hinnebusch framework syria-turkey

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APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF TURKEY-SYRIA RELATIONS

By Raymond HinnebuschUNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS

[email protected]

Prepared for the Workshop on Syria-Turkey Relations

Damascus 10-11 November 2010

APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF TURKEY-SYRIA RELATIONS

The dramatic change in relations between Syria and Turkey is a fairly exceptional phenomenon. In less than a

decade, they went from the brink of war, engaged in a very “realist” power struggle, to amity, even alliance.This arguably has significant consequences for the region’s stability and for the ambitions of various actorsincluding the drive of the US for hegemony in the region.

As an arguably important or unusual case, the Syrian-Turkish relation allows us to test some debates in IR theory. Analysis of the case can contribute to the literature on foreign policy change, re-structuring and re-alignment. It also allows us to test theories about what drives state behaviour, with the determinants of

alignments traditionally a key concern in IR theory. We can ask what theories best help us understand therealignment; we can also ask what the implications of the re-alignment are for our theoretical understanding of the regional system.

This paper has several purposes: 1) It aims to review the IR theory relevant to out case; 2) it seeks tosummarize the findings in the literature existent on the Syrian-Turkish relationship (notably the definitive work

by Altunsik and Tur, but also works by Aras and Kuni, Moubayed, and James Ozdamar, and Oktav) and to

organize this empirical knowledge in a framework of analysis 3) it aims to identify remaining puzzles and on-going debates about the relationship and point to areas of needed research.

I. Re-Alignment and Theoretical Debates

For purposes of simplicity, we will refer to the change in relations as “re-alignment” although it involves morethan just a reshuffling of regional alliances. Specifically, we seek to explain change in Turkish-Syrian relations

over time from the deterioration into near war followed by the normalization of relations and then the movetoward alliance. We can identify three categories of variables that are of interest to our research: the nature of the change in relations, the explanations for the change and the consequences for the region. The explanations

are of course the independent variable, the change itself might be seen as the dependent variable or alternativelyas an intervening variable, with the consequences being the dependent variable.

Conceptualizing change

The literature on foreign policy and alignment change is useful in that it enables us to judge how unusual andimportant the Syria-Turkish realignment might be, to assess the relevance of explanations given for other similar

cases, and to locate our own case as a contribution to this literature.It is first useful to define our case on a continuum between two poles. At one end, the most radical form of

change is captured by Holsti’s concept of foreign policy re-structuring or transformation in which the “total”

pattern of a state’s foreign relations is transformed in major ways, not just its allies but its mode of operation,with the main cases considered being a change from dependence to self reliance or even isolation or switchingmajor patrons. At the other end of the continuum, we can think of a change in alliances as the outcome of policy

consistency, specifically of a realist policy of balancing against threat with changes in alliances merely the result

of a shift in perceived threat. In the middle, we can locate Herman’s notion of a “foreign policy redirection” inwhich governments recognize that a policy is not working and self-corrects, that is, it is a matter of elite

“learning” leading to more significant change than realist balancing and less than foreign policy restructuring.



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The Syria-Turkey case is arguably located somewhere between the extremes of a mere adjustment to

changes in the power balance and Holsti’s restructuring. There has arguably been learning but neither state haswholly transformed its foreign policy. But the change from enemy to ally appears to be a major change in thenorm governing relations that had always ranged from cool to hostile. It also has important implications for

aspects of their identity, global alliances and modus operandi. Both have moved away from “realist” towardmore accommodative strategies. In Turkey’s case alignment with Syria is a break with its long-standing

Westcentrism and deference to the US; in Syria’s case, it marks a new willingness to forego irredentist claims(over Alexandretta) and its traditional Machiavellian modus operendi.

But exactly how deep the change is and hence how enduring it is likely to be remains a matter of research.

A number of analysts (Sever, Aras) hypothesize that the improved relation would not survive a concerted anti-Syrian convergence by both the US and EU, relations far too important for Turkey to sacrifice or even damagefor the sake of that with Syria; in this respect the willingness of Turkey to deepen the relation even after suchconvergence had started over Syria’s role in Lebanon, suggests that it was more than a temporary convergence

of interests. Aras and Altuncik and Tur suggest that the decisive factor is likely to be Iraq; if the shared threatfrom the US in Iraq evaporates, the relation could prove fragile.

Debates over Determinants of Change:

What factors drive state behaviour , and specifically the alteration of relations from enmity to amity? Alternativeexplanations EW offered by theories such as realism, constructivism and foreign policy analysis.

1) Material or ideational factors: realism contests with constructivism as to whether power and interests or identity matters most in shaping relations of enmity or amity. In realist analysis, changing threat drives changing

alignment (Walt); Holsti considers in this regard Stalin’s replacement of HIS anti-Nazi policy with a non-aggression pact with Germany as a major foreign policy change that responded entirely to a changingcalculations of threat. Yet constructivism argues that threat is not a wholly self-evident matter of material power

balances and interests and is constructed through interactions and interpreted thru the lens of identity (Barnett).

In our case, A&T assess the relations of the two states as threat driven, in line with realism. Previously, theywere on opposite sides of the Cold war, with rival patrons; regionally they were locked in a zero-sum game over territory and sovereignty, (water, Kurds) by balancing threats that escalated into crisis. The post-1998

rapprochement issued from a change in the threats from those perceived from those posed by each to the other to the common threat from US policy in Iraq and Syria’s need for a buffer against the US threat of regime

change. However, they also underline that threats are interpreted through lens shaped by historic memory andchanging self-images which in turn are the outcome of domestic debates and as perceptions were revised,

policies changed. Aras and Koni go further, arguing that realism cannot explain the period of conflictualrelations which were the result of constructed images of enmity and elites’ use of “controlled tension” tolegitimize their rule within. Elite worldviews rife with misperceptions and exaggerations of threat were the maindrivers of the Syria-Turkey conflict. This raises the issue of what produced the changes in elite worldview thatmade possible a move toward enmity? Was it a change in material factors such as threat—most obviously

Syria’s submission to Turkish demands to cease support for the PKK--or has this also been accompanied by analteration in identity? The adjustment in relations between the two sides seems to have gone beyond a merecalculation of interests at least for Turkey, for which a mere reduction in the Syrian threat did not require a

move toward amity. Why have Turkey and Syria not only ceased to see each other as enemies but also come tosee each other as friends? If this was the outcome of an alteration of identity, then it would be expected to be

much more durable than if it was a mere temporary adjustment to threat and interests. Here liberalism’sinterdependence can be brought in as another alternative to realism’s threat variable: shared trans-state problemscan be the foci of conflict, but liberalism holds they can also generate shared interests in cooperation.

2. Core-periphery relations: The case, involving as it does, interaction between the global and regionallevels, allows us to test arguments about core and periphery. Dependency theory, neo-realism and globalizationtheories all tend to assume the dominance of the core, and to explain changes in alignments at the regional level

as reflections of the global system, hence bipolarity, unipolarity, etc. Berthe Hansen who looks at the MiddleEast, tries to show that the post Cold war global transformation was directly reflected at the regional level:with declining regional autonomy, bandwagoning with the hegemon becomes the normal behaviour in aunipolar world. On the other hand, Buzan and Weaver see regional systems as having considerable but varyingautonomy. Global systemic change certainly impacted both Syria and Turkey and especially Syria which lost itsglobal patron, and there is some but, as A and T point out, hardly an exact correspondence between change in

Syrian-Turkish relations and global change.Theories of regional middle powers fit with Buzan’s argument that regional powers are actors, not mere

pawns. Turkey, certainly, and Syria, marginally, may be said to be regional middle powers. Regional middle

powers exercise little power at the global level but are significant actors in their regions where, much like

classical great powers, they seek to build up military capabilities and alliances to balance against externalthreats, seek spheres of influence, may reach for regional hegemony or may play the role of benign peace maker



