Discussion: "Türkiye’s Renewed Middle Eastern Ambitions: End Goals and Constraints"

On January 13, 2025, our Institute hosted a discussion on "Türkiye’s Renewed Middle Eastern Ambitions: End Goals and Constraints" by Professor Soli Özel, with AUB Political Science Professor Hilal Khashan as a discussant. 

With the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, Turkish President Erdogan was presented with a golden opportunity to assert himself as one of the main power brokers in the region, amid a significant rise of Israel to quasi hegemony and a series of setbacks to Iran. The discussion aimed to address this and other limitations of Erdogan’s ambitions in the region.

Özel argued that Türkiye’s foreign policy towards Syria has seen a transition; from former PM Ahmad Davutoglu’s ‘zero-problem’ foreign policy aiming to open new markets to Türkiye’s business constituency; to the ideological “Islamist”-oriented foreign policy with the Arab Spring, as Turkey sought to become the dominant Sunni power in the region. After 2021, Ankara adopted a pragmatic approach in its foreign policy aiming to balance between the West and Russia. However, the main challenge for Türkiye in its foreign policy is the Kurdish issue. Özel does not foresee a major Turkish-Israeli clash in Syria, and Erdogan would have to wait for the new Trump administration to see how the US will react to the Kurdish issue, assuming that Washington may broker a deal between Damascus and Ankara and the Kurdish leadership in north eastern Syria. 
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At the same time, Özel highlighted another challenge for Türkiye, that of Syria’s reconstruction. He mentioned that one of the motives behind Türkiye’s normalization with the Gulf countries was to facilitate the flow of Arab Gulf investments in Syria’s post-war reconstruction efforts. This is why the new Syrian administration visited Saudi Arabia first, in order to provide further political legitimacy to Damascus. However, there are concerns as some Arab countries did not view the change in Syria positively. Finally, Özel mentioned that US-Turkey relations are important as US needs Türkiye, a NATO member, in Africa, Central Asia and other regions because Ankara has the advantage of geography due to its strategic location.

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