Turkey-Syria Relations

Between Enmity and Amity

Özlem Tür, Raymond Hinnebusch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409452812
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317005940
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In 1997 Turkey and Syria were on the brink of war, engaged in a very real power struggle. Turkey was aligned with Syria's main enemy, Israel, and there were seemingly intractable differences on the issues of borders, the sharing of river waters and trans-border communities. In less than a decade, relations were transformed from enmity to amity. Border issues and water sharing quarrels were moving towards amicable settlement and the two states' policies toward the Kurdish issue converging. Turkey undertook to mediate the Syrian-Israeli conflict and close political and economic relations were developing rapidly between the two states. Yet, with the Syrian Uprising, relations returned to enmity. What explains these remarkable changes? Given that Turkey and Syria are two pivotal states in the region, what are the implications of this changing relationship for the international politics of the Middle East, the balance of power and regional stability? In this internationally collaborative work, co-edited by Raymond Hinnebusch and Özlem Tür, British, Syrian and Turkish scholars address these questions and examine the various domestic and international drivers in this key regional relationship. They discuss what theories best help us understand these seismic realignments and explore the impact of economic interdependence, identity changes and power balances on the evolving relationship between these two key regional powers.

Chapter 1
Introduction: The Study of Turkey-Syria Relations

Raymond Hinnebusch

The dramatic recent changes in relations between Syria and Turkey constitute a fairly exceptional phenomenon. In less than a decade the two states went from the brink of war, engaged in a very ‘realist’ power struggle in the late nineties, to amity, even alliance in the 2005–10 period, and then, after 2011, regressed again to enmity. These changes arguably had significant consequences for the region’s stability and for the ambitions of various actors, including those of the US hegemon in the region. We seek to describe and explain these changes and their consequences for the regional system.

As an arguably important and unusual case, Syria-Turkey relations can contribute to the literature on foreign policy change and on alignments; on the conditions for movement from conflict to cooperation; and on regionalism in an era of globalization, all major concerns of IR theory. The case can throw light on major debates in IR theory between rival schools such as realism, liberalism and constructivism on issues such as the relationship between material and ideational factors and on the relative weight of systemic and domestic factors as determinants of foreign policy and alignment change. This introductory chapter identifies and conceptualizes the phenomenon we seek to understand, the Syrian-Turkish relationship, breaking it down into its distinct phases, trying to locate it on a conflict-cooperation continuum and examining rival explanations of change in the relationship. Finally, it summarizes the organization of the book.

Describing the Change in Turkey-Syria Relations

Phases and Watersheds in the Changing Relationship

How can we conceptualize and also measure change in the Turkey-Syria relation? In conceptualizing the relationship, it is first necessary to disaggregate the ‘variable’ we seek to understand into several distinguishable, even if overlapping, phases, that ought to be separately explained: 1) the deterioration of relations leading to near war (mid-80s to 1998); 2) the gradual normalization of relations (1998–2003), accelerating into a movement toward amity and alliance (2003 to 2010); 3) regression toward enmity over the Uprising in Syria starting in March 2011. Categorization and explanations for one phase would not be adequate to understand others.

The First Deterioration of Relations: In this phase there was a steady deterioration of relations over water sharing and Syrian support for the PKK (Partia Karkeren Kurdistan – Kurdistan Workers’ Party), with repeated failures of diplomacy to resolve the issue, culminating in the decision of Turkey to threaten war. Watersheds include the agreement of July 1987 during the visit of Prime Minister Özal to Syria that Turkey would guarantee release of half the average flow of Euphrates water in return for a security protocol on terrorism; the 1990 Turkish diversion of Euphrates water to fill the Atatürk Dam; the 1993 visit of President Demirel to Syria when he confronted Asad over PKK leader Öcalan’s continuing use of Syrian refuge to direct terrorism against Turkey; the 1996 movement of Turkey into alignment with Israel against Syria; the 1998 showdown when Ankara massed 10,000 troops on Syria’s border; Syria’s submission to Turkey’s threats leading it to expel Öcalan; and the 1998 Adana security accord. Various aspects of this phase are treated in the existing literature, including work on the water dispute by Daoudy (2009) and by Kibaroğlu and Ünver (2000); on the Kurds by James and Özdamar (2009) and Olsen (2000); and on the dynamics of the crisis, by Aykan (1999), Alantar (2001), Sezgin (2002) and Aras and Köni (2002).

