Turkey's Syria Morass
Turkey needs an exit strategy from Syria, writes Pinar Tremblay.
The legend goes that the Prophet Muhammad came all the way to the walls of Damascus, saw the luscious landscape and refused to enter the city, uttering “you can only enter paradise once.” Once you make a decision to intervene in another country, it is a game changer. This applies to Turkey’s Syria policy.
The easiest answer to the question of what Turkey wants in Syria would be what any country wants from another: to cooperate with it and the region in a stable manner. Turkey and Syria already had a mutually beneficial friendship, to the point that Turks have decided to demand more benefits from this relationship. I am convinced that Turks want a Syria which would produce not more, but different benefits. Turkey is struggling to undo the damages of the Iraq war, hoping that if Iraq could be reversed from Sunni-minority rule to a Shia-dominant rule with strong influence from Iran in the post-US pullout, Syria could evolve from Alawite-minority rule to a Sunni-majority rule with a deep Turkish influence.
