Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the weekend added his voice to a growing chorus of officials who had significantly changed rhetoric on Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, arguing: “Political dialogue or diplomacy cannot be interrupted between states.” . His remarks were the clearest signal yet that Turkey has embarked on a new policy aimed at stabilizing Assad, after being the main regional backer of his ouster for more than a decade. It came on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the war’s biggest atrocity, the gassing of nearly 1,300 civilians in an opposition-held area of Damascus’ outer suburbs with sarin shells on August 21, 2013. In the intervening years, Russia and Iran have led Assad to a resounding victory on the country’s battlefields. The two states and Turkey now have a significant stake in a fractured country described as post-war Syria, where large sections of the population remain outside the control of the central government. In the northwest, however, the guns of war continued to fire on Monday, with Russian airstrikes targeting 13 different locations in Idlib province, where most of the country’s anti-Assad opposition or those forced to flee their homes as part of the so-called reconciliation agreements, continue to be guarded between hard-line groups. The airstrikes were among the most intense since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent aircraft used to bomb Syria into a new conflict. The number of victims was unknown. Erdogan has in recent years strongly opposed Russian bombing of Idlib, where Turkey has built significant influence over the past two years. However, the new attacks have met with no reaction from Ankara, which has moved closer to Vladimir Putin’s view of a solution for Syria in recent months. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The Turkish leader was reportedly dissuaded from launching a new offensive in Syria’s Kurdish northeast last month after speaking with Putin during a summit in Sochi. After failing to win Putin’s blessing, Erdogan appeared to be resorting to diplomacy while launching drone strikes against what his intelligence officials said were Kurdish rebels. One such strike hit a volleyball match near the city of Hasaka last week, killing four girls and injuring seven others. Kurdish groups in the northeast, backed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), are bracing for a new Turkish invasion, which they fear aims to create a new sphere of influence along the Turkish border into which Ankara will transfer Arabs refugees who have been hosted in Turkey in the last decade. Erdogan faces elections next year in which anti-refugee sentiment is on the rise as he struggles to deal with a normalizing economy and simmering social unrest. Turkey has already announced plans to send up to 1 million refugees back to Syria and has funded housing construction in Kurdish areas in the northwest and northeast, effectively driving a wedge between them. Direct contact with Assad is unlikely to happen anytime soon, but officials, including intelligence elements, are expected to resume cooperation. “This will be done gradually,” said a senior Beirut-based official. “The messages from the Turks are very clear. They want to deal with the PKK and Assad now has some power with them for the first time. However, everything is done through Putin, so he shouldn’t push it too far.” More than half of Syria’s pre-war population remains internally displaced or outside Syria’s borders, where most remain reluctant to return, citing dangers posed by regime officials who believe they will shake them economically and detain them arbitrarily. A senior Kurdish official in northeastern Syria on Monday called Turkey’s rapprochement with Assad a “trick” “Turkey has never supported the Syrian revolution,” said Ilham Ahmad, a member of the region’s executive council. “She used it to serve her expansionist agendas based on colonialism and demographic change. Turkey used Syrian refugees”. The UN and NGOs have insisted that Syria remains unsafe for return for many who fled persecution throughout the war. Lebanon has also shifted its rhetoric towards Syrians sheltering in the country, with community attitudes turning hostile in some areas and refugees forced to go into hiding to avoid arrest. “I’d rather try my luck in this broken place than go to Bashar’s prisons,” said Mustafa Hilani, a Syrian who has lived in Beirut for the past six years. “There is no life there.”
