Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has returned to Moscow on Wednesday, after a year and a half. Everything indicates that the tenant of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, will amicably push him to sit down shortly with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, their Turkish counterpart, to negotiate the end of the war in Syria.
El Asad, accompanied by a large ministerial representation, has been received at the airport by the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov. The latter is today hosting his counterparts from Turkey, Syria and Iran in a meeting whose only point for today and tomorrow is an effective end -with political counterparts- to the Syrian war. An outcome that is favored by the recent thaw -sponsored by Beijing- between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which fed opposing sides since the start of the rebellion, twelve years ago today.
Moscow already hosted the defense ministers of Syria and Turkey in December. Before, she had acted as a hostess for their respective intelligence chiefs. The corollary of today’s meeting should be that of foreign ministers, to prepare a summit between Bashar al-Assad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The counterpart to this high-voltage presidential meeting, which will raise blisters in some countries, could be the lifting of the Turkish veto on Finland’s NATO membership, which is beginning to be rumored for within a month, in the last breath of this legislature. Not so that of Sweden, whose adhesion will be in the hands of the winner of the next elections.
Hafez al-Assad’s dauphin has not only survived twelve years of insurgency, but is emerging stronger from last month’s earthquake. This has served as an alibi to relaunch relations with several Arab countries -such as Arabia itself- that were already considering it. Others, such as the Emirates, Oman or Egypt, had already gone ahead.
In any case, the determination of all parties to close the conflict would make it difficult to justify the continued US occupation of Syrian oil fields, in collusion with the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party ( PKK), at war with the Turkish state for four decades.
The recent visit to the area by the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, has raised blisters in the Turkish Armed Forces. The United States also maintains another base near the border with Jordan and Iraq, around which another minor focus of Islamist insurgency orbits.
Most Arab regimes have come to the conclusion that reconciliation with Assad is the only way to loosen their dependence on Tehran. Likewise, in the same way that China, the best client of Saudi Arabia and Iran, is sponsoring the reconciliation between these two rivals, Russia wants to do the same with Syria and Turkey, very important countries in its foreign policy for different reasons. Vladimir Putin has a good personal relationship with both Recep Tayyip Erdogan and, obviously, Bashar al-Assad.
As shells – many of them Russian or Iranian made – continue to rain down on buildings in Ukraine, both Russia and China seem to be enjoying their new role in the Middle East, ostensibly peace-making and leaving the ball in the West’s court.
Although Turkey reiterates its support “for the sovereignty and integrity of Syria”, the reality is that it occupies relatively large and even more populated areas in the north and northwest of the country, where it shelters insurgents of different Islamist affiliations. It is also believed in Ankara that, with the Russian army engrossed in the Ukraine war – in which Turkey has been a valued mediator on both sides – now is the best time to negotiate.
Erdogan faces the polls on May 14, heading the Popular Alliance. The minimum program of his main opponent, the National Alliance, whose candidate is Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, contemplates maintaining relations with Russia while expanding institutional relations with the United States. He also advocates a return to the fifth-generation US F-35 fighter-bomber acquisition program, which would implicitly mean getting rid of Russian S-400 batteries theoretically capable of shooting them down.