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to settle conflicts in their neighbourhood. When there are rival middle powers in a region their competition

enables a hegemon to act as an off shore balancer or to co-opt one or the other, enhancing its ability to exercisesregional influence through them. Yet regional powers, feeling entitled to leadership in their own region, may tryto ally constitute a buffer or constraint on great power intervention in the region and when their interests are

threatened by the hegemon, they have some capacity to bargain with it or resist its dictates and especially if they

form an alliance. There is certainly evidence that both Turkey and Syria have seen themselves as having

interests to defend in the region and have sought to soft balance against the hegemon over the Iraq war.3. Structure/System) vs. State (Agent): A related issue is the relative weight of structural systemic level

factors and that of the state or agent in understanding foreign policy change. While structural theories such as

neo-realism and dependency theory see the structural level as largely constraining policy-makers, at least over the long run, foreign policy analysis assumes that there are always multiple ways a state may respond tosystemic challenges or opportunities and that they do so in diverse, not uniform ways. An external shock, achange in threat or in the balance of power may be the stimulus that precipitates change, but foreign change may

take place even without major changes in a state’s international environment if there are major changes withinsuch as in its legitimating ideology, in its ruling coalition or in regime type. Indeed, the most radical kinds of foreign policy re-structuring are likely to issue from major transformations within the state. Revolution typically

transforms both ruling elites and state identity: thus in both Iraq and Iran, their respective revolutions turnedthem from main allies of the West into main anti-imperialist powers. Independence may also be a watershed inforeign policy change: Holsti is particularly interested in the efforts of post-colonial governments to reduce their

dependence on the former colonial power, in which high levels of penetration, treaties, bases etc giving way to“non-alignment,” with Nasser’s Egypt a classic example. War may similarly precipitate internal changes such as

shifts in the ruling coalition and ideology: thus in Egypt war burdens and an accompanying economic crisis ledthe Sadat regime to exchange its Soviet for an American patron, with major consequences for domesticrestructuring, indeed a virtual regime change from within. Our case, of course, does not fit with the regimetransformation model; but the turn from enmity to amity has been paralleled by a significant domestic change--

the succession of Bashar al-Asad in Syria brought a new generation to power and the rise of the AKP party inTurkey a coalition of “outsiders” with a different ideology from that of the establishment. Moreover, the USinvasion of Iraq might be considered to be a major shock for both regimes similar to war for even though neither

were directly targeted they felt threatened and paid many of the costs of the invasion. Perhaps the most profitable approach is to consider foreign policy change to be the outcome of interaction between the systemic

(structure) and state (agent) levels.4. Elite Learning : This level of analysis departs from recognition that the state is not a unitary actor, hence

that studies of elites and of the policy process, particularly of bureaucratic politics may be relevant. Holsti’sstudy of re-alignment found the most powerful variable was at the leadership level, in elite personality and

perception. Under what conditions does the leadership change its mind about a policy? The most obviousanswer is when a new elite comes to power on the assumption that incumbent leaders are usually too invested inthe status quo to change course and that it takes new leadership to overcome the inertia or resistance of the

foreign policy establishment (L.S. Etheredge). Change is especially likely if the new leadership comes to power as a result of the failure of the status quo policy and has a self-interest in differentiating itself from its

predecessor.

However, it is possible for incumbent elites to learn from past mistakes or from the costs of current policies or to recognize that a change of policy would allow taking advantage of new opportunities. But

recognizing there is a problem with the policy may require that elites change the very framework through whichthey see and interpret the world. The leader is more likely to recognize the policy is the problem if he gets goodinformation or advise from agents not invested in the status quo that he trusts and when ideology is not at stake

and if the cost of the status quo policy threatens other valued interests. A shift in the balance of power amongthe competing branches of the foreign policy bureaucracy may empower those advocating change at the expenseof the defenders of the status quo. Elements of the bureaucracy particularly in touch with another country such

as diplomats or intelligence officers in charge of the “file” may initiate learning by reporting on theinadequacies of the current policy or the opportunities for change. The bureaucratic politics alerts us that for anychange in policy to happen a consensus must normally be built that may involve bargaining and logrolling.Implementation of policy change is facilitated if implementers were involved in decision-making, if the policychange is made explicit, not vague, and leaders follow-up on implementation.

The role of the public and public opinion is often thought to be of lesser importance in foreign policy

making. In our two states, in particular, it is often assumed elites, being either relatively institutionalized and/or authoritarian, are relatively free to respond to systemic factors as they think best serves their view of the“national interest” and whatever domestic constraints exist are likely to be within the regime, notably the

military and security forces and perhaps the foreign ministry or ruling party leadership. However, even in

authoritarian states, if legitimacy rests on foreign policy performance, as in Syria, elites may feel constrained to pay attention to public opinion or may seek to bolster their legitimacy may following policies expected to be



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popular. In Turkey, the deepening of democratization is widely thought to be increasing the importance of

public opinion in foreign policy-making, The Kurdish issue is a major issue of nationalist arousal there and in both states the US invasion of Iraq was so strongly opposed by the public that arguably, it was a factor thatforced itself upon elite calculations.

4. Consequences of alignment change

The Syrian-Turkish relation also allows us to test arguments about the consequences of re-alignments. Oneissue is what it tells us about responses to US hegemony? While proponents of a benign version of hegemonicstability theory such as Lake and Ikenberry see the US hegemon as a source of regional stability and Wohlforth

sees it as, anyway, irresistible, Layne, Walt and Waltz argue that its move away from the role of off-shore balancing has produced regional instability and stimulated forms of “soft balancing” against it.

1Our case

appears to validate the latter view since the perception of US behaviour as a source of disorder in the region wasa major factor in driving Turkey and Syria into an alignment that soft-balances against the US. One could go

further and argue that this alignment been a constraint on the US, at least in tempering what it could do againstSyria, but also in pitting obstacles in the way of its ability to impose its will in Iraq except at very high cost.

A related question has to do with the sources of regional order and the consequences of Syria-Turkey

relations for it. Realists expect regional order would best be served if regional alignments produce a balance of power constraining any one actor, including the hegemon. The Turkey-Israel alliance can be interpreted as balancing a Syrian-Iranian counter-alliance in the interest of regional stability; has the movement of Turkey and

Syria toward each other been a re-balancing effort that resulted from a US-Israeli power imbalance followingthe invasion of Iraq? From the viewpoint of liberals and constructivist approaches, the question to ask would be

whether the re-alignment improves the prospect of moving the region beyond a conflict-ridden security complextoward a security community because of change from enmity to amity among two pivotal states and theaccompanying growth of shared interests and interdependencies resulting from trade, water-sharing etc.

II. The Syria-Turkish Case

Describing Alignment Change in the Turkey-Syria Case.We have to specify and disaggregate the variable we are explaining more precisely. In this respect, there

are three distinguishable, even if overlapping phases, involving a series of steps from enmity toward amity thatought to be separately explained: 1) the deterioration of relations leading to near war (mid-80s to 1998); 2) the

step back from war, and the normalization of relations (1998-2003); 3) the movement toward amity and alliance(2003-to present). Explanation for the first would not be adequate to explain even the second and certainly notthe third.

1. The Deterioration of relations:

Here the main phenomenon to be described and explained is the repeated failure of diplomacy to resolve theissue and the decision of Turkey to threaten war. Several watersheds in the interactions leading to thedeterioration of relations would include: a) the July 1987 visit of Prime Minister Ozal to Syria and the

agreement that Turkey would release 500 cubic meters annually of Euphrates water in return for a security protocol on terrorism; Syria was however angered when Turkey began constructing its dams and Turkey said

the PKK attacks continued (A&T). b) PKK attacks continued and Ozal threatened in 1989 to breach the water accord; Syria’s Jamal Asad, the regime liaison with the PKK in Beqaa claimed that the Kurds should have ahomeland including Turkish territory. c) Turkey reopened its embassy in Tel Aviv in 1990 and Syrian support

continued for PKK attacks in Taurus Mountains and Hatay. d) In 1993 President Demirel visited Asad who he perceived as being dishonest with him over Ocalan’s use of Syrian refuge to direct terrorism; e) in 1994 the president of the Turkish chambers of commerce, a close advisor of the Tansu Cillar government, led a-100 man

trade delegation to Syria, but the warming of relations was cut short by increased Syrian support for the PKK (O&J); f) 1993: Foreign Minister Cetin’s visit to Israel where security agreements and cooperation against“Syrian sponsored terrorism: were discussed, g) In 1998, Turkey massed 10,000 troops on Syria’s border, andwhile Egypt and Iran sought to mediate, Syria did not get enough support from its old protector, Russia. Asad

backed down, closing down of PKK camps and expelling Ocelan.