From Normalization of Relations to Amity: While relations might have remained tense or cold in the aftermath of the crisis, Turkey took the opportunity to normalize relations and Syria, despite its humiliating climb-down, responded positively. The Adana Accord set up a direct telephone line and provided for regular meetings of a joint security committee. The security agreement proved successful and the 2000 attendance of Turkey’s President Sezer at the funeral of Hafiz al-Asad consolidated the normalization of relations. Beginning in the early 2000s, the two states went beyond simple normalization, toward amity, even alliance. A major turning point in this was the similar opposition of the two states to the approaching Iraq war and its outcome, the destruction of Iraq’s central government. In 2004 Bashar al-Asad made a historic visit to Turkey and declared that the creation of a Kurdish state in Iraq would cross a ‘red line’ for Syria and Turkey. In 2004 Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan refused an invitation to visit Israel from Prime Minister Sharon, owing to Israel’s repressive policies in Palestine, and visited Syria instead. For Syria, the most pivotal moment was President Sezer’s visit to Damascus in April 2005 at the time of US/French pressure on Turkey to isolate Syria over the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. A major innovation was the Turkish mediation of indirect Syrian-Israel peace talks in 2008. The same year, meetings of the ‘Trilateral Front’ composed of the Syrian, Iranian, and Turkish leaders manifested their common interest in preventing the fragmentation of Iraq. In 2009, Turkey’s relations with Israel, already strained over Israeli support for Iraq’s Kurds and its treatment of the Palestinians, and by Turkey’s attempt to legitimate and bring Hamas out of international isolation, further declined, symbolized by Erdoğan’s walking out of a public appearance with Israeli president Shimon Peres during the Gaza war; then the ‘flotilla’ incident of 2010 seemed to end any remnant of a Turkey-Israeli alignment. In 2009 Turkey and Syria launched their first joint military exercise; for Syria, this sent a political message to Washington and Israel while Turkey saw it as contributing to the security of its borders. This phase is treated in existing literature, particularly by Altunışık and Tür (2006); Aras (2005); and Aras and Polat (2008).

Back to Enmity? The Syrian Uprising of 2011 interrupted the deepening of the relationship and introduced severe strains into it. In the initial period of turmoil, Turkish leaders urged the Syrian president to respond with political reform, rather than repression; when this advice was not taken, the tone from Ankara became more hectoring, with hints Turkey might intervene, especially as it had to host refugees from the fighting and as Turkish public opinion was inflamed against the Syrian regime; in response, the tone from Syria became more resentful. Turkey’s hosting of conferences of the Syrian opposition; then of defectors from the Syrian army who had constituted themselves as an anti-Damascus armed force; followed by its collaboration with the Arab League in trying to get a UN resolution against Syria, and in June 2012, Syria’s downing of a Turkish warplane, were signposts in an escalation of animosity between the two regimes. In parallel, co-operative practices over trade and water suffered, with cross-border trade drying up. The relationship had gone full circle to the bad old days of the mid-1990s.

Conceptualizing and Measuring the Relationship

In order to measure change in the relationship, it is useful to locate it on a continuum stretching from high levels of conflict to high levels of cooperation. While the descent into conflict in the 1990s and again after 2011 seems self-evident, it is a matter of some dispute how deep the change from enmity to amity in the middle 2000s ever actually was.

