Austin Bay

In late summer 2012, Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab denounced his boss, dictator Bashar al-Assad, and fled to Jordan.

Hijab also pledged allegiance to what diplomats called “the anti-Assad rebellion,” a jumble of ethnic, religious and political groups that actually reflected the fragmented Levantine demographics that breed friction when Syria supposedly experiences peace.

When asked by Washington media to evaluate the significance of Hijab’s defection, an Obama administration State Department spokesman declared the defections of Hijab and other former Assad loyalists indicated “that the (Assad) regime is crumbling.”

The Obama State Department missed that call by 12 years. Now lame-duck President Joe Biden says his administration is trying to manage “risk and uncertainty.” He pledged — and I quote this from the White House transcript — to support Syria’s neighbors “including Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel — should any threat arise from Syria during this period of transition.”

Consult the map. Missing from Biden’s list of neighbors is Syria’s largest neighbor — NATO member Turkey.

Perhaps Biden’s memory is dim. Turkey, however, matters in so many ways.

Here’s one from the Obama era: Syria almost became a NATO war. In June 2012, following Syria’s downing of a Turkish Air Force reconnaissance jet, Turkey called for a NATO treaty Article 4 consultation.

Article 4 says NATO allies will “consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence, or security” of an ally is threatened. In this case, it demonstrated Turkey believed Syria’s complex security threat at its southern border required alliance action. Those threats: Syrian military attacks and terrorist attacks from Syrian territory.

After one incident where Assad’s soldiers fired across Turkey’s border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan considered invoking NATO Article 5, which provides for mutual defense when a NATO nation is attacked.

In 2011 and 2012, Turkey very publicly mulled military action to establish a buffer zone inside Syrian territory with the goals of containing Syria’s civil war chaos and protecting Syrian refugees (Syrian citizens) entering Turkish safe havens. At the time I argued that establishing the buffer zone, with the blessing of NATO allies, had another implicit goal: toppling Assad’s Alawite dictatorship.

The number of Syrian refugees in Turkey or protected by Turkish forces eventually reached 3.5 million. That’s a burden.

In 2019, Turkey established a temporary North Syria Safe Zone (also called the Peace Corridor). Then it became semi-temporary.

Syria, like its Levant neighbor, Lebanon, is an ethnic and religious mosaic, the demographic legacy of shattered empires, tribes and fractious religious faiths. Over the centuries, heretical sects and obstinate clans in its rugged mountains and desert valleys have successfully resisted first elimination, then assimilation.

The Syrian and Lebanese mosaics even survived Ottoman Turk imperialism — what Balkanites under Ottoman control called “the Yoke.” Ottoman depredations against Levantine Arabs (Muslim, Christian and Druze) are well documented.

Also documented: brutal internecine conflicts among Lebanese and Syrian ethnic and religious factions — from the 8th century B.C. to 2024.

The factions spill across current borders, which date from the Ottomans’ post-WWI collapse (with a few later 20th-century rearrangements). For example, Turkey sees Syrian Kurds as allies of the Kurdistan Workers Party — a terror organization originally backed by the Soviet Union.

Turkish and U.S. forces team up to destroy remnant Islamic State terrorists operating in Syria. Alas, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army has battled the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces — Syrian Kurds Turkey calls terrorists.

Within the last two weeks, a rebel army led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel faction overran Syria’s major cities, seized Damascus and toppled the Assad regime. At one time HTS allied with al-Qaeda. BBC and Reuters report HTS’ leader has ties to ISIS but claims he’s changed. News services have reported that just as HTS began its offensive, Turkey’s SNA hit SDF positions.

A sign of coordination with Turkey? I’ll say yes.

Turkey doesn’t want to rule Syria. However, Ankara doesn’t want a terrorist state of any stripe on its border. Obama and Biden just talked. With Russia out and Iran weakened, Turkey has the regional military power to end the chaos.

What about Trump Administration 2? We will see.

Austin Bay is a syndicated columnist and author.