Turkey-Syria & the New Geopolitics of the Greater Middle East | Joshua Landis

In Episode 291 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joshua Landis. Landis is the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and a widely recognized Syria expert. He was last on the podcast over three years ago to discuss the then-ongoing invasion of northern Syria by the Turkish military and the long-term withdrawal of American forces from the Middle East and Central Asia.

The background for today’s conversation are the ongoing negotiations between Turkey, Russia, and Syria and President Erdoğan’s desire to expand Turkey’s military presence in northern Syria. Erdoğan’s stated aim is to create a larger buffer zone in which to transfer Syrian refugees and from which to defend Turkey from the threat posed by an independent Kurdish state aligned with elements of The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Ankara’s jingoistic rhetoric may be in part responsible for bringing Russia and Syria to the table and we may be on the verge of a reset in Turkish-Syrian relations and a reproachment between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Bashar al-Assad. The implications of such a reset would be profound for the Syrian people and is further evidence of Turkey’s bid for strategic autonomy. It is also reflective of the emerging geopolitical complexities of the Middle East and Europe, which have only been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.

Joshua Landis and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation focused mostly on the historical antecedents of the conflict in Syria and the larger American presence in the Middle East. They devote the second hour to assessing long-term prospects for Turkey as a regional power, the role of the EU and NATO as counterbalancing forces to Turkish aggression in the Aegean, and the prospects for normalization of relations between Turkey and Syria and what this means for the US and Europe long-term.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

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Episode Recorded on 12/29/2022