Philip Pilkington
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria earlier this month, there was a brief period of excitement in Western foreign policy circles. Now, as new battle lines are drawn and Turkey reasserts its influence in the region, such hopes are fading quickly.
This week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated that if Kurdish militias in Syria did not lay down their arms they would be “buried”. The position of the new Syrian government under Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on the Kurdish question is unclear, but it is becoming increasingly evident that the Turks wield enormous influence over the group.
Shortly after Erdoğan’s statement, his son announced a rally in Istanbul on 1 January, adding: “Yesterday Hagia Sophia, today the Umayyad Mosque, tomorrow Al-Aqsa.” The Umayyad Mosque is in Damascus, and so we can only infer from this that the Turks consider themselves the new major power in Syria. Al-Asqa Mosque is located in Jerusalem, and so its mention raised eyebrows in Israel about this resurgence in Turkish regional power.
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