The most minimal change, moving away from the conflict pole, is evident in the fact that the two states that had power balanced against each other in the 1990s ceased, as a result of a rapprochement and normalization of relations at the end of the decade, to see each other as a threat. The change in relations, however, arguably went further since the two states not only ceased to balance against each other but also aligned together against shared threats from US policy in the region in the mid-2000s. Realists might interpret this as a temporary tactical adjustment to a shift in the location of threat, a behaviour very familiar to students of MENA regional politics; Aras (2005) and Altunışık and Tür (2006) had suggested that if the shared threat from the US in Iraq evaporated, the relation could prove fragile—as eventually it did. A number of analysts (Sever 2007, Aras 2005) also hypothesized that the improved relation would not survive a concerted anti-Syrian convergence by both the US and the EU, relations far too important for Turkey to sacrifice or even damage for the sake of that with Syria; however, the willingness of Turkey to deepen the relation even after such a Western convergence against Syria had started around 2005 over its role in Lebanon, suggests that Turkey’s relation with Syria was more than a temporary tactical alignment. Indeed, additionally, there was a perceptible move, within a mere half-decade, from relations that had ranged between cool and hostile for a half century toward marked amity; while previously the two states had each constructed their identities partly in opposition to the other, now their identities apparently ceased to be mutually exclusive; this change, evident in the mid-2000s, was accompanied by a movement from conflict to cooperation over key issues that defined their relationship, including water and trade, kick-starting, as a result, growing interdependencies at the trans-state level. This change in relations, apparently both deeper and more durable than a temporary re-alignment, arguably constituted a great leap forward on the continuum from conflict to cooperation.

The further the move along the continuum, the more it is likely to be paralleled by wider changes in the whole foreign policy orientation of the states involved, not just a change in their allies but also in their modes of operation, captured by Holsti’s (1982) concept of foreign policy re-structuring (see also Hermann 1990). In Turkey’s case, alignment with Syria was a break both with its long-standing West-centric deference to the US and with its traditional realist ‘hard power’ balancing against threats in MENA; instead, relations with Syria became the showcase of a new policy of using soft power and constructing interdependencies to create ‘zero problems’ with neighbours and even aiming at regional leadership; in Syria’s case, the relationship was accompanied by a foregoing of irredentist claims (over Iskanderun/Hatay) and abandonment of its traditional Machiavellian modus operandi, namely its practice of using bargaining ‘cards’ such as support for the PKK insurgency in Turkey to get leverage over Turkey regarding Euphrates water.

Finally, at the furthest end of the continuum would be located an incorporation of the two states into a ‘security community’ based on treaties and institutions in which war between the two becomes unthinkable, an aspiration articulated especially by Turkish leaders in parallel to growing trans-state interdependence but which, if it was ever actually likely, was aborted by the Syrian Uprising beginning in March 2011. The subsequent sharp deterioration in relations between the two states underscored the vulnerability of a relationship that had been elite driven, developing in the first place at the government-to-government level and then at the business level, in spite of the differences in the political systems of the two states. The latter would arguably preclude the possibility of a security community, which is said to result from a deep normative convergence in political values and practice, as notable in the case of the EU. For this reason, Oktav (Ch. 15, this volume) characterizes the relationship as a ‘quasi-alliance’, non-institutionalized, hence not a stable one based on collective security or shared values.

Given the move in the relationship from conflict and power balancing practices to something well beyond mere normalization and toward amity and practices of liberal interdependence, but also the rapid breakdown of good relations after only a decade, we will use the term re-alignment as a shorthand for the ups and downs in the relationship, keeping in mind that it involved at times more conflict and at other times more cooperation than this term suggests.