2) The step back from war and normalization of relations

Here the main issues are why Syria chose to submit and why Turkey took the opportunity to normalizerelations and Syria, despite its humiliating climb-down, responded positively. A watershed was the Adana

1 A view with which I concur in my chapter criticizing HST in Fawn and Hinnebusch, The Iraq war: causes and consequences, LynneRienner Publishers, 2006.



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security accord the two sides negotiated; Turkey approached the negotiations from a position of power and some

in the Syrian delegation wanted, as a result, to leave but they had instructions from Asad to reach a deal. Theagreement, signed 19-20 October 1998, set up a direct telephone line and provided for regular meetings of a

joint security committee; the Turks wanted to see if they could trust Syria (A&T). b) The 2000 attendance of

President Sezar at the funeral of Hafiz al-Asad consolidated the normalization of relations; c) in 2002 a visitingTurkish delegation that met with Vice President Khaddam and ministries of economy, etc. were told that Syria

had made a strategic decision to upgrade relations

3) Toward amity and alliance:

Here the main dynamic to trace and explain is how two states with little history of amicable interactionover a half century, went beyond simple normalization toward amity, even alliance. Among the signposts in thisevolution are: a) A major turning point was the similar opposition of the two states in 2002 to the approachingIraq war; b) In 2003 Syria handed over to Turkey 22 people suspected of involvement in a suicide bomb attacks

in Istanbul c) In 2004 Bashar al-Asad visited Turkey and ’declared that the creation of a Kurdish or other ethnicentity in Iraq would cross a "red line" for Syria and Turkey. d) PM Erdogan’s refusal of an invitation to visitIsrael from Israeli prime minister Sharon in 2004 and his visit to Syria the same year. e) In convergence with

Syrian policy and in disagreement with the West, Turkey received a Hamas delegation and refuses to join theinternational great powers in isolating it after it came to power in the Palestine territories; e) President Sezar’svisit to Damascus in April 2005 at the time Syria was under US/French pressure to withdraw from Lebanon and

these powers were seeking to isolate the country over the Hariri assassination (A&T). f) Syria pleased Turkey by establishing links with the Turk ish Republic of Northern Cyprus at the expense of its relations with Greece

and the EU; g) 2008: A major break with the past was the Turkish mediation of indirect Syrian-Israel peacetalks; h) 2008, meetings of so-called “Trilateral Front of the Syrian, Iranian, and Turkish heads of state wereanother innovation; h) 2009: Turkey’s relations with Israel, already strained over Israeli support for Iraq’s Kurdsand its treatment of the Palestinians, and by Turkey’s attempt to legitimate and bring Hamas out of international

isolation further declined, symbolized most forcefully walking out of a public appearance with Israeli presidentShimon Peres during the Gaza war. 2009: Turkey and Syria launch their first joint military exercise; Syria seesit as enabling it to send a political message to Washington and make Israel nervous, while Turkey sees it as

contributing to the security of its borders and relations with its Arab-Muslim neighbours

Explanations and Consequences of Alignment Change:

Explanations of factors driving alignment change and assessments of its consequences can be distinguished atfive levels: the global systemic; the regional system, the trans-state level; the state level and the internal politicslevel; although most explanations will likely bridge more than one level.

Global Level

Systemic level theories such as neo-realism, structuralism as well as theories of globalization and hegemony

would expect that the global great powers of the “core” would shape the options available to smaller powers;that such powers would be dependent on and need great power patrons more than the patrons need them, and

that major upheavals in the global level balance of power, notably the end of the Cold War, would be directlyreflected at the regional level. The main variations in factors at the global level of analysis that could beexpected to affect variations in Syrian-Turkish relations relate to global polarity (tight bi-polarity, loose bi-

polarity, unipolarity) , and the consequent variations in the role of the hegemon and in the amount of autonomyleft to regional middle powers under these different configurations.Under bipolarity when the two super powers checked each other, regional actors enjoyed the autonomy to

choose their global patron and could even balance between them, permitting a less asymmetrical kind of dependency compared with current period of uni-polarity.

In the period of so-called tight bi-polarity Turkey and Syria were aligned with opposing camps; hence their relations might be expected to be hostile and this was largely the case. In Turkey’s case, its alliance with its US

patron, rooted in a Kemalist-fostered Westcentric identity, US protection against the Soviet threat andmembership in NATO, was institutionalized as the predominant factor in shaping its foreign policy behaviour.

In Syria’s case, the US was seen as an imperialist power and the main backer of its main enemy, Israel, whilethe Soviet Union was Syria’s political patron protector arms supplier. Syria and Turkey were at certain pointsdrawn into conflict over Cold war issues. Turkey, welcomed and facilitated the Western presence in the region

which Syria opposed while Syria tried to bring in the Soviet presence to balance that of the West and Israel,

much to Turkey’s alarm. The main episode in this was the struggle over the Baghdad Pact, of which Turkey wasa pivotal member and which was opposed by Syria and the 1957 incident when Turkey mobilized troops on



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Syria’s border in the name of containing (Arab-nationalist, pro-communist) radicalism, a low point in their

relations and the first of two incidents when the countries came close to war.In the period of loosening bi-polarity, when the high state of hostility between East and West moderated,

Cold War alignments loosened and that was largely the case for Turkey and Syria as well, each of which eased

their total dependency on their initial patron. While the thawing of the Cold war facilitated this, it was, however,driven, not by global factors but by regional issues and national interests to pursue more flexible, autonomous

policies and diverse alignments. In the case of Turkey, several disappointments with the failure of the US to protect Turkey’s interests, notably as a result of the US arms embargo over the Cyprus issue, revived a certainearlier distrust of the West rooted in the post WWI attempt to dismember it, the so-called Sevres complex that

saw the country surrounded by enemies threatening its integrity. This revived the pre-Cold War Kemalistinjunction that Turkey should avoid involvement in wars and in external conflicts with local actors. A thirdfactor was the post-1973 oil price boom and the consequent elevated importance of Middle East markets andenergy resources to the country’s economic security. These factors led to Turkish attempts to ease its

dependency by diversifying relations with the Middle East and to policies that were in some respectsindependent of those of the US. Mahmut Aykan points out that Turkey diverged from US policy in the MiddleEast over the Arab-Israeli wars, the Palestine issue and after the Iran revolution refrained from applying US

sanctions against Iran. Syria, for its part moved toward the US: after the loss of the Golan Heights to Israel andSyria’s failure to recover it in the 1973 war, Syria began to periodically attempt to engage the US as aninterlocutor needed to get a peace deal with Israel that would (at least) return the Golan Heights. Turkey came to

be seen as somewhat less of a Western surrogate and the former hostility in Syrian-Turkish relations declined but was replaced mostly by indifference and a minimum of interaction.

In the post- Cold War period, US involvement in the region deepened, first with the 1990-91 Gulf war against Iraq, and then through Washington’s subsequent dual containment of Iraq and Iran and its brokering of the Arab-Israeli peace process. As regards Turkey, the threat from the Soviet Union disappeared but wasreplaced by a sense of threat from instability in the Balkans, Caucasus, and Middle East at a time when Ankara

feared the end of the Cold War had devalued Turkey as a Western ally and when the welcome given to Turkey’saspiration to join the EU was seen as unenthusiastic. NATO’s failure to assume protection of Turkey in the Gulf war was worrying. Aras and Koni point out that in a first major departure from the Kemalist policy of non-

involvement in regional conflicts, Turgut Ozal proactively used the Gulf crisis to make Turkey valuable to theWest and got a bonanza of new weapons and the stationing of patriot missiles. After the Gulf war, Turkey was

uneasy over the consequences of US regional policies, notably the empowerment of the Kurds in northern IraqHowever ties with Washington remained tight, and indeed tightened as Turkey moved toward alliance with

Israel. Turkey was in third place after Israel and Egypt as a recipient of US aid; the US was also its main armssupplier, together with Israel (Nachmani).

