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Political changes impact on Turkey’s Syria policy: Pundit

Saturday, 21 January 2017 6:16 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 21 January 2017 6:16 AM ]

This file photo taken on October 10, 2016 shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) talking with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during the opening ceremony of the 23rd World Energy Congress in Istanbul, Turkey. (Photo by AFP)

Turkey has acknowledged it can no longer insist that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must leave power as a precondition for peace talks. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Friday that settlement without President Assad is not realistic. One of the main obstacles in the way of reaching consensus in previous Syria peace talks was the precondition for resignation of the Syrian president.

Gordon Duff, a senior editor at the Veterans Today from Ohio, says that Turkey is facing several internal and external risks, which have prompted Ankara to change its policies toward the conflict in Syria and other regional issues.

“Turkey is a prone target for external intervention” and it is “vulnerable to color revolution,” Duff told Press TV’s Top 5 on Friday night.

A failed military coup to overthrow the Turkish government on July 15 its aftermath as well as recent wave of terrorism taking place in the country have been effective in changing minds of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his cabinet towards regional issues including the conflict in Syria, he noted.

In regional arena, the dissolution of Turkey’s alliance with Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar has prompted Erdogan’s government to strengthen relations with Russia, Iran and Syria, the senior editor added.

Internationally, Ankara has chosen to distance itself from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) because the organization walked away from Turkey and Europe has become a weak economic partner, he argued.

Turkey’s previous behaviors and alliances were “economically suicidal” and it “needs to look home for closer economic partners,” he noted.

Hinting at a potential similarity between Ankara and Riyadh over their policy reform towards Syria, he stated that Saudi Arabia may change its behavior because the kingdom is “running out of cash” and the Saudis might not have US’s all-out support for the future.

The United States and its regional allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia started to support militants to wreak havoc in Syria and overthrow its government in 2011, but Ankara has recently changed its policy toward the neighboring Arab country and brokered a peace talk to be held in Kazakhstan capital, Astana, on January 23.

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