Turkey and Saudi Arabia seek interests, not romance with Assad's Syria

In the background of Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the normalisation process of Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime came back to the fore with two recent events.

First, the Saudi embassy was opened in Damascus in September 2024, after multiple failed announcements. Chargé d’Affaires Abdullah al-Harees stated during the open ceremony the Kingdom's embassy’s commitment to foster and make every effort to develop bilateral relations between the two countries.

In the same month, Turkey participated for the first time in an Arab League meeting since September 2011. Although the Syrian government delegation, led by Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, walked out of the Arab League Council meeting in Cairo when Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s speech was announced, Damascus, like all the other Arab states, had initially approved Turkish participation in this meeting.

Before this, Bashar al-Assad pledged at the People’s Assembly in Damascus in August 2024 to continue with the reconciliation process with Turkey.

Syria’s regional normalisation is indeed still ongoing, but many challenges and obstacles still exist to witness a consolidation of relations with regional actors, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Turkey.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s motivations to normalise with Syria

Riyadh’s decision to initially rehabilitate Damascus in 2023 was connected to national objectives and regional dynamics involving the kingdom’s security, political and economic priorities.

First, the Saudi kingdom has been seeking to significantly reduce the smuggling of Captagon, production of which in Syria massively expanded after 2011, as Riyadh is the biggest market for the drug and it is particularly consumed by its youths.

Second and more importantly, the normalisation process has been an outcome of Saudi Arabia’s evolving political strategy in terms of regional foreign policy.

The confrontational and aggressive foreign policy adopted by MBS, symbolised by the deadly war initiated against Yemen in 2015 and maximum pressure on Iran and its allies in the region has been a failure. This policy turned out to be too politically costly and damaging to the KSA’s project to reform the economy. The Saudi kingdom has therefore tried to establish more cordial relations with its neighbours and more generally seek a form of authoritarian stability in the region.

Finally, the reorientation of Saudi foreign policy is principally linked to the need for the kingdom to concentrate on economic reforms and the Saudi Vision 2030 objectives.

On the Turkish side, Ankara’s move towards reconciliation with Damascus, which was undertaken in the background of a wider political rapprochement with other Arab regional actors such as Egypt and the KSA, has been motivated by two main objectives.

Firstly, Erdogan sought to gain votes ahead of the 2023 Presidential elections by accelerating the forced return of Syrian refugees to Syria.

Since then, there has been a continuous rise in racist and violent attacks and campaigns against Syrians in Turkey, and the Turkish government has deported tens of thousands of them.

The other motive for Turkey’s rapprochement with Syria is their shared determination to deny Kurdish aspirations for autonomy and more specifically of the continuous rule of the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria, represented by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

The Turkish government views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.

Poor progress

Restoration of relations and contacts between Damascus on one side and Riyadh and Ankara on the other side are however still awaiting to witness major and significant improvements in the political and economic fields.

Syria’s re-integration into the League of Arab States and normalisation with Saudi Arabia have not led to a significant increase and expansion of political and economic exchanges between Damascus and Riyadh. Only very minor evolutions have taken place in Saudi-Syria relations.

While regular flights between Riyadh and Damascus were reestablished in July after a break that lasted more than 12 years, the economic effects of the normalisation process remain limited. Only one company was established by Saudi investors in Syria in 2024.

Last year, Saudi investors established five companies and in 2022 four companies. Trade between Syria and the Saudi kingdom had actually increased before the normalisation process, from $92.35 million in 2017 to nearly $431 million in 2022.

The main reason for this growth was the reopening of the Nassib-Jaber border crossing with Jordan, Syria’s gateway to the Gulf, in October 2018. Saudi Arabia remained one of Syria’s main export markets in 2023, mostly for food products. The total value of trade is nevertheless far from the pre-war level of $1.33 billion in 2010.

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At the political level, small steps have been taken to advance relations between Riyadh and Damascus. Syria’s embassy in Saudi Arabia reopened in October 2023 after the arrival of Syria’s Consul General Ihsan Raman in the kingdom.

In November, Bashar al-Assad attended a joint Arab-Islamic summit on Gaza in Riyadh. A month later in December 2023, Mr. Ayman Soussan was appointed the new ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates announced the beginning of Syrian Embassy operations in Riyadh.

In the same month, the Syrian Minister of Religious Endowments, Dr. Mohammad Abdul-Sattar al-Sayyed, visited the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran in Madinah.

This led to an agreement a few weeks later in January 2024 between the Syrian Ministry of Religious Endowments and the Saudi Ministry of the Hajj to allow Damascus to also assume control of Hajj and Umrah affairs for the year 2024. 

This competence was therefore not only restricted to the Syrian opposition, as it has been the case since 2013.

Turkey on its side, has taken several measures, which were partially seen as decisions in the framework of the political rapprochement with the Syrian regime.

At the end of June 2024, the Abu al-Zindeen crossing, connecting the Syrian Interim Government (SIG) and regime areas, was reopened.

While trade never completely stopped, it has been going through smuggling intermediaries, the resuming of official commerce could make trade more fluid.

In addition to this, a few months later, in September, Turkish officials imposed that Syrians residing abroad who want to cross from Turkey to opposition-held Idlib via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing need a valid Syrian passport issued by Damascus with a two-month validity. 

On September 21, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared he had asked to meet Bashar al-Assad on the sidelines of UN talks in New York this week to normalise ties.

Restricted access

Despite meetings between the defence and foreign ministers of the two countries, alongside of security and intelligence officers, normalisation with the Turkish government has remained limited, focusing primarily on security cooperation and agreements.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stated in mid-July that "Turkey must collaborate with the Syrian regime on issues such as border security, combating terrorism, and the safe return of refugees."

However, the Syrian regime is unable to meet Ankara’s interests. Damascus has insisted that no progress in relations with Turkey can occur without the withdrawal of the Turkish military presence in Syria or at least an agreement in that direction.

Meanwhile, Ankara is frustrated by Damascus’s inability to facilitate the return of Syrian refugees and to challenge and dismantle the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). 

In mid-September, the Turkish presidency actually announced that there were no specific agreements yet regarding the date or location for a meeting between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Bashar al-Assad.

The impacts of Syria’s normalisation process with the KSA and Turkey are therefore restricted at all levels.

The challenges to the progress of the normalisation process between Riyadh and Damascus are connected to multiple issues, starting with the inability of the Syrian regime to deliver on security issues relating to Captagon traffic, the continual existence of sanctions, the economic crisis in Syria and regional dynamics, particularly connected to Iran-Saudi relations.

In the case of Turkey, the Syrian regime is too weak politically, economically, and militarily to exert influence in the north.

Damascus also sees the return of millions of refugees as a political and security threat, as well as an additional economic burden it cannot support.

So despite the signals and posturing by Ankara and Riyadh, Assad's Syrian regime has a long way to go to be recognised throughout the region. In the case of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both have remained largely wary, restricting their normalisation to the diplomatic sphere. Political and economic progress has been modest, to say the least. And without deeper material economic and political support, Assad's Syrian regime will, for the time being, remain isolated and ostracised, unable to shake off his regime's pariah status. 

Joseph Daher teaches at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and is an affiliate professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, where he participates in the Syrian Trajectories project. He is the author of Syria after the Uprisings, The Political Economy of State Resilience.

Follow him on Twitter: @JosephDaher19

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.