Erdoğan: big winner in Syrian civil war - How We Got Here - TVP World

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The Assad dynasty has fallen; few will regret it. But what will its neighbors, especially Turkey, make of it? Are they ready for a change in the geopolitical chessboard?

Although Bashar Al-Assad's regime has been toppled, parties involved in the Syrian civil war continue vying for patches of the war-torn country. One of the contenders is Turkey, along with the Syrian National Army, to which it provides funding, training, and military support.

But it is precisely the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces that Turkey and the SNA are facing off against in northern and eastern Syria. Ankara claims that the SDF has direct links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK – a guerilla movement formed in 1978 initially as a mix of Marxism-Leninism and pro-independence Kurdish nationalism. Over the years, PKK’s objectives have shifted to promoting democratic confederalism that would replace the United Nations, capitalism, and nation states. Turkey, but also the United States, the European Union, and some other countries now designate the PKK as a terrorist organization.

In the past, Ankara was notorious for using refugees as a leverage to extort political gains from the European Union. During the 2015 refugee crisis, Turkey’s growing role as a buffer state for the bloc led to the striking of a deal in March 2016 with the EU. The agreement stated that illegal migrants to the Greek islands coming from Turkey would be returned to Turkish soil. The tradeoff was that the EU would help Turkey accommodate and integrate Syrian refugees and that the refugees would be resettled in EU Member States on a one-to-one basis. The EU also offered to return to discussions about Turkey’s accession to the bloc and make other concessions.

And while scenes of alleged reunions have already circulated on the Internet, given the ongoing clashes, it may still take time for around 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, but also nearly 4.5 million in the EU, to return to their homeland.

What are Turkey's strategic thinkers and “doers” thinking and doing?

Join Jan Darasz and his guest Adam Michalski, Research Fellow at the Center for Eastern Studies, for How We Got Here.