Approaches to Explaining Syria-Turkey Relations

What factors drive alignment change, and specifically the alteration of relations between enmity and amity? Three factors appear relevant: regional relations with neighbours, the impact of the global system on regional alignments, and the internal policy process. At each level, alternative theories, such as realism, liberalism, constructivism and foreign policy analysis offer different explanations. The Syria-Turkish case is relevant to three issues in the theoretical debates between these theories: 1) at the regional level, to what degree re-alignments are driven by material interests or by identity; 2) how far regional re-alignments are shaped by the global power balance and periphery dependencies on the core or by regional factors; and 3) at the internal level, the relative degree of state agency or autonomy, and hence the importance of the interests of domestic actors as opposed to external systemic constraints, in shaping alignments.

Regional Level: Material and Ideational Factors:

Realism and liberalism both see material interests as driving conflict and alignment, but while realism expects neighbouring states in particular to see the other as threats, liberalism sees a potential for cooperation from shared interdependencies. Constructivism argues that identity matters in the construction of threats, enmity and amity, hence whether neighbours are seen as threats or appropriate alliance partners.

For realism, conflict and alignments are explained by the insecurity of an anarchic system, inducing power balancing against threats via military build-up, alliances, a search for spheres of influence and even bids for hegemony. The main variable is threat, arising chiefly from conflicts of interest, notably over territory, but also from proximity and power imbalances. The distribution of power shapes the vulnerabilities, constraints, and opportunities states face as they struggle over conflicting national interests; thus, more powerful states (Turkey) are more likely to follow assertive policies and weaker ones (Syria) to be on the defensive, but also to attempt to remedy the imbalance. Alignments are a major way of altering the power balance and states sharing threat perceptions are likely to ally against the perceived threat, for example, the Syria-Iran alliance against the Turkey-Israeli one in the 1990s. Alternatively, states perceiving a threat from a more powerful neighbour may choose to bandwagon with (appease) it. The main explanation for re-alignments in this tradition is a change in the location or level of threat. Security, for realists, results when regional alignments produce a balance of power constraining stronger states.

Liberalism sees interdependencies between states as constituting shared interests that would be facilitated by cooperation, thus giving greater durability to alignments than mere balancing against common threats—which may rapidly alter. However, interdependencies also produce mutual vulnerabilities, hence possible conflict. Since interdependence is usually asymmetrical some actors are more vulnerable to pressure and the least vulnerable can acquire power leverage over the more vulnerable (Keohane and Nye 1976). The main issues that generated enmity/conflict in Turkey-Syrian relations are at the transnational level where the severance of the two states upon the breakup of the Ottoman Empire disrupted economic ties, cut across river flows and divided territory and ethnic communities (with Kurds left on both sides of the borders and Arabs in Alexandretta ceded to Turkey). From the viewpoint of liberalism, the post-2000 political level alignment of the two states improved prospects that the growth of shared trans-state interests and interdependencies resulting from trade, water-sharing, and tourism could move the relationship beyond a mere temporary realignment toward a security community; this objective was, indeed, explicitly invoked by the two leaderships in the late 2000s—to the scepticism of ‘realists’ in the security establishments of both states.

Constructivism argues against realism that neither threat nor appropriate alignments are a wholly self-evident matter of material power balances and interests but rather are interpreted through the lens of identity (Barnett 1998); similarly, whether interdependencies are seen as vulnerabilities, hence threats from/leverage over the other or as opportunities for mutual benefit via cooperation, depends on ideational factors. Identities are constructed, not given, in a dual interaction, internally with constituents and externally among states. A state’s self-image, often constructed against the ‘Other,’ determines its perceptions of enmity and amity, hence appropriate allies. Just how identity is constructed both affects and is affected by conflicts or cooperation over material resources and territory between contiguous states. If identity changes, so do perceptions of mutual amity or enmity. In our case, while Altunışık and Tür (2006) assessed the relations of the two states as threat driven zero-sum conflict over material issues (territory, security, water), they also underlined that threats were interpreted through the lens of historic memory and identity, which in turn were the outcome of domestic debates and as these changed so did policies. Aras and Köni (2002) went further, arguing that realism cannot explain the period of conflictual relations between Turkey and Syria which was, rather, the result of constructed images of enmity used by elites to legitimize their rule within. From a constructivist perspective, the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) redefinition of Turkey’s identity reshaped its conception of Turkey’s interests and threats and made Syria a possible ally.