As for Syria, the end of the Cold War did not change its underlying long established goal of recovering theGolan, but it had lost its Soviet patron and was, therefore much more exposed and under pressure to change itsmethod; it did adjust its policies from confrontation with Israel to joining the 1990 Gulf war coalition and the

US sponsored peace process. Yet, it was in this period of Syrian bandwagoning with the US that relations mostsharply deteriorated with Turkey. Paradoxically, even though Syria moved toward Turkey’s US patron andthough both states were on the same side in the Gulf war, their relation actually deteriorated over issues that had

little to do with global level alignments, border, water and Kurdish issues.Indeed, Turkey was uneasy with the growing amity in US-Syrian relations that paralleled Syria’s

involvement in the US sponsored peace process, fearing that Syria would be taken off the US terrorism listinspite of its support for the PKK. In a second departure from the Kemalist policy of avoiding partisanship inthe region, Turkey moved into a close alliance with Israel as part of a growing “cold war” with Syria. At the

same time, Turkey had a developing energy interest in Iran including the purchase of natural gas, investment inIranian energy fields and pipelines that the US opposed and which were potentially obstructed by the Libya-IranSanctions Act of 1996.

Under the George W. Bush administration, the behaviour of the US hegemon in the Middle East radicallychanged from its old role of offshore balancer, and regional stabilizer with a new greatly intensified level of intervention in the region, epitomiozed by the invasion of Iraq, that was widely seen as destablizing. This

provoked a sharp readjustment in the relations of both states to the hegemon and eventually movement towardeach other.

Syria was most directly threatened by Bush’s sharp tilt toward Israel, its pressure on Syria over its support

for Palestinian militants and Hizbollah, now regarded in Washington as terrorists, and the invasion of Iraq,which Syria opposed. Intense US pressure included economic sanctions, attempts to isolate the country, threatsof military action to change the regime in Damascus, and the successful expulsion of the country from its

position in Lebanon. In defense, Syria moved into a close alignment with Iran, which was under similar

pressures. Yet remarkably, this period was also paralleled by a growing Syria-Turkish alignment. Syria had astrong incentive to upgrade its relations with Turkey to avoid US attempts to demonize and isolate the country.



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Regional I: Transnational Issues and regional interdependence

The main immediate issues that have made for enmity/conflict and amity/cooperation in Turkey-Syrian relationsare located at the transnational level where Syria and Turkey are linked to each other and the region by complexties and interdependencies. These can make both for shared interests that would be facilitated by cooperation

and for mutual vulnerabilities, which have in past resulted in threat and conflict. Since interdependence isusually asymmetrical some actors are more vulnerable to pressure from others and the least vulnerable can

acquire power leverage over the less vulnerable. Interdependencies can be constituted by material interests, inour case economics or water; but they may also be a matter of trans-state identity movements that can threatenor be used by state against each other.

Where trans-national identities are seen as threats to regimes, they balance against them, but in a differentway than anticipated by classic realist versions of balancing against threats from rival states. According to thetheory of omni-balancing, as proposed by Steven David, the main threats faced by unconsolidated third worldstates are from within; states align with a more remote external power in order to get the resources or protection

to deal with the more immediate threat from within. The theory is amended and improved by Harknett andVanDenBerg who point out that internal and external threats are typically inter-related , that is, internalopposition in the Middle East is frequently a function of trans-state movements that spills across borders and

may be used by rival states against each other. In a particular case of such interrelated threats, James and Ozgur Ozdamar with the Kurdish case in mind, point out that ethnic disturbances may be internationalized, making anapparent domestic conflict an issue between states. In the Turkish-Syrian case, the origin of the trans-national

conflicts and vulnerabilities is the way the border was somewhat arbitrarily drawn with the breakup of theOttoman empire, disrupting economic ties, cutting across river flows and also ethnic communities (with Kurds

left on both sides and Arabs in Alexandretta ceded to Turkey)Water: Turkey controls much of the region’s water resources and specifically controls the headwaters of

the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that Syria (and Iraq) depends on. The sharing of the transnational rivers betweenTurkey and the two downstream states became an issue as rival hydraulic development projects, the GAP

project in Turkey and Syria’s Euphrates basin project, started to make growing demands on the water. The twostates disagreed over the legal status of their claims, with Syria and Iraq insisting the rivers were internationalwaterways, hence subject to international conventions and Turkey that they were transboundary ones (a

category unrecognized in international law, which entitled it to sovereignty over the water in its territory.Turkey received no World Bank funding for GAP because it was unwilling to reach a water sharing agreement

with the downstream states but funded the project itself as a matter of national pride that enjoyed a cross-partyconsensus and was also seen as crucial to develop the southwest to order to marginalize the PKK. For Syria, the

Euphrates Dam and basin was a great project involving the legitimacy of the Ba’thist regime as a developmentalstate and there were constituencies attached to it also. (A&T). The project provided 30% of Syria’s electricity inearly 80s, making the country very vulnerable to a reduction in the flow of the river.

Under a 1987 accord with Syria, Turkey undertook to release a minimum of 500 cu m/second (the averageflow at the border being 1000) which, however, Damascus interpreted as a temporary measure during the filling

of the Ataturk Dam and pending conclusion of a trilateral accord under which it wanted the flow to return to a pre-existing flows of at least 600-700 cu m/second; Iraq also objected that 500 was too low and complained thatit would be left with little flow and of a low quality due to pollution and salinity upstream. In January 1990

Turkey unilaterally totally stopped the flow the flow in order to fill the Ataturk Dam, causing power cuts inSyria as the turbines of its Euphrates dam worked below strength. At the same time that Turkey was claiming

that it had to ration the amount of water released to Syria, it also proposed to export excess water through "peace pipelines" to Syria, Jordan, Israel and the Gulf; significantly, after Syria’s expelling of KPP leader Ocelan,Turkey increased the flow to Syria to 900 cu m/second. The point was made that Syria was very vulnerable and

that Turkey was prepared to use water to acquire political leverage over it.Asad’s support for the PKK (as well as Armenian militants) was a direct response to the Turkish decision

to build the GAP but also a response to the refuge given by Turkey to the Syrian Muslim brotherhood, that had

mounted an armed uprising in the early 1980s. Syria sought to use support for the PKK to win concessions onwater and Turkey to use water to get Syria to give up support for the PKK. Each state sought to manipulate thevulnerabilities of the other from cross border interdependencies.

Once the PKK issue was resolved and water ceased to be seen in a purely 0-sum light and a politicized toolof leverage, the possibility of cooperation over its use began to be realized. Collaboration between IrrigationMinistries started building intergovernmental networks which would open up new opportunities win-win

solutions (Kabaroglu). As political amity replaced enmity between Syria and Turkey, water-sharing apparentlyadvanced, and water did not even become an issue in the drought years of the later-2000s. Thus in 2009 Syrianofficials were publicly declaring that Turkey was providing Syria with its share of water. Whether there was a

material change in Turkey’s water policy or not is one question; what was striking was the radically different

construction of the issue by the Syrian regime; with Turkey identified as a friend rather than enemy, Syria’sasymmetrical interdependence and vulnerability ceased to be an issue.



