Why Türkiye is So Influential in Post-Assad Syria

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, left, sits with Ahmad Al-Sharaa during their meeting in Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024. (AP file photo)

Asharq Al Awsat

07:10-20 January 2025 AD ـ 21 Rajab 1446 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

07:10-20 January 2025 AD ـ 21 Rajab 1446 AH

Why Türkiye is So Influential in Post-Assad Syria

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, left, sits with Ahmad Al-Sharaa during their meeting in Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024. (AP file photo)

Türkiye has emerged as one of the most influential power brokers in Syria after the opposition factions toppled Bashar al-Assad last month, ending his family's brutal five-decade rule.
NATO member Türkiye is now in a position to influence its neighbor's future diplomatically, economically and militarily.
Here are details of Türkiye's connections with Syria and how it hopes to use its influence there.
WHY IS TURKIYE IMPORTANT?
Türkiye, which shares a 911 km (566-mile) border with Syria, was the main backer of the opposition groups fighting under the banner of the Syrian National Army during the 13-year uprising against Assad. It cut diplomatic ties with Damascus in 2012.
It is the biggest host of Syrians who fled the civil war, taking in some 3 million people, and is the main entry-point for aid.
Since 2016, Türkiye, with its Syrian allies, has mounted several cross-border military campaigns against Kurdish militants based in Syria's northeast that it sees as a threat to its national security.
Syria's new administration, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is friendly towards Ankara.
WHAT DOES TURKIYE WANT?
With its strong ties to Syria's new leadership, Türkiye stands to benefit from intensified trade and cooperation in areas including reconstruction, energy and defense.
Assad's fall has presented Ankara with a window of opportunity to try to end the presence of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) along its borders.
Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is deemed a terrorist group by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union.
The YPG militia spearheads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, which is the United States' main local partner in the fight against Islamic State and controls swathes of territory in the northeast.
Washington's longtime support of the Kurdish factions has been a source of tension with Ankara, but Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has said he believes incoming US president Donald Trump will take a different approach.
Trump has not said publicly what his plans might be but has said that he thinks "Türkiye is going to hold the key to Syria."
Syria's de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who heads HTS, has said he does not want Syria becoming a platform for the PKK to launch attacks against Türkiye.
As the opposition factions led by Sharaa took control of Damascus last month, fighting flared between Turkish-backed and Kurdish-led forces in the northeast.
The SDF has shown flexibility regarding some of Türkiye’s demands, telling Reuters last month that its foreign fighters, including PKK members, would leave Syria if Ankara agrees to a ceasefire.
Intensive talks are underway to try to resolve the conflict in the region.
WHAT HAS TURKIYE SAID AND DONE?
Türkiye’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, was in Damascus days after Assad was ousted, and its top diplomat, Fidan, was the first foreign minister to visit. Türkiye was also the first nation to reopen its embassy.
Fidan has said that Türkiye is proud to have been "on the right side of history" in Syria but has no desire to "dominate" it.
Türkiye has promised to support Syria's reconstruction, offering to help rebuild infrastructure, draft a new constitution, supply electricity and resume flights.
It hopes Syrians it is hosting will start returning home but has said it will not force them to leave.
Türkiye has also called repeatedly for the YPG to be disbanded, while warning of a new military offensive if authorities in Damascus do not address the issue. Its officials have met repeatedly with US and Syrian counterparts about the issue.
The SDF has said it would be willing to integrate with Syria's defense ministry, but only as "a military bloc".

Pro-Israel Lobby Spends Big on US Midterms as Backlash Grows

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, DC, US, March 6, 2018. (Reuters)

09:09-28 August 2026 AD ـ 15 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Pro-Israel Lobby Spends Big on US Midterms as Backlash Grows

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, DC, US, March 6, 2018. (Reuters)

The most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States is spending more than any other outside group on the 2026 midterms -- even as its once-coveted backing becomes an increasingly potent weapon for political opponents.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has poured tens of millions of dollars into races nationwide through its main election-spending vehicle, the United Democracy Project (UDP).

The so-called "super PAC" -- a group allowed to lavish unlimited sums to influence elections, provided it operates independently of candidates -- has spent $54 million on congressional races, according to campaign finance monitor OpenSecrets.

That has made it the single largest outside spender of the cycle, OpenSecrets said, while the wider pro-Israel donor network spent $71 million -- placing it second only to the cryptocurrency industry.

The extraordinary financial firepower underscores AIPAC's continued influence in Washington -- but also a growing backlash over US policy toward Israel and the role of wealthy interest groups in American elections.

AIPAC has concentrated much of its spending on Democratic primaries, supporting candidates strongly committed to Israel and trying to defeat critics of unconditional US military aid.

It didn't respond to a request for comment, but it has rejected suggestions that its influence is collapsing, saying hundreds of candidates it backed have won their primaries.

