Comment on far-bg.com
December 8 is the last day in the history of the dictatorial regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In a matter of days, the state terror machine that had kept the Syrian population under its control for 24 years collapsed and collapsed.
Although Assad is a doctor by training and has taken the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm to people, he has resorted to a policy of genocide and extermination of all who disagreed with his course.
Assad has cemented his image as one of the world's most brutal mass murderers, with the blood of more than a quarter of a million of his countrymen on his hands. As the representative of the Alawites, Syria's Shia religious minority, he ruthlessly suppressed the resistance of the Sunnis who make up the majority of the country's population, including in the armed forces. This explains the practical lack of resistance from government units marching from Idlib province and the border with Turkey towards Damascus.
One by one, cities such as Aleppo, Hama, Homs fell into the hands of the rebels, as a result of which the units of the Syrian National Army and units of the “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham“ (HTS) triumphantly entered Damascus. Assad's forces are surrendering completely, while the rebels, on the contrary, are looking for members of his government to take power from them, avoiding violence. Moreover, one of the leaders of the uprising and leader of HTS, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, emphasizes that the goal of the Syrian revolution is to remove the dead regime and establish institutional governance in Syria through elections. It is through them that Syrians will finally achieve peace after 13 years of civil war.
This is the opinion of the Turkish political leadership, which welcomes the development of the revolutionary processes in the neighboring Muslim country, especially in the context of the possible formation of a government that reflects the religious and ethnic configuration of Syria, where Sunni Islam predominates. Turkish President R. Erdogan, speaking at the 8th regular provincial congress of the Justice and Development Party in Gaziantep, was critical of the former Syrian leadership. He stressed that Turkey has given shelter to millions of Syrian civilians who have been forced to flee their homes because of the fighting, especially the aerial bombardment carried out by the Assad regime and its foreign allies – Iran and Russia, against them.
The Assad regime pursued an aggressive policy until the end, resorting to terrorizing the population in Idlib province, which was the last straw and sparked an unprecedentedly strong revolutionary movement. As a result, despite Assad's diplomatic maneuvers aimed at gaining international support for his dictatorship, he suffered a complete collapse and the opposition forces, under the slogans of freedom, justice, peace and security, ended the history of the vile dictatorship. Thus, Ankara welcomes the new reality, which will be characterized by the fact that “Syria, with all its ethnic, confessional and religious components, will belong to the Syrians”.
The last point is very important, as it clearly shows Ankara's position on the undesirability of external forces acting as foreign support for anti-revolutionary forces on Syrian territory. The most important role here belongs to Russia, which considered the Assad regime to be its strategic, if not its only true ally in the Middle East. Russian propaganda has long been dominated by the narrative that it was Russian military intervention, air force missile strikes on opposition units, and the supply of arms to Assad's army that were the decisive elements in keeping Assad in power in the critical year of 2015.
It was then that the Russians began a three-year struggle against the “terrorists” from its military bases in the Syrian region of Latakia, which, according to Assad's Russian patron, Russian President Putin, ended with the defeat of the extremist forces. Moscow's interference in Syrian affairs has been a significant irritant for the Turks, and at times it has led to a situation of open interstate confrontation, as was the case with the downing of a Russian Su-24 that violated Turkish airspace in November 2015. and was shot down by Turkish air defenses.
Therefore, from a political, geostrategic and security perspective, Russia's military presence on Syrian territory is undesirable for Ankara. It is not only related to the suppression of the anti-Assad uprising, but also represents a military challenge for Ankara itself. The Russians currently have up to 2,500 military personnel in Syria, stationed mainly at the Khmeimim Air Base and the Russian Navy's 720th Logistics Center in Tartus. They are armed with air defense systems, missiles, armored vehicles and ammunition.
The future of the Russian military presence in Syria's Latakia after the fall of the Assad regime has become one of the key issues currently being discussed. The Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Kremlin itself do not fully understand what to do with their own military infrastructure located in this part of the world. Of course, the Turkish side has a huge role in solving this issue, not only from the point of view of Ankara's influence on the new government in Damascus, which is still in the process of being structured, but also from the point of view of Turkey's international obligations related to with the regime of the Black Sea straits.
The Russian military contingent, known as the Russian Federation Force Group in the Syrian Arab Republic, is in very dire straits and could become the target of natural retaliation by the Syrian Revolutionary Forces, which Lavrov's team has only now stopped calling “terrorists“ and already calls the Syrian "opposition". First of all, it should be noted that the agreements to base Russian military in Syria were concluded with the ousted Assad regime, and it was his security that they were supposed to guarantee in exchange for Moscow's geopolitical preferences. Thus, the purpose of the group's deployment disappeared, along with the escape of former President Assad.
For the Turks, these Russian bases are a symbol of the projection of Russian military presence in the Mediterranean, a tool for international capitalization of the illegal annexation of Ukrainian Crimea, and a means of providing logistics for expansion in Africa. Fugitive Bashar al-Assad is pinning his last hope of staying in power on the Russian military, and during a visit to Moscow last week, he asked Putin to use the full firepower of the air force in Syria against the rebels to raze their bases in Idlib. The Russians began to comply with this request, resulting in between November 27 and December 2, 2024. 81 civilians in Idlib and Aleppo were killed by Russian airstrikes, 304 people were injured, and the Russians also bombed the “Al-Watan“ clinic.
Moreover, just a few days before the fall of Damascus, the Russian special services in Latakia were developing a scenario for the proclamation of a Syrian analogue of the DPR and LPR, the so-called “Latakia People's Republic”, which could become the center of resistance against the revolution and a place to concentrate Assad's loyalists for the purpose of his future restoration to power.
This is supported by Moscow's official recognition of the political asylum of Assad and his family in Moscow. However, due to the rapidity of the collapse of the Assad regime, it turned out to be impossible to implement these plans, which would guarantee the security and inviolability of Russian military bases in Syria.
There are reports that Assad was able to escape from Syria precisely with the help of Air Force planes that managed to reach the Khmeimim base. Together with him, part of the command of the Russian group fled to Russia. Thus, the question of the evacuation of the property and weapons of the Russian military bases from Syria is becoming more and more relevant, as this could be one of the first bright achievements of the December revolution in Syria and an unconditional geopolitical victory for Turkey.
Reassuring statements from the Kremlin are appearing in the public space that Putin officials are in direct contact with representatives of the armed opposition in Syria, who allegedly gave the Russians guarantees about the inviolability of their diplomatic missions and the security of their military bases. It is difficult to assess how credible these assurances are, given the storming and looting of the Iranian embassy in Damascus by insurgents and the evacuation of Iraqi diplomats to Lebanon.
In view of this, the importance and position of Turkey for the Russians becomes more and more important in the question of the future of their bases in Syria. Moscow is working on schemes to evacuate personnel, property and weapons from Latakia, worried by Erdogan's changing stance.
It is quite possible that armed revolutionaries will try to seize Russian facilities in the chaos, just as they previously easily seized bases and arsenals of the Syrian government army. The Turks may turn a blind eye to this, citing the uncontrollable course of the people's revolution.
That is why Moscow may be conducting secret negotiations, mainly with Ankara, for the unhindered evacuation of its military and their weapons from Syria to other Russian bases, including Crimea. The Russians want Turkey to facilitate the Black Sea passage for Russian ships that want to leave Tartus carrying military cargo.
For more than 9 years of presence in Syria, the Russians have accumulated many weapons that have been used by a contingent of over 7,500 people. Currently, the most valuable items are transported to Russia by military transport planes, but they can only take minimal amounts of weapons with them. It is known that up to 90% of the cargo in support of the Russian military presence in Syria was transported by sea.
However, Ankara is required to reject the Russians' request for permission to allow Russian warships with weapons to enter the Black Sea through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. The current Montreux Convention obliges Ankara to deny access to the straits to warships of any country at war, even if Turkey is not involved in the war. Therefore, since the weapons that Russia wants to export by sea can be used in the war against Ukraine, the Turkish side should refuse to allow the Russians to carry out their aggressive intentions.
This is especially true considering that on February 27, 2024 Ankara officially recognized Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a war and imposed restrictions, halting the movement of Russian ships. Also in January 2024, citing the provisions of the Montreux Convention, the Turks refused to release two minesweepers handed over to Ukraine by the British Navy.
Accordingly, Ankara should continue to stick to its course, proving its role as a supporter of security in the Black Sea region. Such an approach not only improves Turkey's international image, but also provides it with significant advantages. At the very least, it will make it difficult and time-consuming for the Russians to get their weapons out of Syria for use in other theaters of war.
Moscow may decide that this plan is too expensive and abandon it, handing over existing weapons to the new Syrian government or simply destroying them in place. So this option is completely acceptable for Turkey, as well as for the entire international community, which strives for a more stable and secure world.