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The Kurds: The other issue shared between the two states is, of course, the cross-border Kurdish

community, with the Kurds straddling four states, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, with the proportion of Kurds inSyria the lowest, and its vulnerability to Kurdish insurgency considerably lower than Turkey’s. Actually,Turkey has historically integrated a considerable portion of the Kurdish population, beginning with Ziya

Golkalp, a theorist of Turkish nationalism and today including landowners and civil servants in the East. Thethreat of the PKK was its attempt to use violence to force a change in the loyalty by these strata. For Turkey, the

PKK insurgency is the main threat to its national security, hence one should expect it to shape all its foreign policy; indeed a main factor in determining Turkey’s relations with all other states was whether they were perceived to support Turkey against PKK terrorism or not. Importantly, the Kurdish problem is seen as

externally driven since the time when a Kurdish rebellion, said encouraged by the British, forced Turkey toconcede Mosul to British Iraq (OandJ). Syrian support for the PKK was seen as the main factor enabling theinsurgency; hence the need to end that support became a high priority for which decision-makers were willing totake considerable risks. As for Syria, some Syrians professed to see the PKK as a national liberation movement,

entitled to Syria’s support as a self-styled anti-imperialist state. After Syria ended its support for the PKK,relations with Turkey were rapidly normalized.

However, some argue that Turkey’s Kurdish problem is in some respects “constructed” as a national

security threats when, in reality it is an issue of national integration in a multi-national state properly advanced by according Kurds minority rights. According to Aras, Syria used the Kurds against Turkey, but Ankara’s eliteinsisted that it was the sole source of the problem, when, in fact, the insurgency was rooted in the failure to

incorporate the Kurds, tacitly recognized by Ozal’s attempt to concede them linguistic rights and by the viewthat development in the southeast would solve the problem. There was also the fact that the problem has

continued after Syria stopped support for the PKK. The Turkish elite, according to Aras, manufactured a war scare, saying the two countries had gone to the brink of war; but in actuality Syria had not even counter-mobilized on its border. Arguably the Syrian threat would not have been viewed as so severe had alternativeviews of the Kurdish problem dominated in Turkey. The conservative Anatolian and Islamist parties, proposed

the use of neo-Ottoman or Islamic identities to bridge Turkish-Kurdish cleavages making it less dangerous toconcede the Kurds linguistic and cultural rights. The AKP enjoyed considerable success in integrating TurkishKurds through the electoral process.

Once Syrian support for the PKK was ended, the threat was seen to relocate to Iraq, exacerbated by US policies after the Gulf war of encouraging an autonomous Kurdish entity outside control of Saddam Hussein’s

central government. For a period, Iraqi Kurds were sharply divided, making it easier for Turkey to play them off against each other, but the US brokered a settlement. After its invasion of Iraq, the US promoted a “federal”

model of governance in Iraq that accorded the Kurds something close to de facto independence; what wouldmake independence a reality would be Kurdish incorporation of oil rich Kirkuk, a goal they sought to achieve

by changing the demographic balance of the city to the disadvantage of Arab and Turcoman residents. Turkeyassumed the right to protect the Turcomans community in the city and to intervene against Kurdish expansionwhile Iraqi KDP leader Barzani threatened to make trouble for Turkey among its own Kurds if it did so. Yet,

Turkey economically penetrated Iraqi Kurdistan: its businesses dominating the area and it was the chief supplier of refined crude oil; while this might be seen as giving Turkey leverage over the Kurdish authorities, they inturn tried to use the stake of Turkish business in the area to exercise counter influence on Turkey.

Turkey might have dealt with the Iraqi Kurdish threat through omni-balancing—appeasing the US in order to get the backing and resources to deal with it. The Turkish government apparently planned to do just that in its

initial intention to join the 2003 US invasion of Iraq in order to acquire a presence on the ground in northernIraq, but this “rational” calculation of interests was obstructed by domestic opinion that had a different view of Turkey’s national interest. Later, in a second similar 2004 attempt to bandwagon with Washington, Turkey

offered to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq, but the Kurds rejected it.At the same time as Turkey was preoccupied with the PKK threat in Iraq, Syria’s own historic relations

with the Iraqi Kurds deteriorated as they moved toward alliance with the US occupation and Syria moved into

opposition to Washington’s policy toward Iraq. The establishment of near-Kurdish statehood in Iraqemboldened Syria’s Kurds. Arab-Kurdish enmities in Syria appeared to grow, with Kurdish riots rocking Syriain 2004, which the regime repressed; there was also the assassination of an oppositionist Kurdish sheikh,although the Syrian regime moved, albeit slowly, toward according to Kurds resettled from Turkey under theFrench previously denied citizenship rights.

The immediate occasion of the post-invasion beginning of Iran-Syria-Turkey trilateral meetings was the

shared concern over Kurdish nationalism (A&T). Thus, both Syria and Turkey objected to the Iraqi Malikiregime’s appeasement of Kurdish demands to uproot Arab or Turkoman families from Kirkuk and Kurdishefforts to seize control of Kirkuk oil, enabling the funding of an independent state. For both, the break-up of

Iraq was a “redline” they were determined would not be crossed.

Economic interdependencies: Syrian-Turkish economic relations were until recently minimal, hence littleinterdependencies to generate shared interests in cooperation. After the 1973 oil crisis Turkey’s trade with the



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Arabs expanded dramatically from 5 to 34% from 1973 to 1981, albeit mostly of Turkish oil imports from the

Gulf States. This declined to a fairly durable 20%, now more composed of Turkish exports although in 1996 itfell to around 10% with Arab states. Little of this was with Syria. However as political relations warmed,economic ones followed. A free trade agreement was signed in December 2004 and although its ratification was

delayed by fears of Syrian business at the competition from Turkey, trade rapidly and significantly increased.Each saw the other as gateways to wider (Arab and EU) markets. Turkey evidently saw opportunities to

extend its export-oriented economic boom in eastern cities like Konya, Kayseri, Adana, and Gaziantep toAleppo and Damascus. (Davudoglu 17). Trade routes through Syria also allow Turkey to by-pass Kurdishnorthern Iraq. Turkey is seeking, through these economic agreements, to build a regional economic belt

extending towards the Arab and Gulf area. As for Syria, the regime, running out of the oil resources that hadfinanced the treasury for decades, was acutely aware that both the economy and the public finances facedimminent crisis unless a spurt of private investment could be stimulated. Yet owing to political conflicts withthe US and Saudi Arabia, it was facing economic isolation at just the wrong time. Turkish investment was a life-

line Turkey seemed happy to extend.In 2008 did Syria-Turkish trade reach $1bn. Turkish investment in Syria also began to take off. Economic

constituencies emerged on both sides of the border pushing for a further deepening of relations. Exchanged

political visits centred on trade and a Turkish-Syrian business council was created. The trade agreements alsocaused speculation that Syria was effectively ending its claims on Alexandretta/Hatay since the opening of Syrian trade missions in the province would imply de facto recognition of the current borders, ending another of

the outstanding conflicts between the two neighbours. Hence while political considerations initially stimulatedeconomic relations, the growth of shared economic interests promoted, as liberals expect, improved political

relations. However, Syrian-Turkish economic interdependence is probably too thin to prevent a reversal of amity if security interests again clash.

Regional II: The Dynamics of the Regional States System

Given the relative autonomy of the regional states system (Buzan and Weaver) one should not neglect tolook for the causes and consequences of change in Syrian-Turkish relations in its dynamics. These dynamics, soably captured by realism, are rooted in the insecurity of an anarchic regional system, inducing balancing against

threats, including through alliances, the search for spheres of influence and even bids for hegemony. The mainvariable is the distribution of power and the pattern of perceived threat, itself partly a function of power

imbalances and partly the construction of enmities/amities. The latter arise chiefly from the transtate issues of conflict but the distribution of power capabilities shapes the vulnerabilities, constraints, and opportunities states

face as they seek to deal with such conflict issues. Thus more powerful states are more likely to follow assertive policies and weaker ones to be on the defensive.