Its money has indeed delivered victories this year, but also some expensive failures.

- Money meets resistance -

In Michigan, AIPAC and allied groups spent around $30 million in an unsuccessful effort to prevent progressive former health official Abdul El-Sayed from winning the Democratic Senate nomination over establishment-backed Congresswoman Haley Stevens.

Progressives have also defeated candidates supported by AIPAC-linked money in congressional contests in California, Illinois and New York, often turning the group's spending itself into a campaign issue.

Eli Clifton, of US foreign policy think tank the Quincy Institute, said UDP was the biggest spender in Michigan, although 97 percent of its large contributions came from outside the state -- and its biggest donors are Republican billionaires.

"This is a special interest that participates outside of the partisan framework, and it's really all about advancing the interests of a foreign country," he told AFP.

Unease over the group is no longer confined to Democrats.

Allies of Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, recently asked AIPAC not to run advertisements publicly on his behalf, US media reported, fearing its overt involvement would benefit El-Sayed in the Arab-American heartland.

- Shifting opinion -

The discomfort reflects a broader transformation in US attitudes toward Israel following years of war in Gaza and widening conflict across the Middle East.

A June Quinnipiac University poll found 48 percent of American voters believed Washington was too supportive of Israel, including 66 percent of Democrats -- the highest overall figure in nine years of the survey.

The change has been clearest on the Democratic left, where candidates increasingly portray AIPAC as too closely aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and emblematic of big-money interests overwhelming ordinary voters.

But criticism has spread to the populist right, where some "America First" conservatives have attacked Washington's support for Israel and blamed pro-Israel lobbying for drawing the United States deeper into foreign conflicts.

AIPAC's financial strength, meanwhile, continues to grow. OpenSecrets says the organization itself has contributed $30 million to UDP.

And its political power remains formidable, with US military aid to Israel continuing to attract broad support in Congress.

But the primaries have demonstrated that record spending cannot guarantee victory -- and a once-prized endorsement can now, in some races, be something candidates would rather their opponents talked less about.

"That's precisely why they never mention US foreign policy and Israel in their ads," Casey Kennedy, co-founder of the Track AIPAC advocacy platform, told AFP.

"AIPAC knows AIPAC is toxic, and the more they spend, the more toxic they become with voters across the political spectrum."

Features

Satellite Images Show Bedrock and Glacier Collapsed on Nepal-China Border, Then Rivers Flooded

This satellite image provided by Vantor shows destruction at Syapru Besi, Nepal on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor via AP)

07:35-28 August 2026 AD ـ 15 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Satellite Images Show Bedrock and Glacier Collapsed on Nepal-China Border, Then Rivers Flooded

As rescue teams searched for missing people following catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-China border, Earth scientists reviewed satellite imagery for clues to the cause and assessed the devastation.

The flooding Wednesday killed hundreds of people in Nepal and Tibet, and hundreds more are missing, including foreigners and pilgrims.

Geomorphologists Kristen Cook and Dan Shugar said initial images from Nepal were obscured by clouds and dust from the debris, so they could only see that part of a glacier had broken off from Langtang Lirung peak, near the border with Tibet. In clearer images from Thursday, they said they could see that the bedrock underneath the glacier had collapsed, taking the massive chunk of ice down with it and sending boulders and ice into the valley.

“It shows the whole area without anything hidden, and we could see that, yes, it looked like there was not only this glacier that had failed, but a much larger chunk of the bedrock of the mountainside itself that had given way,” said Shugar, associate professor at the University of Calgary. “You have this big bedrock failure that took part of the glacier with it.”

This satellite image provided by Vantor shows Syapru Besi, Nepal on Oct. 18, 2023. (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor via AP)

Shugar said it’s heart-wrenching to look downstream from there on the images, to where people were living, and see how the debris has buried villages.

After slamming to the valley floor, the debris maintained its momentum through the steep, narrow valley as ice melted, said Cook, at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France. Water and mud several stories high swept through communities.

The Trishuli River surged during the flooding. Before and after satellite images of the Kolpurtar, Betrawati and Syapru Besi areas of Nepal show that the river is now much wider, and brown and black, because it overtopped its banks in some areas and filled with debris in others. The change in the color of the water shows how much sediment the flow was carrying, turning from greenish to very brown because it's full of mud, Cook said.

Towns and villages that were devastated along the river banks are submerged in debris and mud. They appear as areas of brown. Some houses are still poking through in an image of the Betrawati area.

The flooding toppled and swept away buildings in Syapru Besi, a popular tourist spot where a famous trek to Langtang begins. In before and after images, a side river is now wider too, because the flow was so powerful it pushed upstream.