So what does the evidence suggest produced the dramatic improvement in the two states’ mutual perceptions during the 2000s? Realists would point to a change in threat, most obviously Syria’s 1998 submission to Turkish demands to cease support for the PKK and without this it is hard to imagine a move toward good relations. Yet the reduction in mutual threat after 1998 did not require the subsequent move toward amity; why did Turkey and Syria not only cease to see each other as enemies but also come to see 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 changed threat and interests. Here, as liberalism might anticipate, amity also encouraged cooperative interdependencies that were expected to blur identity—and territorial—demarcations between the states. It is evident, of course, that neither identity alterations nor the development of trans-state interests was enough to prevent the rapid deterioration of Turkey-Syria relations in 2011; for realists, this was to be expected since alignments are subject to the changing balance of threat. Certainly, in Syria’s case, the new enmity to Turkey was driven by a renewed sense of threat from Ankara; but a much weakened Syria did not seem to present a threat to Turkey which sacrificed security cooperation against the PKK and business interests in moving toward enmity with Damascus; was this a function of identity—of Turkey’s democratic self-mage or of a Sunni Islamist identity in the ruling coalition? Our contributors will address these issues.

Core-periphery Relations

The case, involving as it does, interaction between the global and regional levels, allows us to test arguments about core and periphery. Dependency theory, neo-realism and globalization theories all tend to assume the dominance of the global level, the ‘core’ and the great powers over ‘periphery’ states, and to explain changes in alignments at the regional level as reflections of the global system, either changes in polarity or in the dependency of the periphery. From a realist perspective, in the bi-polar Cold War, Turkey and Syria were on opposite sides; hence their relations were naturally hostile. Would the global transformation to unipolarity transform their relations?

Berthe Hansen (2000) argued that the post-Cold war transformation was directly reflected at the Middle East regional level: with declining regional autonomy, bandwagoning with the American global hegemon became the normal behaviour in a unipolar world. By contrast, scholars such as Buzan and Waever (2003) see regions as having considerable autonomy and their alignments as chiefly driven by re...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: The Study of Turkey-Syria Relations
• 2 Ripeness Theory and Coercive Diplomacy as a Road to Conflict Resolution: The Case of the Turkey-Syria Showdown in 1998
• 3 Syrian-Turkish Relations: Geopolitical Explanations for the Move from Conflict to Co-operation
• 4 Turkey’s Cold War Alliance: Nation-building and the Utility of the 1957 Syrian Crisis
• 5 Paradise Lost: A Neoclassical Realist Analysis of Turkish Foreign Policy and the Case of Turkish-Syrian Relations
• 6 ‘Milking the Male Goat’ and Syrian-Turkish Relations
• 7 ‘Victory of Friendship’?: Asad, Erdoğan and Football Diplomacy in Aleppo
• 8 As Seen From Damascus: the Transformation in Syrian-Turkish Relations
• 9 The Importance of the Unimportant: Understanding Syrian Policies towards Hatay, 1939–2012
• 10 Ethnicity, Religion and Foreign Policy: Turkish-Syrian Relations since the 1980s
• 11 Back to Conflict? The Securitization of Water in Syrian-Turkish Relations
• 12 Turkey-Syria Water Relations: Institutional Development and Political Confrontations in the Euphrates and Tigris Region
• 13 The Political Economy of Turkish-Syrian Relations in the 2000s – The Rise and Fall of Trade, Investment and Integration
• 14 Explaining the Transformation of Turkish-Syrian Relations: A Regionalist Approach
• 15 The Syrian Uprising and the Iran-Turkey-Syria Quasi Alliance: A View from Turkey
• 16 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index