Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Biography

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Syria policy was one of the most complex and contradictory of any actor in the conflict. Initially hoping Assad's fall would install a Sunni Muslim Brotherhood-aligned government friendly to Ankara, Turkey opened its borders to both refugees and fighters, allowing jihadists including ISIS recruits to transit into Syria in the conflict's early years. Turkey hosted, funded, and armed a range of rebel factions and provided the Idlib province sanctuary that allowed the opposition to survive Assad's reconquest of major cities. At the same time, Erdoğan was obsessed with preventing the establishment of a Kurdish autonomous zone on Turkey's southern border, viewing the Syrian Kurdish YPG as an extension of the PKK — the Turkish Kurdish militant group fighting inside Turkey. This dual objective — supporting Sunni rebels while destroying Kurdish forces — put Turkey in direct tension with the United States, which relied on Kurdish SDF fighters as its primary anti-ISIS ground force. Turkey launched multiple military operations inside Syria: Operation Euphrates Shield (2016–17), Olive Branch (2018), and Peace Spring (2019), targeting Kurdish positions and carving out Turkish-controlled buffer zones in northern Syria. Turkey's interventions prevented a definitive Kurdish autonomous state while prolonging the conflict and complicating every diplomatic initiative. By 2023, Erdoğan had reversed course on Assad, pursuing normalization with Damascus as he sought to arrange the repatriation of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey — a domestic political liability.

Key Battles