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HomePublic OpinionCritical turning points in Syria's 13-year civil war -1

Critical turning points in Syria’s 13-year civil war -1

Series of articles

In March 2011, high school students who were affected by the activism in Arab countries wrote this article on a wall in Dera.

Bashar Assad was known by this nickname because his main profession was an ophthalmologist.

Following the detention of the students who wrote the article and violence against their families, protests were held in Damascus and Dera after Friday prayers on March 15, 2011.

Assad responded harshly, dozens of civilians lost their lives.

Protests then spread across the country.

This is how the civil war began in Syria.

"It's your turn, doctor."
“It’s your turn, doctor.”

Today, it is impossible to find a Syrian who has not lost a loved one or been estranged from his/her family in the region he/she lives in, in a country with a population of 22 million in 2011, and more than 600,000 people have lost their lives in 13 years.

Approximately 6.5 million Syrians are internally displaced. Most live in tents or in unhealthy conditions.

Almost six million refugees have also left Syria.

When the civil war began, many of the Al Qaeda members who were in prison joined organizations such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

The Islamist militant groups led by HTS entered Damascus on December 8.

And it was reported that Bashar Assad left Damascus on a plane.

So how did we get to this point?

We examined the turning points and critical developments of the war:

July 2011

– Opposition forces establish Free Syrian Army, uprising turns into civil war
Dozens of people died and the protests intensified as security forces intervened in the protests.

The officers who left the army announced that they joined the opposition, which started to arm itself, taking some soldiers with them.

On July 30, it was announced that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was formed, consisting mostly of officers who had left the army.

After this date, the term “civil war” began to be used for the events in Syria.

Aid was also coming to the opposition from foreign countries, especially Türkiye, Qatar and other Gulf countries.

On August 9, 2011, then-Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu went to Damascus to contact the Assad administration, which had very close relations with Ankara until the uprisings began.

The meeting, which lasted eight hours, was the last high-level meeting between Ankara and Damascus.

Esad and Davutoğlu, 2011
Esad and Davutoğlu, 2011

Meanwhile, Turkey was implementing an open door policy for Assad opponents and civilians fleeing Syria.

On August 18, then US President Barack Obama called on Assad to resign. Many Western countries also began to impose embargoes on the Assad regime.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who went to Egypt in September where another uprising took place and the regime was overthrown, and was the prime minister at the time, described the Damascus regime as “shooting its people and raiding cities with tanks and artillery”:

“The Syrian people do not believe in Assad right now; neither do we.”

During the same period, the political wing of the opposition was gathering in Turkey and Qatar.

At the very beginning of the uprisings, Assad released radical Islamists, who were the West’s worst nightmare, from prisons in order to cut off support for the opposition.

Together with the jihadists coming from Iraq, these fighters took their place on the side of the scattered opposition.

Assad’s army withdrew from the mostly Kurdish-populated regions of northern Syria without fighting.

In this region, armed members of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) formed the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in July 2012.

After Assad’s move against Turkey, the YPG became the dominant force in Afrin, Kobani and Qamishli, and YPG flags were hung on the Turkish border.

Turkey claims that the PYD and YPG are extensions of the PKK.

February 2013

– Iran’s presence in Syria was officially announced, the course of the war changed in Assad’s favor
The Iranian government, not wanting to lose one of its most important allies in the region, Assad, was providing the Damascus army with weapons, militia and training/command support through the Quds Force.

There were reports that the leader of the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, was seen on the front lines in Syria.

On February 14, 2013, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced that one of its commanders had been killed by the opposition in Syria.

In the meantime, the opposition had captured many settlements.

A few months after Iran admitted its involvement in the war, on June 5, 2013, Qusayr on the Lebanese border came under the control of the Damascus army.

Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani
Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani

This victory, which Assad achieved with the support of Hezbollah and Iranian militias under the leadership of Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, was a turning point that changed the course of the civil war in favor of Assad, in which the opposition had gained gains in two years.

However, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was being very cautious in his statements at the time.

In an article he wrote for the Washington Post in September, Rouhani stated, “An environment needs to be created where people in the region can determine their own destiny, and diplomacy should be used in Syria.”

August 2013  

Sarin gas was used in the Damascus countryside

The allegations that the Damascus government used chemical gas were “confirmed” by the US on June 14, 2013.

On August 21, a sarin gas attack was carried out in Ghouta.

Hundreds of people, including civilians, lost their lives.

These attacks reminded us of Obama’s statement in 2012:

“The use of chemical or biological weapons is our red line.”

However, the turning point of the war was what happened on the Washington-Moscow line after the use of sarin gas and ultimately the US changing its stance on the Syrian civil war.

Obama, who was expected to intervene in Syria because he said “the red line has been crossed,” “requested military authority from Congress” and threw the ball to Congress.

Immediately afterwards, he made an agreement with Russia, a supporter of the Assad government, to remove the chemical weapons in Syria from the country.

Ankara reacted.

The then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu stated, “Seeing this as an absolute solution, conveying a message to the Syrian regime that no matter what tool you use other than chemical weapons, no matter how many people you kill, this will not bring peace.”

The Obama administration provided limited support to the opposition after that date; it did not intervene openly against Assad.

This situation led to comments that the Obama administration, which was close to a nuclear agreement with Iran at the time, was acting reticently in Syria in order not to increase tensions with Tehran.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise among the opposition created anxiety in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries.

Riyadh was no longer supporting the opposition in the south through Turkey, but through Jordan.

Eventually, opposition groups in different parts of the country split.

ISIS captures Raqqa January 2014

The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and members of the organization, who came from Iraq, launched an attack on opposition groups in Raqqa.

In January 2014, he expelled these groups from the city and announced that “the capital of the caliphate is Raqqa.”

Organizations such as Ahrar al-Sham and al-Nusra, which were expelled from Raqqa, mostly headed to Idlib.

Thus, the number of radical groups on the Turkish border increased.

ISIS became increasingly stronger and increased its number of fighters to 30,000, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In 2015, ISIS had reached the capacity to launch major attacks in some Arab countries, Turkey and Europe, in which dozens of people lost their lives.

The siege of Kobani and the first US air operation against ISIS in Syria, September 2014

Erdoğan ve Obama
Erdoğan ve Obama

ISIS, which captured Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities, in June 2014, had surrounded some of the PYD regions on the Turkish border.

The US, which first targeted ISIS with an airstrike in the Sinjar region of Iraq in August, carried out its first airstrike against the organization in Syria on September 23.

On September 27, it struck ISIS once more in Kobani to prevent its advance into PYD regions.

While Erdoğan said in early October, “Unless cooperation is established with those who carry out this task in the ground operation, this job will not be finished with the air operation. Kobani has fallen and is falling right now,” referring to the Turkish-backed opposition, the US had other plans.

On October 19, Barack Obama called Erdoğan and said that he would provide direct arms aid to the YPG, and the aid began.

This time, the course of the war changed for the YPG.

First, the YPG pushed back ISIS, which had besieged Kobani, and then advanced rapidly along the Turkish border. Then, turning south, they captured Raqqa.

The YPG’s growing strength to declare autonomy in Syria under the name of a ‘canton’ and gaining the support of the international coalition against ISIS led by the US laid the final stone in front of the fragile resolution process in Turkey.

The process, which caused great shock at the time of the Kobani incidents, ended with Turkey striking first ISIS in Syria and then PKK targets in Northern Iraq on July 24.

6.5 million Syrians are displaced from their homes
6.5 million Syrians are displaced from their homes

In the same days, Incirlik Base, which the US wanted to use in operations against ISIS but Turkey “would only approve in return for the establishment of a safe zone”, was opened before these conditions were met.

A high-level Turkish official speaking to BBC Turkish explained the reason for opening Incirlik Base and hitting ISIS before targeting the PKK with the following words:

“If we had only hit the PKK, no matter how legitimate it was, it could have been perceived as harming the fight against ISIS. We were already fighting allegations that Turkey was supporting ISIS. In order to prevent this perception, we opened Incirlik Base and conducted the first operation against ISIS. Then we hit PKK targets.”

Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield on August 24, 2016 to prevent the establishment of a bridge between the two YPG regions and to end the ISIS threat on its border. In 2018, it launched Operation Olive Branch in Afrin.

The YPG had now become Turkey’s top priority in Syria.

Both the Olive Branch and Euphrates Shield operations were carried out thanks to the green light given by Russia, which now controls Syria’s airspace.