Syria's future is seen from Egypt

Assad, who is trying to survive by launching the most merciless and reckless massacres against his own people in Syria, has no future. At the third meeting of the Friends of the Syrian People held in Paris, this time there was participation from 100 countries. Even this participation shows that Assad has by now sufficiently lost the ground of international legitimacy in Syria.

Turkey has from the outset attached great importance to international legitimacy and has concentrated its efforts on getting that ground to move against Assad. Despite Assad, Turkey was never eager for war from the beginning. The claim that criticizing Assad would lead to an Iraq-like occupation of Syria and that Turkey is a tool for this is, in a single word, unfair. It is clear that those who voice this claim have a strange image of, or expectation from, Turkey. For the sake of what lofty interest was Turkey supposed to swallow all the evils of a dictator with whom it had been in good relations from the beginning, within those good relations?

Strangely, as Assad's life in his own country is prolonged thanks to his savage massacres, more and more emphasis begins to be placed on the wrongness of Turkey's choice. Yet even if Assad were to remain standing not just a few months but ten more years from now, this would not be proof that there is something wrong in the stance Turkey has taken toward him and in its policy. As Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu expressed in his statement on returning from Egypt, the policy Turkey is following in Syria is precisely the policy expected of it in all the rest of the region. Had Turkey behaved otherwise, say, had it plugged its ears and shut its eyes to what Assad has done, it would not have had the slightest respect or future in the region.

Yet today Turkey is in a very strong position in the Arab countries that have experienced the spring, Egypt foremost, as well as Tunisia and Libya, and thanks to the warm reception there, in all the other Arab countries as well. Wandering through the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar in Cairo, I am a living witness to the interest the people showed in Davutoğlu. It was worth seeing how those who saw Davutoğlu and recognized him at once lined up to greet and embrace him, and how those who remained at a distance conveyed their affection by chanting slogans.

Davutoğlu was the first Foreign Minister whom Muhammad Morsi, whose presidency, won in the elections, was also approved by the Supreme Electoral Commission, received. Rest assured that in this reception the dialogue between Morsi and Davutoğlu did not remain at the level of a formality. Muhammad Morsi, with whom we had the opportunity to meet and chat before he was elected president, has a very special interest in and affection for Turkey, particularly for the AK Parti government under Erdoğan, and he does not hide it.

With the successful completion of the process of Morsi's election as president, have no doubt, the policy Turkey has followed in the Arab Spring process has also received its greatest confirmation. It has become very clear that Egypt is the most important field of manifestation of strategic depth. When we think of Egypt together with Tunisia and Libya, the only thing that could spoil Turkey's current position would be for it to follow a different stance in Syria than today's. In that case we can certainly see that neither Turkey's foreign minister nor its prime minister or president would find this warm reception in these regions. Moreover, any Turkish citizen visiting these countries today is received, thanks to this policy line, with a sympathy that in no way compares with what came before.

The reason for Davutoğlu's being in Egypt was a meeting of the Syrian opposition rather than a visit to the newly installed president Morsi. This is a portrait of how Egypt too has taken its place in the same line, with active participation, in Turkey's much-criticized Syria policy. Without doubt Egypt has a very special place in both the Arab and African worlds, and as it overcomes its own internal problems it appears set to enter the region's balance game demanding new cards, so the policy Egypt will follow from now on will be very important for Turkey as well. The policy that Turkey has followed in Egypt since the moment the Arab Spring process began has today opened up for it an extremely wide and deep field of maneuver.

The fates of Egypt and Syria have always been interconnected throughout history. That a change in Cairo finds its counterpart in Damascus has been ordained within this history, and it appears so in this case too. Let anyone who wishes take a tour from the Umayyads to the Abbasids, from the Ayyubids to the Mamluks, from the Ottomans to the colonial and Cold War years, and what he will see in the historical community of fate between these two countries will be nothing other than the near future of today's change.

It is already visible that with the withdrawal of the increasingly cornered Assad a new situation will emerge in Syria. In this new situation we can foresee that strategic depth, the zero problems policy, and the concepts of soft power, as a Turkish contribution to the literature of international foreign policy today, will become the subject of a new evaluation. We say today as well that the "zero problems policy" is not merely an unprincipled "policy of good relations," and moreover that it is a good will and direction that can never be falsified by any concrete development, but it seems that for some to understand this they will have to see Assad's inevitable end.

I guess they will not have to wait long.