The Turkish government is re-examining its Syria policy after jihadist groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) are gaining control of different regions in war-torn country, analyst Seth Frantzman wrote in the Jerusalem Post on Saturday.
The areas Turkey controls in northern Syria have become home to extremists, including “Islamic State (ISIS) members and Al Qaeda types,” the analyst wrote, and officials are in Ankara are seeking to manage these groups.
Syrian jihadist group HTS – a merger between al-Nusra Front and several other groups – earlier this week took over the Kurdish-majority Afrin, a key town that was controlled by Turkish-backed groups in northwest Syria, U.S.-government funded Voice of America outlet reported.
The group also seized some 26 towns and villages to its southwest amid administrative infighting among the Ankara-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), which point to deep divisions among the group’s factions, VoA said.
The infighting between HTS and Syrian rebel groups reveals the extent of the nightmare Turkey has created for civilians in Syria, Frantzman wrote, and how the former civil rebellion has been transformed into proxy groups.
HTS moves in Syria “open up many opportunities,” Frantzman said, for the United States, who has been advocating for working with the group, as well as Moscow and Ankara.
The development “could help matters in Syria and reduce friction between Turkey-Russian forces, enabling Ankara to shift focus to areas in eastern Syria,” according to the analyst.
“The Assad regime wants the rebels side-lined and has been happy to see Ankara’s efforts to co-opt them to fight the Kurds,” according to Frantzman, who noted that Damascus has in the past worked with extremist groups, including “funnelling them to fight the US in Iraq from 2003 to 2011.”
Once an ally of Damascus, Turkey maintains an involvement in Syria’s civil war on the side of the opposition. The country has since 2016 launched four cross-border operations into northern Syria targeting Kurdish forces linked to an insurgency on its own soil and to prevent the formation of what it calls a terror corridor and controls swaths of territory in northern Syria with allied Syrian rebels.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last week hinted at the possibility of meeting Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad in the future, confirming Ankara’s tentative steps to restore ties with the neighbouring war-torn country despite backing rebel groups in the country’s civil war, Evrensel newspaper reported.
Ankara “apparently thinks HTS should now cement control of Afrin,” Frantzman wrote, noting that “for women and minorities, this means there is no chance for the former diversity of this region to return.”
Ahval