Syria-Turkey Relations During the Arab Spring Uprising

Introduction: The Arab Spring and Syria

The Arab Spring became one of the most consequential political movements in the Arab world in recent decades. It resulted in regime change in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, with wide reverberations felt across Libya, Syria, and even Iran. The countries of the Middle East entered a process of transformation—not solely in terms of regime change, but also in terms of social development and political mentality. Although the precise spark of the Arab Spring is difficult to identify, since early warning signs had long been visible, the Arab world and these countries in particular are now on a path of transformation regardless of how this movement ultimately resolves.

This paper focuses on Syria as one of the most strategically significant countries in the Middle East, particularly given the nature of the regime currently in power and the international response to it. The Bashar al-Assad regime has faced intense scrutiny from the international community, the Arab League, and neighboring states for the manner in which it has responded to popular uprisings, demonstrations, and demands for reform. The central focus of this research is the relationship between Syria and Turkey during the Arab Spring, with particular attention to the ways in which Turkey has contributed to the rise of the Syrian opposition.

Historical Background of Syria-Turkey Relations

Power relations in the Middle East have a strong religious component, and the divisions within the Muslim world frequently mirror the patterns of political support that one country extends to another. The relations between Syria and Turkey are no exception. A critical starting point is the religious dimension: both countries have large Sunni majorities, with Shia Muslims constituting clear minorities in each. This shared religious identity has historically provided a degree of assurance regarding political alignment and mutual support in times of need.

However, Syria-Turkey relations have not always been considered among the most privileged bilateral relationships in the region. One persistent source of tension has been Turkey's Kurdish minority, which the Syrian government had long supported, partly because of the significant influence Kurds exercise within Syria itself. The Kurdish PKK movement, meanwhile, conducted terrorist attacks on Turkish soil in pursuit of greater rights and autonomous status for Kurdish-majority territories within Turkey. The PKK's leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was eventually expelled from Syria, prompting a diplomatic reassessment. From 1998 onward, relations steadily improved: the two countries signed a free-trade agreement in 2004 and conducted an unprecedented three-day joint military exercise in 2009. That same year, they lifted mutual visa requirements and began the symbolically significant practice of holding joint cabinet meetings.

Until the Arab Spring, therefore, Turkish foreign policy had come to accommodate the Assad regime and actively sought the benefits of deeper ties with Damascus. This orientation was also shaped by Turkey's broader international repositioning. Its ongoing, ultimately unsuccessful bid to join the European Union prompted a shift toward greater engagement with the Middle East—especially as the common strategic connector between Turkey and Israel, namely EU membership aspirations, had weakened. These factors combined to make Syria a more important partner for Ankara in the years immediately before the Arab Spring.

Turkey's Shifting Stance Toward the Assad Regime

The current state of affairs between Syria and Turkey is considerably more complex, particularly in light of the policy changes Turkey had undertaken in prior years. The Assad regime came under severe pressure not only from its neighbors but also from the Arab League, which suspended Syria's membership. The United Nations condemned the killing of more than 5,000 Syrian civilians since the unrest began in March 2011. Documented crimes include cases of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, widespread or systematic attacks against civilians including the killing of peaceful demonstrators and the use of excessive force, and the persecution of human rights defenders and activists. Attacks on several embassies and consulates in Syria further led the international community to characterize the regime as violent and in breach of international law across diplomatic, humanitarian, and political dimensions.

Turkey's position was complicated by the good relations it had previously cultivated with the Assad regime. A shift was necessary in order to ensure that Turkey was not associated with the regime's violence—particularly because Ankara had already positioned itself as a model of Islamic democracy and had developed a strategy of exporting democratic norms to other Muslim and Arab countries undergoing transitions. Continued support for a government engaged in atrocities against its own population was incompatible with that self-image.

The shift in Turkey's orientation did not occur immediately after the first protests but only after sustained efforts to moderate and advise the Syrian authorities had failed. As analyst Asli Aydintasbas has argued, four main factors drove Ankara to drop its support for the Assad regime: an assessment that Assad was either too weak or unwilling to reform; the influx of Syrian refugees into Turkey; Sunni public sentiment, particularly around the Hama massacres; and concern about Iran's growing influence over Syria.

On the first factor, Prime Minister Erdoğan had initially envisaged a brokerage role in the Syrian crisis, but Assad's limited leverage within his own power structures made any peaceful transition to reform implausible. Turkish association with an unreformable regime carried unacceptable reputational risks for Ankara's broader regional policy.

Second, the refugee influx imposed enormous pressure on Turkish border communities, while the political visibility of a humanitarian crisis on Turkish soil was politically unacceptable for the government.

Third, the religious dimension mattered. Despite the Sunni majority shared by both countries, the Assad family's history of mass killings and human rights abuses generated widespread moral disapproval among the Turkish public. Turkey's own evolving democratic culture, including a newly assertive civil society, made it impossible for the government to ignore domestic protests against the violence occurring across the border.

Finally, the broader international context—particularly the prominence of the Iranian nuclear issue on the Security Council agenda—made it strategically costly for Turkey to remain associated with a Syria that appeared increasingly vulnerable to Iranian influence. Seeing that Assad was both unwilling to reform internally and exposed to pressure from one of the international community's most negatively perceived actors, Turkey concluded that it could no longer invest diplomatic capital in sustaining the relationship. Without a clear UN mandate comparable to what authorized action in Libya, Turkey could not take drastic unilateral measures, but it could shape the Syrian opposition and the conditions under which resistance to Assad developed.

Conclusion: A Tense and Consequential Relationship

The relations between Syria and Turkey are rather difficult to characterize at the moment. On the one hand, Turkey cannot permit the regime of Bashar al-Assad to remain in power, as it represents everything Turkey stands against as the new example of Muslim democracy; on the other hand, it cannot be too vocal or active in supporting any military or violent resolution to the conflict, since Arab countries are historically and acutely sensitive to issues of international intervention or foreign military action against sitting governments. Turkey's experience attempting to mediate the crisis, its exposure to refugee flows, its Sunni public's moral outrage, and its strategic anxiety about Iranian encroachment have all pushed Ankara into a position of active but carefully calibrated opposition to Assad. The relationship between Syria and Turkey is therefore not only tense but also constitutes a significant test of Turkey's newly formulated foreign policy identity in the region—a policy that aspires to project democratic norms while navigating the deep constraints of Middle Eastern geopolitics.