The development of Turkey-Syria relations can be understood in terms of realist power balancing againstthreats but the relation cannot be analyzed in isolation since it both affects and is affected by the wider regional

power balance and even the penetration of the system by external powers. Thus, a key factor that reshuffled the

regional balance of power was that following Soviet collapse, Turkey became the strongest military power after Russia and it was aligned with Israel, another formidable military power, putting Syria in a vice, while Syriacould not depend on Russia to back it against Turkey (OandJ). It is all the more remarkable, from a realist point

of view, that Syria chose to confront Turkey in its north via the PKK while using Hizbollah to similarlychallenge Israel in the south

The emergence of an unprecedented Turkish-Israeli alliance was the second most important developmentin the regional balance and was a direct outcome of power balancing. The ups and downs of Turkey’s relationswith Israel had always been driven by a conflict between security interests and identity. After voting against the

partition of Palestine, Turkey was persuaded by its need to court the US as NATO was being formed, torecognize Israel. It withdrew its ambassador to Israel after the Suez invasion but it joined the Israeli inspired

periphery pact against radical Arab nationalism after the Iraqi revolution destroyed the Baghdad Pact. But when

the Cyprus crisis showed the limits of American friendship and the cost of Turkey's regional isolation, and Araboil and markets became essential, Turkey started a move away from Israel. In the 1970s Turkey supportedPalestinian rights at the UN, recognized the PLO, and protested at Israeli annexation of Jerusalem. In 1976 it

joined the Islamic Conference Organization. But the 1980s fall in oil prices and in Turkish-Arab trade and themovement of Egypt (1978), then the PLO (1993) into relations with Israel relieved constraints on relations withit.

Geopolitical reasons to move closer to Israel after the Cold war included Israel’s upgrading of Turkey’s hi-tech military capacity, especially airpower, and the influence in the US congress an Israeli alliance was expectedto provide against the Greek and Armenian lobbies that jeopardized Turkey’s US alliance. Both states feared

their usefulness to the West after the Cold War had declined. But the key factor in bringing Turkey together

with Israel was the shared perception of threat from Syrian (and Iranian) sponsored “terrorism,” concentrated inLebanon’s south and Bekaa valley where both Hizbollah and the PKK had bases.



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The development of the Turkish-Israeli alliance was in part a response to Syria’s alliances and also

stimulated Syria to seek counter-alignments. Most obviously Syria and Iran renewed their long-standing allianceand Syria deepened relations with Turkey’s rivals, Greece and Armenia. In 1988 the PKK became a part of Syria-Iran axis and Iran handed over bases of its own Kurdish movement (KDPI) to the PKK in 1989.

Turkey’s alliance with Israel was a key factor in enabling its increasingly assertive policies toward Syriaover the PKK. Turkey at first hesitated to militarily threaten Syria while it was engaged in peace negotiations

with Israel under US auspices and for fear of Arab condemnation; Turkey indeed feared that a successfulconclusion of these negotiations would embolden Syria against it and also that a deal would be reached tocompensate Syria at Turkey’s expense for Golan waters retained by Israel. But with the rise of Netanyahu

government in Israel, the peace negotiations ended. Israel under Netanyahu and Turkey jointly called Syria andIran terror headquarters. The Turkish navy visited Haifa as Erbakan was toppled in Turkey. In 1996 the Israeliambassador visited Hatay and the Turkish PM celebrated its annexation. Following PM Yilmaz’s visit to Israel,accusations against Syria mounted The sharp shift in the balance of power in favour of Turkey and against Syria

must be a main explanation for Turkey’s confidence in provoking a showdown with Syria over the PKK and inSyria’s rather humiliating surrender to Ankara’s demands. The Turkish-Israeli alliance was a key factor inenabling Turkey to prevail against Syria.

As long as Syria and Iran were supporting the PKK threat, the Turkish-Israel alliance was strong, but oncethis ceased, Turkey’s interest in its Israel alliance was less intense. However it was Israel’s support for the 2003US invasion of Iraq and the ties it deepened with Iraq’s Kurds that soured this relationship (Oktav). Seymour

Hersh’s revelations of Israeli penetration of Kurdish Iraq displeased Turkey (although Foreign Minister Gul saidwe had to trust Israel’s denials of meddling as they were both democracies). When a PKK offshoot started

insurgency against Iran, Turkey and Iran were brought together in 2007 Qandil operations against this threat. Atthe same time Turkey’s criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians and Erdogan’s engagement withHamas further strained relations. As such, at one level the ups and downs of the Syria-Turkish relations aredirectly related to the Israel-Turkey alliance, and both rooted ultimately in the Kurdish issue. When Syria and

Israel reversed positions on the Kurdish issue, Turkey began reversing its alignments. Nevertheless, Turkey hasnot broken its alliance with Israel, which remains intact on several key levels below that of the top politicalleadership, notably at the military and economic levels.

From Syria’s point of view, alignment with Turkey was chiefly meant as a buffer against the US.However, it was also thought to provide some constraint on Israel’s freedom of action, especially once Turkey

began mediating peace negotiations between Syria and Israel. This was crucial at a time when neo-con elementsin the US administration were encouraging Israel to attack Syria, especially over the conflict in southern

Lebanon and Syria’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. Moreover, as Syria’s relations with its historic Araballies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, inexorably worsened over Lebanon and Syria’s close alliance with an Iran theyfound threatening, Syria all the more valued the “Trilateral Front” that brought it protective partnership withTurkey and Iran.

Turkey’s relations with Israel and with the Arabs and Syria were historically a zero-sum matter: the more

Turkey moved toward Israel the more distant its relations with Syria and the reverse. What is remarkable todayis that a Syrian-Turkish alliance parallels an Israeli –Turkish one. According to Syrian president Bashar al-Asad,“With regard to Turkey-Israel relations, what is important is that [Turkey's] connection with Israel will not

affect the relationship with Syria. I am reassured with regard to this, and the development of relations between

us proves this." ( Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), January 19, 2004). Even more remarkable is that Turkeyundertook to mediate in the Syrian-Israeli conflict in 2007-08; a Syrian-Israeli peace, which in the 1990s itregarded as a threat to be countered, it now sees as a positive good for itself. Potentially, however, the Turkish-

Israel alliance still represents a threat to Syrian-Turkish relations. Israel may have overflown Turkey to attack

what it claimed was a Syrian nuclear site in 2007. Ali Reza Askari, a retired Iranian revolutionary guard officialand Khatami Cabinet member was reputedly kidnapped by Israeli intelligence during a February 2007 stopover

in Istanbul and supposedly divulged information on the Syrian nuclear facility.

State Level:

In this category the state is taken as a cohesive unit or corporate actor viewed as having a collective identity and

“national interests.” Constructivist approaches hold that a state’s conception of its interests is not self-evidentfrom the material context and depends on its identity. Identity is constructed, not given, in a dual interaction,inside with constituents and the opposition and outside, between states in which the self-image is often

constructed against the “Other.” Enmity and amity are a function both of conflicts or cooperation over materialresources and territory and of this construction of identity. But if identity changes, so might perceptions of threat

or enmity from the other.



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According to Robins, Turkey’s identity is “uncertain,” its membership in both NATO and the Islamic

Conference Organization showing its foot in each world. Its identity is being contested in a dialectic between the“top hat,” the Kemalist establishment elite, and the “crescent,” the conservative, Islamic counter-elite, nowsharing power as an elected government with the establishment. Though Turkey has always seen itself as a

bridge, state, having good relations with all sides in actuality historically, it has been too linked to the West to perform this function. Ataturk enjoined his disciples to refrain from involvement in regional conflicts. But as

regards the Arabs, Kemalism was based on a break with the Ottoman/Islamic past, replaced with an ethno-linguistic nationalism, with pre-Islamic roots, meant to marginalize the Ottoman and Islamic identities Turksand Arabs had shared. The Arabs were associated with Islamic backwardness and were deemed to have stabbed

Turkey in the back during World War I, although in fact most Arabs, including Syrian Arabs, remained loyal tothe empire and only embraced Arabism after its collapse left no alternative. The aspiration to becomewesternized substituted for the lost Ottoman domains. As multinational empire gave way to nation-state

building, the Arabs and Turks sharply differentiated themselves from each other.

