an in-depth analysis of Turkey’s policy towards the war in Syria in order to identify the reasons for a specific, inflexible Turkish position. The author verifies positively a hypothesis that the Turkish policy towards Syria and the war there is a result of the interplay of many domestic and foreign policy factors in Turkey as well as the regional and international situation. The inflexible Turkish position is in this context a consequence of the more sectarian policy of the AKP government (reflecting the departure from the “strategic depth doctrine”) connected with the ideological factor as well as the negative consequences of the Assad regime’s actions for Turkish security and the increasingly complex Kurdish issue.
Highlights
Turkey is an important actor of the war in Syria
It is worth analysing this issue because it provides an opportunity to show the complexity of the Middle Eastern politics and allows for a better explanation of some unclear aspects of Turkish policy towards the conflict, e.g. why the Turkish leaders have a kind of obsession with the al-Assad regime, leading as a consequence to the isolation of Turkey in the region--called by the Turkish authorities “precious loneliness”; why Turkey was for a long time reluctant to be directly involved militarily in Syria and why it did not take a critical approach towards the so called Islamic State (ISIS) from the very beginning
The article confirmed the hypothesis that Turkish policy towards Syria and the war there, is a result of the interplay of a large set of foreign and domestic factors, e.g., the perceptions of elites and societies as well as the regional and international situation
Summary
Turkey’s 2015–2016 measures to control and manage the flow of the Syrian refugees, such sealing the Turkish-Syrian border as well as the conclusion and implementation of the refugee deal between Turkey and the EU in March 2016 (including receiving financial resources from the EU side)[57] will only partially solve the refugee problems. It seems that the Turkey-EU undertaking serves more the improvement of their relations than the problems of the presence of millions of Syrians on the Turkish territory
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