Vali Nasr
Foreign Policy / December 10, 2024
Ankara will seek to fill the regional power vacuum left by the fall of Tehran’s most valuable client.
The cataclysmic events of the last few weeks in Lebanon and Syria—from Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah to the fall of the Assad regime—have opened a new chapter for the Middle East. The hope may be that the collapse of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance in the Levant augurs a period of peace and stability in the region. The more likely outcome, however, is an intensification of regional competition to fill the vacuum left by the diminishment of Iran and its allies. The collapse of Hezbollah changed the balance of power between Iran and Israel, and the fall of Bashar al-Assad has further weakened Iran. But the broader consequence is a change in the balance of power between Turkey and everyone else.
The quick end of the Assad regime is a watershed moment for Syria. It marks the liberation of a long-suffering country from 54 years of family rule marked by depravity and brutality, never more cruelly than over the past 14 years of near-constant war. It is also a humiliating defeat for Iran and Russia, which propped up Assad; Russia may lose the military bases it has used as a springboard to Africa, while Iran loses Syria as its land bridge to Lebanon.
The euphoric celebration of Assad’s demise and Iran’s defeat does not tell the whole story. The 12-day blitzkrieg that concluded with the Syrian rebels’ capture of Damascus can also be viewed as a deft power play by Turkey. Ankara has been the main patron of the principal anti-Assad force, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, or HTS), and in large measure accounts for the group’s battlefield successes. Turkey has expressed surprise at the speed at which the Assad regime collapsed, but the outcome was intended. It is a clear display of Turkey’s ability to project power through HTS and its allied forces, with Turkey supplanting Russia and Iran as the dominant outside power in Syria.
In time, Turkey’s gains in Syria could also extend the former’s influence into Lebanon and Iraq, especially as Iran’s position in these two countries weakens with the loss of Syria. This reality changes the regional balance of power in important ways. For one, it is a massive setback for Iran. But equally—if not more importantly—Turkish gains have implications for other regional actors. All of them will likely calibrate their policies in reaction to the new reality.
For Iran, the loss of Syria is a serious blow to its prestige and regional strategy. It weakens its hand in confronting the United States and Israel. But as reactions by observers across the Iranian political spectrum to the fall of Assad show, Turkish gains in Syria are an urgent concern. Iran views Turkey as a regional rival challenging its spheres of influence in the Middle East and Caucasus, where they have long competed for influence. With Turkey’s strong support for Azerbaijan, including its lightning strike to win back the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave from Armenia in September 2023, Iran effectively lost that competition. If Turkey, emboldened by the outcome in Syria, now lends support to Azerbaijan to assert control over the Zangezur corridor trade route that will connect Azerbaijan and Armenia to Turkey, Iran will be completely cut out of the Caucasus. To Iran, this could look like a reconstitution of the Ottoman Empire’s hold over the Caucasus and Levant that Iran grappled with between the 16th and 20th centuries.
Ironically, Iran’s primary adversary, Israel, also has reasons to be concerned with the turn of events in Syria. Israel’s celebration for all but ending Iran’s presence in the Levant will be cut short by the challenges inherent in facing a Turkish sphere of influence there. An ascendant HTS-led government, once it consolidates power in Syria, will reject Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and will likely not remain neutral on the plight of the Palestinians. Its Sunni Arab links with Palestinians are more organic than those of Iran and Hezbollah. The menace on Israel’s borders could now lie in the new political order in Damascus, backed by Ankara.
For Arab states—from Egypt and Jordan to those in the Persian Gulf—HTS’ triumph in Syria looks like a dangerous echo of the Arab Spring, which they thought they had defeated. Those uprisings challenged authoritarianism in the Arab world with calls for democracy and good government. They were quickly championed by Islamist parties, some accepting democracy and some aiming for rigid Islamic states. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan embraced the Arab uprisings, seeing a future for the Arab world that reflected his own vision of Muslim democracy. In return, many Islamist parties embraced Turkey as their inspiration and source of support.
Arab states fought hard to crush Islamist movements in their countries, and that arrayed those states against Turkey. In the end, the Arab states won. Nowhere were the stakes higher for Turkey than in Syria. It actively supported a part of the opposition, which included Islamist factions, and welcomed millions of refugees fleeing the civil war. In that fight, it was Russia and Iran that frustrated Turkey’s efforts to depose Assad. Viewing Assad as Iran’s client, Arab states turned their back on him, but his survival nevertheless fit well with their goal to prevent any ascendancy of Islamism. More recently, they took steps to rebuild ties with Assad and welcome Syria back into the Arab fold.
Now, roughly 14 years after the start of the Syrian uprising, Turkey has finally won its battle to topple Assad and insert itself into Syria. Worryingly for Arab states, this victory is a belated chapter of the Arab Spring, in the form of a resurrection of Islamism as a political force in control of a vital Arab state.
A rise in the fortunes of one regional power will inevitably invite a realignment—and then strategies to contain and reverse it. Those efforts will have to exploit fissures within Syria. HTS controls the Syrian government and the all-important north-south corridor from Aleppo to Damascus, but its hold over the rest of the country is far from assured. There are other Islamist and nationalist forces that operate in Syria, as well as Kurdish forces that control the country’s northeast. Those forces may have their own reasons to challenge the new order in Damascus, and their efforts will be more potent if they find support from external actors willing to back their cause.
The best outcome for Syria after years of suffering is a strong and stable state that focuses on rebuilding the war-ravaged country. However, if Syria becomes entangled in the vortex of regional rivalry, then it may be looking at a future not unlike that of Libya, where competition among outside powers has fractured the country and prolonged its suffering.
Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri professor of Middle East studies and international affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies; he served in the U.S. State Department from 2009 to 2011 and is the author of The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat
