Assad's fall in Syria turned Turkey and Saudi Arabia from rivals to partners. Will it last?
BEIRUT (AP) — Sunni regional powerhouses Turkey and Saudi Arabia have had a complicated and often contentious relationship over the years. But their ties warmed significantly after Bashar Assad was toppled in neighboring Syria in a lightning rebel offensive in December.
Since then, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have worked to stabilize the new government in Damascus and usher Syria back into the international fold.
It was no surprise then that the first trips abroad that Syria's insurgent-leader-turned-President Ahmad al-Sharaa made were to the kingdom's capital of Riyadh and Ankara, Turkey's capital.
That new Turkey-Saudi amiability was on display during U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East earlier this month, when he held a surprise meeting with al-Sharaa in Riyadh. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was in the room, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined the meeting by phone.
When Trump announced he was lifting sanctions imposed on Syria, he credited both the crown prince and Erdogan with persuading him to make the move.
Roots of a rocky relationship
There have been 'both regional and ideological reasons' for the Turkey-Saudi rivalry in the past, according to Sinem Cengiz, a Turkish researcher at Qatar University's Gulf Studies Center.
Both countries enjoy the status of so-called 'middle powers' — states that are influential globally but lack the clout of great powers — which has 'fueled competition for regional dominance,' she said.
The two also have different approaches to political Islam. Turkey has backed the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Arab Islamist movement that Saudi Arabia considers a terror organization, as do several other Middle East countries.
After the 2011 Arab Spring swept across the region, Turkey openly supported the popular uprisings while the kingdom remained circumspect. However, both Ankara and Riyadh backed anti-Assad factions in Syria's 13-year civil war.
When Saudi Arabia and Qatar, another wealthy Gulf Arab state, had a diplomatic blowup in 2017, Turkey sided with Qatar.
The lowest point in relations came in 2018 when a Saudi hit squad killed Jamal Khashoggi — a Saudi citizen and U.S. resident who wrote critically about the Saudi government for The Washington Post — at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Turkish officials — who had access to audio recordings from inside the consulate — alleged that Khashoggi was killed in a premeditated operation by Saudi agents and dismembered with a bone saw. Prince Mohammed acknowledged the killing came under his watch but denied he ordered it, though U.S. intelligence agencies believe that he did.
How did Assad's fall improve relations?
Analysts say Assad's fall and the new reality in Syria intensified a thaw that was already underway between the two major U.S. allies.
Hesham Alghannam, a Saudi political scientist and nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center think tank, says it was an impetus that 'significantly transformed Turkey-Saudi relations."
Their interests aligned in a post-Assad Syria, so the two shifted 'from rivalry to pragmatic cooperation,' Alghannam said.
Ankara and Riyadh shared concerns about Iran's outsized influence in Syria under Assad — which disappeared with Assad's ouster — and the two now want to insure Tehran' doesn't stage a comeback, he added.
They also had their own security concerns in Syria — Turkey because of its long unstable border with Syria and Turkish insurgent Kurdish groups that have sought safe havens with Syrian Kurds.
For its part, the kingdom has worried about the smuggling of the highly addictive Captagon in the region, an amphetamine-like stimulant that had been a main source of revenue for Assad.
'Their mutual need to counter Iran, manage Syria's instability, and shape a Sunni-led government (post-Assad) has fostered a partnership,' Alghannam said.
Riyadh and Ankara have also recently established a united front to counterbalance Israel, which has been suspicious of al-Sharaa, once a leader of a formerly al-Qaida-linked militant group.
Since Assad's fall, Israel has launched airstrikes, seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone inside Syria and threatened to invade to protect the Druze religious minority after Druze factions clashed with the new Syrian security forces under al-Sharaa.
Joint Saudi-Turkey lobbying helped persuade Trump despite opposition in Israel — Washington's strongest ally in the region — to lift the U.S. sanctions on Syria, "in the interest of avoiding any new destabilization,' Cengiz said.
Today, Saudi Arabia and Turkey believe that like Iran did in the past, 'Israel is playing a similarly disruptive role in Syria," she added.
Will the cooperation last?
With the lifting of Western sanctions paving the way for lucrative reconstruction deals and other investments in the new Syria, analysts say the Riyadh-Ankara alignment is likely to continue.
Cengiz said that neither Riyadh nor Ankara can dominate in Syria, so 'to maximize their respective interests, both Turkey and Saudi Arabia will need to continue finding ways to work together for a 'win-win' outcome."
Alghannam noted other signs of warming relations, including the revival earlier this month of the long-dormant Saudi-Turkish Coordination Council, a body charged with promoting cooperation across political, military, intelligence and economic sectors.
There will be arms sales, he said, pointing to Saudi interests in Turkish drones, as well as 'joint reconstruction efforts in Syria.'
While their rivalry could still resurface, 'the trend toward Turkey-Saudi cooperation is likely to persist," he concluded.
Salem El Yami, a former Saudi foreign ministry official and political analyst, said Syria's new leaders will have "a significant role to play' in balancing ties with allies rather than playing them off against each other.
'If Saudi-Turkish coordination succeeds in Syria ... it can be expected to contribute to Syria's stability and, consequently, to the state of calm and stability in the region,' he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
31 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
A Virginia museum found 4 Confederate soldiers' remains. It's trying to identify them
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — Archaeologists in Virginia were excavating the grounds of a building that stored gunpowder during the American Revolution when they uncovered the eye sockets of a human skull. The team carefully unearthed four skeletons, including one with a bullet in the spine, and three amputated legs. They quickly surmised the bones were actually from the Civil War, when a makeshift hospital operated nearby and treated gravely wounded Confederate soldiers. The archaeologists work at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a museum that owns the land and focuses on the city's 18th century history. They're now trying to identify human remains from the 19th century, a rare endeavor that will include searching for living descendants and requesting swabs of DNA. The museum has recovered enough genetic material from the men's teeth for possible matches. But the prospect of identifying them emerged only after the team located handwritten lists in an archive that name the soldiers in that hospital. 'It is the key,' said Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg's executive director of archaeology. 'If these men were found in a mass grave on a battlefield, and there was no other information, we probably wouldn't be trying to do this.' The archaeologists have narrowed the possible identities to four men who served in regiments from Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and Virginia. The museum is withholding the names as the work continues. Meanwhile, the remains were reinterred Tuesday at a Williamsburg cemetery where Confederate soldiers from the same battle are buried. 'Everyone deserves dignity in death,' Gary said. 'And being stored in a drawer inside a laboratory does not do that.' 'Shockingly costly for both sides' The soldiers fought in the Battle of Williamsburg, a bloody engagement on May 5, 1862. The fighting was part of the Peninsula Campaign, a major Union offensive that tried to end the war quickly. The campaign's failure that summer, stalling outside the Confederate capital of Richmond, informed President Abraham Lincoln's decision to end slavery. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln said he intended to reunite the nation with slavery intact in the Southern states, while halting its westward expansion, said Timothy Orr, a military historian and professor at Old Dominion University. But Lincoln realized after the campaign that he needed a more radical approach, Orr said. And while the president faced political pressure for emancipation, freeing people who were enslaved served as 'another weapon to defeat the Confederacy.' 'He becomes convinced that slavery is feeding the Confederate war effort,' Orr said. 'It had to be taken away.' Bigger and bloodier battles followed Williamsburg, Orr said, but it was 'shockingly costly for both sides." Roughly 14,600 Union soldiers fought about 12,500 Confederates, Carol Kettenburg Dubbs wrote in her 2002 book, 'Defend This Old Town.' The number of Union killed, wounded, captured or missing was 2,283. The Confederate figure was 1,870. The fighting moved north, while a Union brigade occupied the southern city. Confederate soldiers too wounded for travel were placed in homes and a church, which was converted into a hospital. A surgeon from New York treated them, while local women visited the church, Dubbs wrote. One woman noted in her diary on May 26 that there were 'only 18 out of 61 left.' Their arms were crossed When the remains were discovered in 2023, they were aligned east-west in the Christian tradition, said Gary, the archaeologist. Their arms were crossed. The careful burial indicates they were not dumped into a mass grave, Gary said. Those who died in the battle were almost immediately placed in trenches and later reinterred at a cemetery. The men were not in uniform, said Eric Schweickart, a staff archaeologist. Some were in more comfortable clothes, based on artifacts that included buttons and a trouser buckle. One soldier had two $5 gold coins from 1852. Another had a toothbrush made of animal bone and a snuff bottle, used for sniffing tobacco. The bullet in the soldier's spine was a Minié ball, a common round of Civil War ammunition. The foot of one amputated leg also contained a Minié ball. Bones in a second severed leg were shattered. 