Kerry’s Remarks on Assad Widen Gap Between U.S. and Turkey

“Collapse of U.S. policy in Syria as Assad continues massacres,” thundered the headline of the government-aligned Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah on Tuesday, in an apparent response to Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks two days prior contemplating possible negotiations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “The United States will have to negotiate with Assad to remove him from power and bring the Syrian civil war to a close,” Kerry had said in an interview with CBS.

“What is there to negotiate?” shot back Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. “How will you negotiate with a regime that has killed more than 200,000 people and used chemical weapons? What have you been able to get from negotiations so far?” Addressing parliament, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu lamented, “It makes no difference to shake hands with Hitler, Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, Saddam, or Assad.”   

Ankara’s criticism is the latest sign that the Syrian conflict is tearing at the fabric of the alliance between the U.S. and Turkey. While Turkey has campaigned for regime change in Syria since 2012, the U.S. has pursued a relatively non-interventionist policy – evidenced by its reluctance to use military force.

Ankara has voiced its disappointment with U.S. policy in Syria since 2013, when Washington failed to bring down Assad after he crossed the American “red line” by using chemical weapons against civilians. Then-foreign minister Davutoğlu ultimately welcomed a subsequent deal to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons, signed in September 2013, but warned that it must not diminish international determination to make the regime “pay” for the chemical attack.

The rise of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria has widened the divergence between the two NATO partners. The Obama administration has been conducting air strikes in Syria against IS with a broad coalition of countries from the Arab world. Turkey has opted not to join the military campaign – to the chagrin of Washington – insisting that Assad is at the root of all of Syria’s problems and the only solution is regime change. This difference in priorities has raised fears in Ankara that the IS threat could eventually lead American policymakers towards a more tolerant view of the Syrian leader, shifting Washington’s position away from the long-stated policy that Assad must go.

Last month, despite these differences, the two countries signed an agreement to jointly train and equip the “moderate” Syrian opposition. Officially, the rebels are being trained to fight IS, but Turkey still hopes that the training will ultimately help the rebels fight the regime. The gap between Washington and Ankara, which had already delayed training for months, could further diminish the effectiveness of a program that is hanging by a delicate thread. Unless the two countries can agree on a broader strategy for Syria, their attempt at forging a united, moderate Syrian front may leave neither side getting what it wants.

Merve Tahiroglu is a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on Turkey.