For weeks now, Turkey has been threatening Syria with divorce. It gave it counsel and sent it warnings, and it addressed it with a tone that it knows Damascus would not accept. The statements of Recep Tayyip Erdogan have shown that the honeymoon is over. The participation of Ahmet Davutoglu in the meetings of the Arab ministers was a very clear message. But Turkey did not want to be at the vanguard. When the Arabs almost unanimously decide to punish the Syrian regime, all that is left for Turkey to do is set the date. What Davutoglu announced yesterday is no simple matter. It is a declaration of the end of the rare golden era in the two countries' relations. The honeymoon was long and it lasted for several years, but there were some doubts when Nuri al-Maliki returned to office. There were further doubts with the decision to oust Saad Hariri from office and overturn the majority in Lebanon. Then the final blow came when the Arab Spring reached the Syrian stop. Here, one must note that the man who announced the divorce proceedings was himself the engineer of the Turkish-Syrian spring. He is the man who entered President Bashar al-Assad's office forty-six times. A quick recap of the past years may help understand the significance of the measures announced by Davutoglu, and the magnitude of the collapse that has hit the relations between the two countries. In 1998, Turkey placed Syria under a difficult choice: Expel the leader of the PKK Abdullah Ocalan or face war. Damascus chose to expel Ocalan, but the Adana agreement did not go beyond security cooperation over counter-terrorism matters. Then the first message from Ankara came two years later. In June 2000, the Turkish President Ahmed Necdet Sezer attended the funeral of President Hafez al-Assad, and invited his son to visit Turkey despite the longstanding discord over disputed lands and conflicting policies between the two countries. Turkey's opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the fact that Turkey refrained from assisting the invasion made rapprochement between Damascus and Ankara easier. In 2004, Bashar al-Assad was the first Syrian President to visit Turkey since the independence. A year later, Turkey responded in kind when it refused to take part in the efforts to isolate Syria in the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Mutual need had paved the way for their honeymoon. Syria gave Turkey a passport to the Arab world, and Turkey gave Syria the opportunity to say that it is not the hostage of its relationship with Iran, and that it is capable of joining a Turkish-Syrian-Iranian triangle instead of the Saudi-Egyptian-Syrian one. Moreover, Turkey is a Muslim nation living under a secular constitution, and its NATO umbrella does not preclude it from having a realistic approach towards the region's issues. Their bilateral relations went a long way. The relations between Assad and Erdogan were warm, so much so that they were almost a source of concern for Ahmadinejad. In 2008, Turkey led indirect negotiations between Syria and Israel, which Erdogan said were almost successful were it not for the intransigence of Ehud Olmert. A year later, the Strategic Cooperation Council between Turkey and Syria was born. Dozens of mutual agreements were signed and visas were waived. In February, 2011, the two countries' prime ministers laid the foundation stone of the Friendship Dam on the Orontes River. With the eruption of the Arab Spring, Damascus felt that Anakara and Doha “have a program for rehabilitating Islamists and assisting them to seize power”. The two capitals felt that Damascus “did not want more than an umbrella to continue pursuing its pro-Iranian policy in the region”. The repression in Syria then represented an opportunity to announce separation on the road to eventual divorce. By hosting refugees from Syria, including the leader of the Free Syrian Army, Turkey sent out its first warning. And with the measures Davutoglu announced yesterday, a more severe warning has been sent, paving the way for a new phase. It is still early to say for sure how far Turkey will go in putting pressure on the Syrian regime or in taking part in regime change in Syria. This repositioning by Turkey also involves and indeed worries Iran. The battle over Syria sums up many wagers over the future of Syria and balances in the region. It is in this context that the “Russian resistance”, which will undergo severe tests in the upcoming weeks, can be understood. It is no simple matter for Davutoglu to announce that his country will punish the Syrian regime, and await the emergence of a legitimate government that is at peace with is people.