The flooding “left a wasteland in its wake” that will take many years to recover from, said Alton Byers, a mountain geographer at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Byers lived in Nepal and now returns there yearly to study glacial hazards and work with communities to prepare. This is the largest glacier flood he has seen, by far.

Byers, faculty research scientist at the university's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, said he thinks Wednesday's flooding is related to climate change. The Earth's warming is melting glaciers and permafrost, causing instability and the breakage of massive amounts of snow and ice at high altitudes. That can be a catalyst for a series of cascading events, he said.

“All the indicators, to me, point to the impacts of warming trends,” he said. “In this case, the permafrost that for millennia has helped to hold together high-altitude rock and ice and soil and glaciers is now weakening and becoming unstable."

Cook and Shugar said that at this point, they can't say for sure there's a direct link to climate change. Slopes fail and landslides happen, Cook said, though permafrost is melting and that is destabilizing mountainsides.

“While we cannot at this point directly link this collapse to climate change, it is not unexpected to see more events of this type with a warming climate,” Cook said. “Not this big, hopefully not this big.”

Features

China's Help Critical, But Unlikely, for US to Choke off Iran

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out plans this week to strangle Iran's economy. Kent NISHIMURA / AFP

Asharq Al Awsat

06:10-28 August 2026 AD ـ 15 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

06:10-28 August 2026 AD ـ 15 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

China's Help Critical, But Unlikely, for US to Choke off Iran

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out plans this week to strangle Iran's economy. Kent NISHIMURA / AFP

The United States has threatened the "economic asphyxiation" of Iran, but analysts say that a successful chokehold would require unlikely cooperation from China.

Almost six months into the Middle East war, Washington this week laid out plans to expand sanctions against Iran, warning that any nation which continued to enable Tehran would become a "global pariah".

China is among countries whose entities have already been hit by the sweeping US plan, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent telling Beijing to "get with the program".

But Beijing instead has defended its cooperation with Tehran and vowed to safeguard its interests.

The apparent impasse is likely to further strain ties between Beijing and Washington, ahead of an expected visit by China's President Xi Jinping to the US capital in September.

- Oil 'central lever' -

Iran has weathered sanctions for decades, using complex international financial networks to evade restrictions.

Cutting off Iran "would certainly require China's help", said political scientist Dylan Loh of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

Beijing is a key customer for Iranian oil, while "a good amount of their trade also relies on (the Chinese currency) renminbi, which can be outside the reach of US sanctions", Loh told AFP.

Before the war, Tehran exported millions of barrels of oil a day, mostly to China.

"Oil is the central economic lever," said Nino Lezhava, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis.

Although most ship traffic in the vital Strait of Hormuz is still blocked, China is not totally cut off from Iran's crude thanks to the highways and railways of Central Asia, said Sun Degang, a professor of political science at Shanghai's Fudan University.

Despite Chinese purchases being lower than before, they remain an important source of revenue.

"Simply continuing to... maintain commercial channels and provide alternative payment mechanisms can substantially reduce the effectiveness of economic isolation," said Lezhava.

- 'Economic sovereignty' -

The United States is well aware of this.

Bessent said "no one is above the reach of US sanctions" when asked if Washington would target Chinese banks that do business with Iran.

However, while its sanctions announced on Monday targeted some Chinese entities accused of helping Tehran procure "critical technology", Washington has so far held back from punishing major Chinese financial institutions.

The United States "can't expect to obtain China's support if it continues to implement sanctions on Chinese companies", said Fudan University's Sun.

"Sino-Iranian trade relations are legitimate and China will safeguard its economic sovereignty."

China is already feeling some consequences from the Strait of Hormuz disruption, adding to economic strain from persistently sluggish domestic consumption.

Cutting off Iran would exacerbate that, as well as implicate Beijing in a messy conflict that has already weakened its strategic rival Washington.

Overall, China has "little reason" to cooperate with the United States on sanctions, said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

- 'Push back' -

On Tuesday, China's foreign ministry said its cooperation with Iran has "always been conducted within the framework of international law and should not be interfered with or disrupted".

Chong said that "Beijing seems highly confident of its ability to push back successfully against the US", were it pressured.

China has expanded its capacities to deal "precisely with such scenarios", said Loh.

"China has its own tools to respond to protect its own interest as we have seen in the tit-for-tat export controls," he added.

China and the United States spent much of last year embroiled in an escalating trade war but reached a fragile truce when the two presidents met last October.

A successful global campaign against Iran may require Washington "to provide incentives" to Beijing to join it, said Lim Tai Wei, a professor and East Asia expert at Japan's Soka University.

China would only cooperate "if the costs of supporting Iran became significantly higher than the strategic and economic benefits", said Lezhava.

Why Türkiye is So Influential in Post-Assad Syria

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Pro-Israel Lobby Spends Big on US Midterms as Backlash Grows

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