As the dark clouds clear in Syria

In Syria the weather for peace and a solution is rapidly turning from clear to overcast and back. Just when everything was thought to be heading to its worst point, with pitch-black clouds covering the sky, a new development disperses the clouds toward a solution and a newly opened horizon renews hopes. Then, as one advances along this very horizon, a new development settles over the situation again like a black cloud.

At first it was thought that the US's involvement in the matter could change everything in a positive direction. The US, which had taken the lead in convincing the world that Assad was the chief party responsible for the massacres and was intertwined with terrorist organizations, had as its first interest in Syria dealing with Assad. But its direct intervention in Syria turned to fighting DEAŞ, which it set in front of Assad, leaving Assad aside.

This showed, from the very beginning, either that what the US sought in Syria was not a solution but, on the contrary, the perpetuation of the lack of a solution, or, if we are to believe it, that the US had jumped like a carp at the DEAŞ bait put out by Assad.

Of course, the worse possibility was that the US used DEAŞ as a pretext in order to carry out its agenda hidden from everyone. Over time it became clear that this last one was the real possibility.

The US has a plan that it does not share even with its allies in particular, and is trying to implement this plan step by step. Whether the things it appears from the outside to be losing in the meantime are part of this plan or real losses, no one has a chance of knowing, because no one but the US knows the plan.

In the meantime we will of course have to keep asking what a US that has lost everyone's trust and friendship might be gaining in return.

Perhaps, as is actually the case, the US, with its entire CIA and State Departmant, is floundering in a vise it cannot tell how it fell into. These days we are witnessing surprise developments that mislead those who attribute great rationality to US politics, and it seems we will see more.

While the US, which has suffered a great loss of trust and prestige in Syria, was gradually losing the quality of being a hope for a solution, the election of Trump could have created the possibility of a change, "perhaps a hope." The words he uttered in the election campaign and afterward provided serious grounds for this hope.

The other day Trump put forward the possibility of a new change by saying that "it is essential to create a safe zone" in Syria and that the US would do something about it

. Apparently this was what Turkey had wanted from the beginning, but on top of the somewhat positive atmosphere that formed after Astana, the possibility that this safe zone could be a zone under PYD control came to mind. It is very clear that such a zone would constitute security for no one, and that a zone under PYD control would constitute no solution, let alone for Syrian Arabs, even for the Kurds other than the ten percent of Kurds who are pro-PYD.

Fortunately, it began to emerge that this statement, whose content was not fully filled in, referred to a zone on the Jordanian and Israeli border. We say it began to emerge, because there is still no proper statement on this.

If so, concerns that the matter will have a dimension that thinks of Israel rather than the Syrian people have already begun to be voiced.

We can already think that such a zone will be welcome to the EU, with the thought that it would in any case prevent migration heading to Europe.

On the other hand, a new environment has undoubtedly formed, with Iran also entering through the new door opened from Astana, through Turkey-Russia cooperation, to the solution space that had narrowed considerably in Aleppo. The Astana talks were of course not an alternative to Geneva, which was planned for 8 February and as of today has been postponed to the end of February. Their primary aim was to make permanent the ceasefire achieved in Syria and to extend it to all regions of Syria.

That is, Astana's agenda was entirely a military agenda; discussing the political dimension of the matter was not intended, and in fact, as far as is known, it was not discussed.

However, it became clear that Russia came to these talks, which for the first time since the problem began in 2011 managed to seat the armed opposition at the same table as the regime, with a constitutional proposal and distributed it to the opposition. Truth be told, this was something like sabotaging the extremely positive atmosphere achieved with the Astana talks. Because, on the one hand, no one expected such a political negotiation from Astana, and on the other, the content of the proposed constitutional text is not a text that could be accepted not only by the opposition but by 90 percent of the existing parties in Syria.

When such a text comes onto the agenda at precisely this stage, no other reason may be needed to provoke all the parties, who were barely persuaded to a ceasefire, to continue fighting.

Perhaps naming Syria simply the Syrian Republic instead of the Syrian Arab Republic could find general acceptance, but issues such as purging the identity of the country of Islam, an autonomous Kurdish region and the like are very serious matters, and it is easy for voicing them at this stage to be understood as provoking the warring parties.

At this point the proposed constitution falls behind even the current Syrian Baath constitution.

Though this subject is worth thinking about separately.

Because in today's Syria, although Islam is the source of legislation, the Syrian regime is in this state.

Not only for Syria, but in fact the fact that all Arab regimes, Egypt first among them, despite having Islam mentioned in the constitution as the source of legislation, see themselves as utterly independent of Islam in all their practices, leads one to think about what function such an article has. Commitment to Islam and Islam's values as a principle placed in the constitutional text but not taken seriously at any level.

Even if it has no function, its standing in the constitution is one thing, touching it is another, and this is the first thing that stands out in the constitutional text now proposed for Syria. What kind of cloud this will bring down over the cities of Syria, you go and work out.