Al-Sharaa's visit to Turkey on a new horizon

After the revolution in Syria, Hamas's magnificent victory over genocidal Israel in Gaza, and Trump's taking office as US President and his statements on the Middle East, there is a brand-new situation in which all the balances in the region will be reshaped. If Trump's intentions to withdraw his soldiers from Syrian territory develop into a plan, a much different horizon has opened, compared with two months ago, both for the YPG and for Turkey's terror problem.

On this horizon, Turkey's cards are without doubt much stronger in every respect than before. The likelihood increases that the call expected from Öcalan to the PKK to "lay down arms" will offer the PKK an exit opportunity in which it will reconsider its calculations. The ground for the US to stay in Syria in the name of fighting DAESH is fast disappearing. Such a justification has no reasonable and realistic basis. Where there is no realism, one must produce more convincing reasons for Trump to stay in Syria, which at the moment looks like the hardest job in the world.

Everyone sees that the situation that has emerged holds very great advantages for Turkey. Trump says the key to Syria is in Turkey's hands. In Syria, which earlier harbored hostile feelings and actions toward Turkey, there is now a regime that is friendly to Turkey and open to every kind of cooperation with it. One of the greatest sources that had fed the PKK until now was the Baath regime in Syria. Now in place of that regime there is a regime and leadership allied with Turkey. Syria is potentially a very important, geo-strategic country, and very strong in terms of its population, culture, history and human resources. Until now, because of the Baath regime, it was a country held back and suppressed from playing the role on the stage of history that it deserves. Now this country, freed from its chains, is making a magnificent return to the stage of history, and it is making this return on the same side as Turkey, in the same direction.

Turkey's having come to the closest position to this leadership that has emerged in Syria, and therefore to the most advantageous position in the strategic vision that has taken shape, naturally gives friends happiness and confidence, but there are also those who are not pleased and who are worried by it. Quite normal. But the worry of some of those who are worried is nothing but baseless suspicion, which is not normal at all.

When I took part in a BBC broadcast in recent days, a question put to me asked precisely about these needless worries. To the question that Turkey has gained great power from the change in Syria and is following an expansionist policy toward Syria, I openly expressed that I was first surprised. Then I said, in substance, the following:

The revolution that took place in Syria is entirely the revolution of the Syrian people, of its sons and daughters. It is true that Turkey supports this revolution, and it is no secret, but it was the Syrian people, not Turkey, that made this revolution. However, to see the support given to this revolution as a sign of Turkey's expansionism is very shameful. Against the suffering of the Syrian people for 60 years, which cost the lives of at least two million of its people, torture and pain, and the displacement of 12 million, Turkey at times took a humanitarian stand at the cost of being left alone and without any calculation. It stood by the Syrian people without tactics, without strategy, without calculation. Turkey also hosted the people fleeing the regime's massacres without any expansionist calculation. Today, as the Syrian people rejoice at being rid of this cruel regime, for which the whole civilized world is responsible, should the country that shares that joy most sincerely not be Turkey?

Turkey is experiencing this joy as the most sincere and the most deserving of it, and is in complete solidarity with the Syrian people. The union of strength this will bring in no way indicates a pre-calculated expansionist policy. But it is also certain that the new situation affords Turkey power and advantage. Not only is this not an intended and planned gain of power, but Turkey, unlike others, has not been, and will not be, calculating how to tie this advantage to its own one-sided gain at the expense of the Syrian people. Turkey's presence in Somalia, Libya and elsewhere has likewise never come about to the detriment of those peoples; on the contrary, wherever it has been, it has been an actor of peace and stability and has gained more for those peoples.

The host of the program, referring to an article I had written earlier about the Muslim Brotherhood, asked whether Turkey aspires to be the center of this Brotherhood, and then claimed that both the regime change in Syria and Turkey's growing influence disturb Saudi Arabia and Egypt. I said that there is nothing that should make either country uncomfortable about this, that Saudi Arabia in any case perceives no threat from the revolution in Syria, and that for Egypt there is nothing that should make it perceive one. On the contrary, I stated that Egypt's conditions and Syria's conditions are very different and that there is no question of the Syrian Revolution ever being involved in any activity against Egypt.

As for the policy toward Islamic unity, I also said that if both countries want to lead such a union, this would please us even more. Let them come forward and answer the problem of political representation and unity that the Islamic world needs, and we will give support. It need not even have a center. Even the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, if operated in line with its purpose or position, can relatively meet this need, and Turkey, far from seeing it as a matter of rivalry, would contribute as a shared duty to be fulfilled. The will and policy Turkey has shown so far has been in this direction.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the natural leader of the Syrian Revolution, was declared Transitional President of the Arab Republic at the meeting of all components of the Syrian revolution held in the past week. That Sharaa's first visit after officially taking the title of President was to Saudi Arabia and then to Turkey, and that on the same day the Egyptian Foreign Minister was making an official visit in Turkey, presents a traffic scene that could not even have been imagined until two months ago.

In this conception there are serious signs that the good and blessing of the countries of the region standing closer to one another on the question of determining their own destiny is very well understood. This is an extremely auspicious traffic, and it shows an open horizon for the working of dialogue, mutual understanding and a common will directed to the future in the region.

This horizon must not be darkened. The walls and hostilities placed between these peoples, who ought to be one and together culturally, historically and politically, were preventing the emergence of a strong historical agency. Now there is much to do together. The destined cooperation and understanding on the new horizon point to a new turning point, a new course of history. May it be auspicious for the Islamic world.