From "proxy" war to "direct" war in Syria?

After the terrorist attacks in France, the Syrian issue has begun to draw more of the international community's attention. That said, we can generally say that Westerners get caught up in details and miss the reality of the whole picture. It is clear that the fight against DAESH will neither end nor ease the Syrian Crisis. In this context, as a result of Turkey's initiatives at various levels, it can be said that an international perspective on the crisis in Syria as a whole, though for now insufficient, has begun to develop.

After the draft resolution submitted to the UN Security Council by France, Russia also submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council on the crisis in Syria, but the draft was rejected by most of the members of the UN Security Council on the grounds that it envisaged cooperation with the Assad regime.

However, in the coming period international diplomacy aimed at ending the civil war in Syria seems set to move noticeably. As a result, the view has begun to spread that the final stretch has been reached in the Syrian crisis. Even so, it is worth being measured about this and bearing in mind that the crisis has become an international fault line.

The parties in Syria have now moved from a proxy war to a direct war. In the Syrian Crisis, which began as opposition actions against the regime and turned into a civil war with the escalation of violence, the parties had come onto the field from 2014 onward. That is, we have entered a period in which the possibility of direct contact between international or regional powers may arise.

Iran first intervened in the course of the war in Syria through Hezbollah, and then, when it could not prevent the retreat of the Assad forces over the past year, began to use its own forces directly in Syria. Russia, another of the parties to the Syrian crisis, began carrying out direct operations inside Syria in the second half of 2015.

Taking all this into account, it is seen that the possibility of an international solution in Syria requires quite serious effort. It is not impossible, but it is very difficult without a serious flexibility in the parties' current positions. Russia continues to hit positions inside Syria with missiles launched from its submarines in the Mediterranean. Moreover, in reports based on Russian officials, it is claimed that in hitting these targets Russia has used not only long-range missiles but also cruise missiles. There is no need to dwell at length on the fact that these actions by Russia in the Eastern Mediterranean carry a meaning far beyond the Syrian Crisis and the DAESH problem.

The most serious question mark in minds regarding Syria is whether the US and Russia have agreed on the future of Syria. After US Secretary of State John Kerry announced that Turkey and the US would begin clearing the Syrian border, Russia's statement that its intervention in Syria is aimed not at protecting the Assad regime but at protecting the Syrian state, and its adoption of a moderate approach about its operations in Syria, strengthen opinions in this direction. However, it could be said that evaluating all of this within the framework of the approach that has emerged as US President Obama's foreign policy paradigm and is called "smart power" would make for a more correct analysis.

The concept of "smart power" was presented as a synthesis of "hard power," which can very roughly be defined as military power, and "soft power," which can again very roughly be defined by the elements of culture, political values and economic power. However, the Obama administration put the concept into practice differently from the understanding of Joseph Nye, the concept's "copyright holder." The meaning Obama attributed to "smart power" was in any case called the "ostrich doctrine" by opposition circles in the US.

The oscillations that smart power created in US foreign policy brought about even more radical oscillations of the actors regarding Syria. In other words, it can be said that the most important reason why the global and regional powers experienced serious breaks in their foreign policies on Syria and the region over the past 5 years is that a resolute stance did not emerge in US foreign policy. That is, the effect of the uncertainty that the concept of smart power created in US foreign policy regarding intervention in crisis zones is felt by the other actors more clearly and more shockingly. In the end the resulting power vacuums were filled by terrorist structures such as DAESH and the YPG.

EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN DAESH

When the analysis is built this way, it can be said that putting DAESH ahead of the big picture has also weakened US foreign policy.

We have stressed before that DAESH has become an instrument providing legitimacy to various actors not only in Syria but in the region. So much so that recently even Bashar Assad, the bloody-handed dictator of the Syrian regime, said he would not leave office until the DAESH threat was erased from Syria. This multi-functional, Swiss Army knife-like form of DAESH seems to have produced the following situation. In fact in Syria every country has its own DAESH. Germany, France, the US, Russia, Iran, the Assad regime and even Israel each have a DAESH. Because DAESH is a high-quality skeleton key that opens every door. Every actor that does not treat the Syrian crisis as a whole and presents only DAESH as a threat can be thought to have a DAESH. The breadth that DAESH has created, in turn, brings with it the bankruptcy of US foreign policy.

It must now be stated clearly and resolutely that the solution in Syria lies in the necessity of ending the Assad regime with the same determination as the fight against DAESH, and policies must be set around this center. Every alternative other than this will be makeshift expediency and will not produce a result that soothes the heart.