Robins admits that the AKP government has adopted a different stance towards the Middle East than itsmany more Kemalist predecessors, being willing to embrace a more Middle Eastern identity, through its corevalue of Islam, and invested more heavily in playing a role in the region. Its leading strategist, Professor Ahmet

Davutoglu, described the Middle East as 'an unavoidable hinterland' for Turkey. At the same time, however,Robins stresses how little Turkey is a part of the Middle East: different ethnically, more institutionallydeveloped and democratic, Europe its main trading partner. Europe is the domain of cooperation and the Middle

East of power politics; Turkey has been pulled in both directions, the realist security approach employed in theMiddle East, e.g. in its showdown with Syria and interventions in Iraq and the liberal multilateralist one in

Europe. Yet even this is changing since Turkey now has the ambition to export the practise of the zone of peace,to the Middle East. Syrian-Turkish relations have been affected by Turkey’s identity evolution. Syria was seenin Turkey as having sided in the Cold war with the Soviets, hence was a threat to Turkey. In the fifties it as asource of Arab nationalist and leftist radicalism and from the late eighties as a source of support for Kurdish

insurgency. There is also the fact that Turkey sees itself as a democracy and Syria is an authoritarian regime.As for Syria, its identity was reconstructed at the end of the Ottoman Empire but less as a separate state

than as part of a wider putative “Arab nation.” Syria has historically seen itself as a champion of Arab

nationalism, which was partly constructed against Turkey, although much more so against Israel and the West.Still, images of the Ottoman period as oppressive and backward, especially after the Cemal Pasha oppression of

Syrian Arab nationalists, were part of Syria’s nationalist discourse. Relations further deteriorated after theFrench conceded Alexandretta to Turkey (A&K). For Syria, its territorial integrity was violated, and a key

component of the Arab population that emigrated in consequence from Alexandretta were Alawis who, under the leadership of the Ba’th Party’s spiritual father, Zaki Arsuzi, put the issue on the party’s Arab nationalistagenda. In the Cold War, Syria saw Turkey as a gendarme of Western imperialism. Syria’s support for the PKK was partly owing to its depiction as an anti-imperialist national liberation movement that dovetailed with Syria’sself perception as an anti-imperialist state and its perception of Turkey as a surrogate of imperialism in the

region.Yet Alexandretta and the Turkish threat to Syria was overshadowed and displaced by the conflict with

Israel, first by the loss of the Palestinian part of southern Syria to the state of Israel, and subsequent border

conflicts over the demilitarized zones and then the loss of the Golan Heights. Syria’s identity as an Arabnationalist power was largely constructed around its mission to defend the Arab cause against Israel and Israel

became the main threat to national security. The need to recover the Golan and secure national rights for thePalestinians became the central goals of Syrian foreign policy, the main touchstones of the national interestwhich determined Syria’s relations with all other states.

Through the period of Hafiz al-Asad’s presidency, Syria saw itself besieged, engaged in a struggle for theMiddle East with Israel and the West, in which Machiavellian tactics were put in the service of a tenacious Arabnationalism. But Asad realized the Golan could not be recovered wholly by military means and accepted that a

diplomatic settlement with Israel was inevitable and that diplomacy was legitimate and pursed as long as Syriahad bargaining cards sufficient to make an honourable deal possible; among those cards were its patronage of the Palestine cause, Lebanon, and a capacity to pursue asymmetric warfare (mostly in south Lebanon) behind aformidable military deterrent and Soviet protection. However, with the end of the Cold war and the successionof Bashar al-Asad, Syria’s orientation began to alter: regional peace, integration into the Western-dominatedglobal economy, and a dilution of militant Arab nationalism were all on the agenda, only delayed by the US

invasion of Iraq and its accompanying targeting of Syria which, although meant to force Syria to abandon itsArab nationalist identity, only--temporarily perhaps--revived it.

As regards Syrian-Turkish relations, the evidence is powerful that there have been dramatic alterations in

perceptions of the other, in part due to behaviour changes but in part also due to alterations in self- identity. In a

visit to Damascus, PM Erdogan observed that he could not distinguish the Turkish and Syrian faces in hisaudience and referred to the Syrians as brothers. For Syria’s part, a watershed in perceptions of Turkey was its



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refusal to cooperate with the US in the invasion of Iraq. This showed Turkish interests need not be congruent

with those of the US and that Turkish and Syrian interests overlapped; for Syrian the image of Turkey wastransformed: it was no longer seen as an ally of imperialism and enemy of Arab nationalism (A&T). Syrianidentity alterations away from Arab nationalism toward a more Syria-centric identity has probably facilitated the

improvement of relations with Turkey, The Ottoman period is being reinterpreted in a positive light and TurkishTV dramas, dubbed in Arabic, are popular (Moubayed). That the Turkish regime under the AKP is both

moderate Islamic and secular makes it an appropriate partner for a Syrian regime compatible with its parallelsearch for a similar reconciliation of its historic secularism with moderate Islamic tendencies.

What is interesting is that Hatay/Alexandretta has ceased to be defined in an irredentist way comparable to

the Golan. To be sure, Bashar’s post-poning of returning the 2000 visit of Sezar was evidently because Turkeywas insisting on his acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the Alexandretta annexation, something that wouldhave been too politically embarrassing. Somehow, since then the issue has been finessed. Is it because a Syriaunder threat simply needed Turkey too much to let the issue stand in the way of warm relations? Is Israel

different than Turkey in regard to identity and enmity/amity? Turkey is, afterall, Muslim and the more itidentifies itself as both secular and Muslim, and no longer a imperialist outpost in the region, the more it is inaccord with the identity of Syrians and the Syrian regime, and the more the Arab-Turkish identity cleavage is

blurred.

Internal Politics Level

This level of analysis assumes that the state is not a unitary actor with a fixed national interest anddomestically undisputed foreign policy but rather that these are an outcome of conflicts between branches of the

bureaucracy and interests, within a political process shaped by institutions, with the foreign policy process aspecial elite-centred domain.

In Turkey, the permanent and elitist foreign policy establishment including the military, and the foreignministry with its institutional memory in foreign policy and security matters, has normally been more important

in the foreign policy process that elected politicians, who were more fragmented, if more representative of the pluralist nature of society. The permanent establishment has been traditionally opposed to involvement inregional conflicts, but its construction of the Kurdish issue as a matter of national security meant that the

military’s view of Syria was contingent on Syria’s role in abetting or containing this threat. Its stake in the armsrelationship with the US and Israel would be expected to make it unwilling to sacrifice these relations for the

sake of improved relations with Syria.It is clear that elected politicians have, nevertheless, made an important difference at key junctures in

foreign policy-making. Some have been more prepared to involve Turkey in conflicts with its Arab neighbours:it was Menderes in the 1950s that involved Turkey in enmity with Syria and Ozal who took it into conflict withIraq. The conservative Demirel-Yilmiz team presided over the showdown with Syria (O&J). In this case themilitary and Demirel were the hawks, with deputy PM Ecevit not wanting to make threats against Syria thatmight not be carried out if Syria called the bluff (A&O). On the other hand, the previous (1995-97) Islamist

Refah party governing coalition under Erbakan had wanted to develop relations with Arab-Islamic states, so thisgovernment had be removed by the military in a “post-modern” coup, to pave the way for the confrontation withSyria (and alliance with Israel). Thereafter, the foreign ministry wanted to solve the water issue but also get

Syria to accept a Declaration of Principles that would concede the legitimacy of borders (and Hatay’sannexation) while the military wanted to leave these issues aside and focus on security relations; it was pleased

enough with the outcome of the security agreement to accept normalization of relations with Syria (A&T). Thesubsequent Ecevit government presided over the first stage in improved relations as part of a policy of improving regional ties independent of the West (A&T). The AKP has since presided over the greatest warming

in relations.The parallel worsened relations with Israel reflect the declining power of the military, which had driven

the Israeli link, and the Islamic identity of the AKP which has been harshly critical of Israel’s treatment of the

Palestinians (Oktav). The Turkey-Israeli alliance is, to some extent, also a function of domestic politics, notsimply regional power relations. Robins says Turkey's establishment has tended to see Israel as a kindred pro-Western democracy, which, like Turkey, is also marginalized from the Middle East and identifies with Europe.However at the public level there is widespread sympathy for the Palestinians; the military dictated the alliancein a flouting of democracy, with the agreement signed when Turkey was between governments. Israel’sambassador was seen as the confident of the generals moving against the Erbakan government. Military ties are

institutionalized and involve a lot of money and collaboration in arms manufacture and there is significant trade between the two countries.

