Assad can only blame himself for undignified fall

On July 22, 2024, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was criticised when he invited now-former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to visit Ankara to discuss the Turkey-Syria normalisation process.

The relationship, fractured by opposing views on Syria’s long and bloody civil war, saw Assad quickly reject the invitation by putting in unrealistic preconditions.

Erdogan’s conservative supporters domestically and many Syrian activists were said to be upset over Erdogan’s normalisation push with the isolated dictator.

Less than five months later, Syrian rebels now control Damascus.

Assad's denial to enter meaningful dialogue with Ankara proved to be costly for his regime and its closest allies, Russia and Iran.

Hours before his impending fall, Assad's army chief made a televised speech in which he claimed the Syrian army was effectively fighting terrorists and that Damascus would not be taken over.

By late midnight on Sunday December 8 , it was clear that Assad had fled the country, leaving behind a violent and fractured legacy and the unhealed wounds of more than a decade of civil war.

The main question is how it unraveled so quickly.

Assad’s problems go back to the regime’s dependency on Russia and Iran. Before the uprising began in 2011, Turkey and Syria had signed visa-free travel and free trade agreements, leading to increased social and economic exchanges between the two countries.

Soon after the Arab Spring reached Syria and erupted in its Sunni-majority northern provinces, Assad turned to Shia ally Iran. This could be seen as the beginning of Assad's troubles.

Assad’s regime got a lifeline in the form of support from sectarian militias — Hezbollah, the Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade and the Pakistani group Zaynabioun along with hundreds of Iranian “advisors” — but not the lasting solution that would come from a political process.

With the Obama administration’s propping up an aspired Kurdish statelet in northern Syria since 2014, Turkey’s misadventures in shooting down a Russian jet in 2015, and the recapture of Syria’s biggest city, Aleppo, by government troops in 2016, Turkey turned away from the US-led Syria policy.

Alongside Russia and Iran, Turkey established the Astana Process, an agreement to de-escalate the Syrian conflict, initiate constitutional reform, free and fair elections, and the return of the country's millions of refugees, mainly from Turkey.

At the time, Turkey hosted nearly 3 million Syrian refugees living in camps or settled in communities.

Back in 2017, the Astana Process was Assad's best opportunity to reunite Syrians and introduce comprehensive, necessary reforms, to rebuild the country’s shattered economy.

By then, under Turkish advice, the Syrian rebels had limited their activities in the rebel stronghold of Idlib, and active hostility had mostly ended.

Assad was aware of Turkey’s mounting challenges as inflation hit over 80 percent and Erdogan’s popularity was declining.

Yet despite his own issues, an emboldened Assad instead demanded Turkey remove all Turkish checkpoints agreed upon as part of the Astana Process.

In February 2020, Syrian government forces bombed a Turkish checkpoint near Idlib, killing 33 Turkish soldiers. Turkey retaliated with a heavy attack on Idlib that killed 300 Assad regime soldiers and did major damage to Syrian military assets.

There was a growing realisation in Turkey that Russia and Iran were using the Astana Process to buy time to recapture Idlib at a suitable opportunity and that Turkey needed to build leverage to prevent such a plan from being realised.

The process came amid strained ties between many Gulf states and Turkey as they boycotted Ankara’s allies in Qatar, leaving Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who once supported the Syrian rebels, to start the normalisation process with Assad in 2021.

However, three developments went against Assad.

The Assad regime had invested no serious effort in rebuilding the Syrian economy, and the Syrian Lira continued to lose its value.

Any rebuilding would have required a comprehensive political dialogue so Syrian workers could return to their villages and join the process. But when Syrian refugees tried to return, they were arrested and harassed.

Another misstep by Assad, which was ignored by the Russians and Iranians, was the complete indifference of the Syrian regime to even a minimum level of political dialogue with its critics.

Syrian state institutions were further securitised and remained resistant to reform. The Assad regime undermined much of the population who fled persecution.

The more than 5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey and Europe remained on the brink as they faced massive anti-refugee sentiments in many places; they had no home but Syria.

With the rebel advance that sprung up so quickly, Russia’s human and financial resources exhausted in Ukraine and Hezbollah crushed by Israel, Assad was left with little time or preparation to face another uprising.

Assad undermined the opportunity given to him by the Astana Process. Relying too much on Iranian and Russian might, he had built no diplomatic bridges.

He initiated no political or economic reforms to ease the pressure from within. And just last month he launched a disastrous misadventure of retaking Idlib by force .

As Assad’s troubles mounted, his allies attempted to revive the Astana Process.

Angered by Assad’s failures, an angry Vladimir Putin refused to meet him for two days, and there were no phone calls between the two leaders in the last days of the crisis.

Erdogan’s most significant foreign policy achievement is his confident relationship with Russia.

The Russian president wanted Erdogan and Assad to agree on normalisation. Iran’s new reformist government, too, wanted to save its time and energy. But Assad refused to engage.

No one but Assad can be blamed for his undignified fall.

Iran and Russia, once the controlling influence over Syria’s future, now need Turkey to implement the Astana Process and other UN Security Council resolutions.

However, Turkey had other plans, going to its Gulf allies to seek help for rebuilding Syria, a massive investment after such a violent, bloody conflict.

As Donald Trump’s return indicates the US will be less willing to get involved in Syria’s future, it is Ankara that is now leading the next steps.

With the Syrian Kurdish groups essentially isolated from the rebels’ victory, Erdogan can focus on his image as the rebuilder of Syrian cities — the statesman who facilitated the return of millions of Syrian refugees to their homeland.

He will hope to do this all before his next re-election, while Assad remains on the run from his people.

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Omair Anas teaches International Relations at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, Turkey.