'We want it be ironclad' As the team researched the battle, they learned of the lists of hospitalized soldiers, said Evan Bell, an archaeological lab technician. The lists were likely copied from Union records by the women who visited the wounded. The documents were with a local family's papers at William & Mary, a university nearby. The lists became the project's Rosetta stone, providing names and regiments of more than 60 soldiers. They included dates of death and notes indicating amputations. The archaeologists eliminated soldiers on the lists who survived or lost an extremity. The four skeletons had all of their limbs. Death dates were key because three men were buried together, allowing the team to pinpoint three soldiers who died around the same time. William & Mary's Institute for Historical Biology examined the remains and estimated their ages. The youngest was between 15 and 19, the oldest between 35 and 55. The estimates helped match names to enlistment records, census data and Union prisoner of war documents. The soldiers' remains and the amputated limbs were buried in their own stainless steel boxes in a concrete vault, Gary said. If descendants are confirmed, they can move their ancestor to another burial site. The identification effort will continue for another several months at least and will include extensive genealogy work, Gary said. Using only DNA tests on remains from the 1800s can risk false positives because 'you start becoming related to everyone.' 'We want it to be ironclad,' he said.
San Francisco Chronicle
36 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Pennsylvania is suing the USDA over cutting funding to a $1 billion food aid program for states
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday, saying the agency, under President Donald Trump, had illegally cut off funding to it through a program designed to distribute more than $1 billion in aid to states to purchase food from farms for schools, child care centers, and food banks. The lawsuit in federal court, announced by Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, comes three months after the USDA advised states that it was ending the pandemic-era assistance program because it no longer reflected agency priorities. 'I don't get what the hell their priorities are if not feeding people and taking care of our farmers," Shapiro said at a news conference at a food bank warehouse in Philadelphia. The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Harrisburg, asks the court to reverse the USDA's decision to end the reimbursement program. Shapiro's administration, in the lawsuit, said the USDA's termination of the contract was illegal, saying the USDA didn't explain why it no longer reflected agency priorities and that the contract didn't expressly allow the USDA to terminate it for those reasons. Shapiro said he was confident that Pennsylvania would win the lawsuit. 'A deal is a deal,' Shapiro told the news conference. 'They made a deal with our farmers, they made a deal with Pennsylvania and they broke it.' The loss to Pennsylvania is $13 million under a three-year contract, money that the state planned to use to buy food from farms to stock food banks. States also use the money to buy food from farms for school nutrition programs and child care centers. Purchases include commodities such as cheese, eggs, meat, fruits and vegetables. The department, under then-President Joe Biden, announced a second round of funding through the program last year.
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Pennsylvania is suing the USDA over cutting funding to a $1 billion food aid program for states
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday, saying the agency, under President Donald Trump, had illegally cut off funding to it through a program designed to distribute more than $1 billion in aid to states to purchase food from farms for schools, child care centers, and food banks. The lawsuit in federal court, announced by Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, comes three months after the USDA advised states that it was ending the pandemic-era assistance program because it no longer reflected agency priorities. 'I don't get what the hell their priorities are if not feeding people and taking care of our farmers," Shapiro said at a news conference at a food bank warehouse in Philadelphia. The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Harrisburg, asks the court to reverse the USDA's decision to end the reimbursement program. Shapiro's administration, in the lawsuit, said the USDA's termination of the contract was illegal, saying the USDA didn't explain why it no longer reflected agency priorities and that the contract didn't expressly allow the USDA to terminate it for those reasons. Shapiro said he was confident that Pennsylvania would win the lawsuit. 'A deal is a deal,' Shapiro told the news conference. 'They made a deal with our farmers, they made a deal with Pennsylvania and they broke it.' The loss to Pennsylvania is $13 million under a three-year contract, money that the state planned to use to buy food from farms to stock food banks. States also use the money to buy food from farms for school nutrition programs and child care centers. Purchases include commodities such as cheese, eggs, meat, fruits and vegetables. The department, under then-President Joe Biden, announced a second round of funding through the program last year. ___ Follow Marc Levy on X at Marc Levy, The Associated Press