In explaining the move toward Turkish-Syrian amity, the threat from US policy in Iraq is important but

this threat does not only originate in objective external factors but as seen through the lens of changing Turkish

perceptions, where a nationalist tide brings together the left and the nationalist right with Islamists, is whichcriticism of the EU, anti-Americanism and third worldism merge. The permanent establishment and elected



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political leaders shared a perception of the dangers of the US military adventure in Iraq, and were both affronted

by American discourse offensive to national dignity, resulting in a unity that made it easier to resist pressurefrom Washington. A notable example of this was President Ahmet Necdet Sezer's visit to Syria against thethinly-veiled public dictat of the American ambassador (A&T). Against this, the Foreign Ministry insisted that

constructive engagement and persuasion were needed to achieve Western aims in the region and with Syria.Public opinion has mattered. In the period of conflict with Syria, PKK terrorism had produced rising

Turkish nationalism directed at Syria that legitimized the showdown in 1998; in the period of amity, rising anti-Americanism in Turkish opinion benefits Syria. Nevertheless, the Sezar visit to Syria, seen as a test case for relations with the US, split the attentive public with some not wanting to antagonize the West and others arguing

for solidarity with Muslim states under threat. A coalition of civil society organizations even visited Syria toshow solidarity (A&T)

As for Syria, the succession of Bashar al-Asad, representative of a generational change in leadership, wasan important factor in improved relations with Turkey. Bashar was more ready to put aside his father’s

Machiavellian style and his interest in integrating Syria into the world economy and aligning the country towardEurope was compatible with good relations with Turkey. But it appears there was no difference between hisviews and those of the Sunni “Old Guard” such as Vice President Khaddam, at the time of Syria’s movement

toward Amity with Turkey. Since Turkey’s stand against the Iraq war and in favour of the Palestinians, this has become congruent with public opinion. What is remarkable is that a Turkish alliance has been pursued at a timewhen the Turkey-Israeli alliance remains intact, a move hard to imagine at the height of Syria’s Arab

nationalism.

V. THEOREITCIAL CONCLUSIONS:

Light is thrown by our case on several theoretical issues1) Material and ideational drivers: What exactly is the relation between identity (and amity/enmity) andmaterial threat/interests in our case? Aras and Koni refer to Jutta Weldes argument that identity construction,

producing the “other” leads to enmity and insecurity; hence insecurity and identity are mutually constitutive.Thus, Turkey and Syria had, under the Ottoman, been a part of the same political community; their break inWWI led to the reconstruction of opposing identities, Kemalist secular Turkish nationalism and Arab

nationalism which caused them to mistrust each other, manifested, e.g. in mutual threats at the time of theEisenhower Doctrine

But this describes a closed circle of ideas feeding on each other and material threats/interests have to beincluded in the interaction: identities involving enmity arise from clashes of interests and threats’ in good part

issuing, ironically, from what the two states shared: borders, river water and a trans-state Kurdish identitycommunity. Episodes such as the Hatay/Alexandretta affair, and Turkey’s unilateral control of Euphrates water and Syria’s support for the KPP were real conflicts over material issues. These conflicts revived latent mistrustrooted in identity construction that lead each to expect the worst from the other, and to drive zero-sum

perceptions and Machiavellian power strategies that diplomacy was unable to overcome. At the systemic level,

these power strategies became manifest in the classic power balancing recognized by realists. Hence, Turkey’smove into alignment with Israel and Syria’s with Iran in a classic “checkerboard” balancing act, establishing akind of tense balance of power that sustained the status quo system inspite of the regional enmities it

institutionalized.What can brake such a vicious cycle? A unilateral reduction in threat by one side, Syria, albeit under threat

from the other, accompanied by tit for tat on the other side led to a sense of threat reduction. But a shift in thelocus of threat to other actors (US in Iraq) and a perception of shared interests in countering this threatreinforced this. A change of leadership and identity/role seemed to be crucial to accelerating and consolidating

what might otherwise have been a temporary adjustment in relations into a more permanent relation of amity; in both cases with leadership change, there was an alteration in the preferred normative modus operendi away fromrealist power approach toward accommodative strategies. The move toward amity enabled and was reinforced

by the growth of material interests such as multilateral cooperation over water and economic ties. Elite learning : Was there any sign of elite learning that could explain the re-alignment? Reading between

the lines, Syria must have learned the lesson of simultaneously confronting two more powerful enemies in itsnorth and south; the regime might have decided if it had to choose an enemy, obviously Israel, it would besensible to make friends with Turkey. As for Turkey, it appears it has periodically re-learned the lesson that,however much it may need the US, Washington is not a wholly reliable ally and is prepared to sacrifice

Turkey’s interests when it suits it; hence better to diversify alliances and proactively pursue conflict resolutionin its dangerous neighbourhood. And both states may have learned from the high costs of conflicts thatcooperation is more productive in dealing with trans-state issues areas, whether these be Kurds or water and that

both stood to gain from economic cooperation.

Core-periphery: As regards the issue of regional autonomy, the case shows clearly that, as Buzan andWeaver insist, the global power balance does not directly translate into predicable regional power



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configurations. Indeed, even when the hegemon attempts to translate its global power directly at the regional

level, its ability to prevail depends on how it is perceived regionally. The US abandonment of the role of regional stabilizer/off shore balancer to one of regionally destabilizing “creative destruction” turned benign intomalign hegemony from the regional point of view. Hegemonic stability theory and its offshoots, including

Hansen’s model of unipolarity, becomes inoperative once the hegemon becomes a de-stabilizer and itslegitimacy collapse leaves it only with material, mostly military power, with which to enforce its will. The case

shows that when pursuing unilateral policies damaging to allies and threatening to opponents, it cannot dictateto either and instead drives them together into (soft, and not so soft)—balancing against it. Turkey’s movementaway from Israel and toward Syria and Iran could also be seen as part of soft-balancing against the upsetting of

the regional balance as a result of the hegemon. Of course the failure of the US project in Iraq, owing toimperial overreach, and the division into “two Wests” as Europe opposed the most destabilizing aspects of US

policy in the region, were crucial in allowing Syria and Turkey enough room to manoeuvre and to defend their interests against the hegemon. Yet, their unwillingness to cooperate in the US invasion, by contrast to their

contrary behaviour in the US-Iraq war of 1990-91, contributed to the high costs and possible failure of the US project in Iraq and certainly to blunting US ambitions to use Iraq as a platform for generalizing its hegemony inthe region. Globalization theory would also predict a decline in autonomy, yet each state in this case pursued

autonomous policies in spite of their long-term movement toward integration into the world capitalist system.Curiously, the effect of globalization in this case seemed to be to improve the relations of these two regional

powers in that it was associated in both with a certain movement away from Machiavellian to accommodative

strategies congruent with the fact that both states aspired to move closer to Europe, the zone of peace. In someways they acted as regional middle powers are expected to do, but specifically combining joint soft balancing

(and not so soft as regards Syria) against the US project, with a joint pursuit of greater integration with adifferent global pole, Europe. US failures in Iraq, its inability to coerce Turkey and Syria to participate in this

project and the possibility of their alignment toward this separate global pole call into question depictions of theworld as unipolar. It may be unipolar at the purely military level, but the US lacks comparable dominance in

economic resources and soft power—the legitimacy necessary for hegemony.Questions for debate and research include: how far is the alliance a contingent adjustment to alterations in

threat and the balance of power and how far does it reflect changes in identity, hence enmity/amity; is the

alliance a temporary reaction to an anomaly in US behaviour that has passed with the Bush administration? Howfar have trans-state interdependencies moved from becoming issues of conflict to cooperation, e.g. has the water

issue really been solved and have economic relations generated any serious interdependencies compared to thetwo states’ relations with its other trading partners?; Will the future development of the Kurdish issue/threat and

of Iraq continue to bring the two states together?

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hinnebusch framework syria-turkey

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