Erdoğan towards the end of his Syria adventure: who will pay the bill?

“We want peace with Syria,” President Tayyip Erdoğan told journalists on his return from the NATO Summit on July 12.
Was Türkiye at war with Syria? Yes and no.
No, because the armies of the two neighbors did not fight a war, there was no declaration of it.
Yes, because with the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, the goal of Tayyip Erdoğan – then prime minister, now president – was to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad until recently.
To this end, a war of proxies was waged.
Syria had done this before. They never accepted the annexation of Hatay province to Türkiye though the plebiscite of 1938. They supported armed outlawed groups like the PKK in Türkiye, trying to justify it with the retaliation the alleged support the Muslim Brotherhood has been receiving in from Türkiye.
Therefore, Erdoğan’s words “We want peace” have a point.
On the other hand, the history of war and politics shows that when there is a conflict, the side that wants peace is usually the side that has not achieved its goals.
The two conditions he told those on the plane for peace with Syria seem to be two of Erdoğan’s regrets: the growing Syrian refugees and PKK problems.
The events in Kayseri alone show that it is time to close the Syria chapter.

Who will pay the Syria bill?

Türkiye under Erdoğan’s leadership has failed to fully achieve its goals in its Syria policy since 2011.
Syria has been shattered, almost half a million people have been killed by the warring sides, millions have fled the country, cities have been devastated, but Assad continues to sit in his seat.
Of those millions of refugees, 5 million (according to official figures) are now living arrived in Türkiye. Today, the economic crisis is the second biggest problem for Erdoğan and his AK Party.
The role of Syrian politics in the economic crisis is not talked about much. However, according to Erdoğan, the money spent on refugees alone is 40 billion dollars.
The AK Party government’s dialog with the PKK through Abdullah Öcalan has given way to renewed conflict, and with the US cooperating with the PKK’s Syrian derivative PYD against ISIS, a US-sponsored PKK-led Kurdish pseudo-state formation has been established along the border.
Turkish citizens are paying the price for the Erdoğan-Davutoğlu team’s underestimation of Russia (and Iran) at the beginning of the civil war and their over-reliance on the US – although US did not give a full promise for that.
Erdoğan now wants peace with Syria, but who will pay the bill for these 13 lost years?

Traffic accelerated by Russia

I think the starting point for the recent increase in the traffic for re-engagement with Syria can be taken as the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, on June 11 who was in Russia for the BRICS meetings.
Fidan has been the head of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) for 12 years of Turkey’s 13-year Syria adventure, one of the closest figures to Erdoğan in policy-making and implementation mechanisms, and now the Foreign Minister.
Simultaneously with this meeting, reports emerged that Turkish and Syrian state – possibly intelligence – officials met in the Russian sector at the Hmeymim airbase in Syria. Then Putin’s Special Envoy for Syria Aleksandr Lavrentyev met with Assad in Damascus.
This was followed by Assad’s statement “I will meet with Erdoğan if he withdraws Turkish troops” and Erdoğan’s statement “We can meet”, replacing “murderer” with “Mr.” to call Assad, a term he has been using for years. In the meantime, Turkey realized that it could not withdraw its troops as long as the PKK threat continued on the other side of the border. After Erdoğan’s meeting with Putin in Astana on July 3, Erdoğan stated that “If Assad takes a step, we will be invited together with Putin” and Erdoğan instructed Fidan to seek contact with Assad.

Pre-2011 conditions?

Meanwhile, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein announced his readiness to bring together Erdoğan and Assad in Baghdad.

Syira, for the first time so clearly in a written statement, said that the restoration of relations with Turkey should return to the “pre-2011” conditions.
In pre-2011 conditions, there were no Turkish troops on Syrian soil, but there was also no US-sponsored Kurdish pseudo-state formation.
Before 2011, there were no millions of Syrians in Turkey.
Erdoğan told the journalist he invited on board the Presidential plane that the Syrian refugees in Turkey should be guaranteed the right to life, housing and property. Of course, he must have calculated that Assad could say “except for those who shoot at me” in return.
If Erdoğan and Assad meet, it is certain that not everything will be rosy all of a sudden.
Erdoğan is probably hoping that Donald Trump will come to power in the November elections in the US, and that by reaching an agreement with Syria and Russia, the US will stop stop supporting the PKK derivatives in Syria.
“Bu pilav daha çok su kaldırır” we say in Turkish, with fish translation “This pilaf will take a lot more water”, meaning we can expect a lot more to happen. To deal with the burden of 13 years is not easy. Also, there is a Russian proverb says “Skolko raz ni govori halva, vo rtu slashche ne stanet – Saying halva does not sweeten your mouth”.

Losing the bird in the hand

There is one more important detail; it is not clear at the moment whether it will be on the agenda or not, but this does not negate its existence.
The US is helping the PKK, Israel is sympathetic to the PKK, Iran tries to use it whenever it wants, but there is only one state that proposes a federation (including a Kurdish federation) as a solution in Syria, and that is the Russian Federation. The written statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry dated September 27, 2017 is the archives.
In Iraq, the Kurdish federation came with the 2007 Constitution after the 2003 US invasion. Could it also come to Syria with a new post-war constitution? Why not?
It is possible that Erdoğan feels standing at the threshold of losing the bird in the hand while going after the two in the bush; he is in search of a sustainable exit.
The Turkish President is preparing to leave behind 13 years of Syria policy and move on thinking that it’s never too late to mend. But the initial question remains unanswered: who will pay the bill?