In a stunning diplomatic surprise, Turkey and Iran have announced a preliminary
agreement on fundamental principles for a settlement of the Syrian conflict.
The dramatic turn in the diplomacy of the Syria War was revealed in Turkish
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s regular weekly speech to the ruling AKP Party
in the parliament and confirmed by a senior Iranian foreign ministry official
Tuesday.
Both Yildirim’s speech and the Iranian corroboration were reported Tuesday
by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed and Al-Hayat, Arabic-language newspapers published in
London, but the potentially pivotal development has been unreported thus far
in Western news media.
The common approach to a Syria settlement outlined by Turkey and Iran represent
what appears to be the first significant diplomatic break in a five-year international
conflict on Syria that has been immune from any real peace negotiations up to
now. International conferences on Syria under UN auspices have generated no
real moves toward compromise.
The new negotiations between Iran and Turkey are the result of a major policy
shift by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan toward diplomatic
cooperation with Russia and Iran on Syria and away from alignment with the United
States and its Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Turkey has been coordinating
military assistance to the armed opposition to the Assad government – including
jihadists and other hardline extremists – with Saudi Arabia and Qatar since
early in the war. However, Erdogan began searching in May for an alternative
policy more in line with Turkey’s primary strategic interest in Syria: containing
the threat of Kurdish demands for a separate state.
The announced agreement on broad principles for ending the Syrian crisis is
only the beginning of a process of negotiations on the details of a settlement,
as Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Jaberi Ansari made clear. “This agreement
on the general lines will contribute to creating an environment suitable to
solving the Syrian crisis,” Ansari said, according to Al Hayat.
It is also possible that Turkey may be planning to use the threat of allying
with Russia and Iran on Syria to force the United States to reduce its own reliance
on Kurdish forces in Northern Syria – the main issue dividing US and Turkish
policies toward the conflict. But Yildirim had already hinted last month –
before the failed military coup in Turkey and the launching of a new offensive
by al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front around and in Aleppo – at Turkey’s intention to
revise its policy toward Syria in order to prevent Kurdish forces in Syria from
establishing their own mini-state.
Yildirim said in his speech Tuesday that the solution to the Syrian crisis
would require “two basic conditions: first to preserve the territorial…