What Does Regime Change in Syria Change?
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Here's my question for today: What does regime change in Syria change? The overthrow of longtime mass murdering dictator Bashar al-Assad strikes me as a good thing. I think all civilized people can agree to that. But those who did the overthrowing? Not good. The most important rebel group involved in this revolution is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, better known as HDS. It has roots in both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Its leader's name de guerre is Abu Muhammad al-Jawani. He and HCS have been officially designated as terrorists by the U.S. government. The fall of Assad weakens Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Russian President, presumably for life, Vladimir Putin. Both had backed Assad and both had derived benefits from Assad in exchange.

The fall of Assad strengthens Turkish president, presumably also for life, Rousseff Tayyip Erdogan. He supports HDS. I believe the Qataris do as well. We'll talk about that. As for Israel, it now has one less terrorist proxy of Tehran on its border, though, as noted, it's been replaced by terrorist Sunni Arabs, HDS.

But if HDS wants to wage jihad, it'll have to do so without Assad's jet fighters, warships, missiles and chemical weapons, because the Israelis have launched more than 450 airstrikes to destroy them.

To discuss all this and more, we're joined by Roel Mark Gurek, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer focusing on the Middle East, and Jonathan Schanzer, FTD's executive director, who has written books and innumerable articles on Middle East issues. We also have with us Michael Duran, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute.

In the administration of George W. Bush, he served as senior director of the National Security Council. He also served in the Bush administration as a senior advisor in the State Department and a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Pentagon. I'm Cliff May. I'm glad you could join us, too, here on Foreign Policy.

Good to see you all, guys. Oh, I should have brought out the whiskey, and I didn't do that. I was going to say, where's the scotch? And now I think of it. And you're on a tight schedule. But I do have some. Well, we'll see how long you can stay. You have to barbeque it after this. What, grapefruit-flavored sparkling water is not good enough?

All right. So the fall of Assad was not on the bingo cards, as you said, of most of the experts. And it seems to me that it should have been. Shouldn't it, Michael? And also, what do you think inspired Jolani to figure, OK, now's the time. Assad can be taken down. I can do it.

So, first of all, thanks for having me here. You, of course, enticed me with scotch and then you did a bait and switch. It's okay. All right. I understand. That's fine. And Ruel here is bleeding on me. The viewers can't see that. I only bleed on my friends. Strange way to treat guests. Yeah.

I did not see this coming. Maybe we should have. I don't know anyone who did see it coming. And, of course, we now know that the Assad regime was hollowed out by Israel's war against Iran, particularly against Hezbollah. Right, because Hezbollah was necessary to keep Assad right. Yes. And the Russians used to have troops there, but they pulled them back. To Ukraine. And I think the Syrian troops were underpaid and kind of demoralized.

Totally, yeah, totally demoralized. The question I don't know the answer to is, was this the HTS Turkish plan to go all the way to Damascus? I gave an interview somewhere where I said, I think what they're going to do is take Aleppo. And then when they went to Hama, I said, they're going to hold the line, the regime will hold the line at Hama. And what Erdogan is doing is setting up a position to negotiate Hama.

But then they went all the way to Damascus. And I keep asking everyone I know, did they intend to go to Damascus or not? Nobody knows. I mean, I hear different expressions of total certainty. Oh, yes, they intended to go all the time. No, it was completely by accident. Yes, it was a Turkish plan. No, it was HTS ran ahead and the Turks had to follow. I don't know what happened.

All right. What do your sources, your secret sources say, former CIA? I think they just discovered that they could continue to advance. Like anyone else, they advanced. I would have to say one thing. I think the regime was hollowed out by the Civil War. 11 years, more than that, since 2011. It was frozen, though. I did write somewhere, I've forgotten where, that I said if the Iranians withdraw their support, then in all probability, the Alawite regime is going to go down.

Because the fact was that their high watermark, the Alawites only had 10% of the population. They're probably down. They were down somewhere by seven or eight now. So they couldn't sustain those losses without the Iranians backing them. All right. Now we're going to have to explain to people what you mean by the Alawites are only small. Oh, they're one of my favorite heretical Shiite sects.

Hereticals? How many other heretical sects are there? There are. I mean, they're really a good one. Let me do, I'm going to do five sentences of history, and I swear, because if I ask you, we'll be here for five hours. I know, right? Five sentences, right? So you've got what we call Syria was an Ottoman possession for hundreds of years, right? That's the case. And then the Ottoman Empire falls, and you've got Sykes people, right? Diplomats from

the empires of Britain and France, and they decide on a map, we're going to pull together

a country and we're going to make it with different groups. There'll be Sunnis. Um, there, there'll be Kurds in the North. There'll be Druze in the South. There'll be the sec called the Alawites, a small sect on the coastline. That's what, that's what Bashar al-Assad was an Alawite only about 12%. As you say, they're kind of a heretical Shiite sect because they could drink liquor and they were kind of secularized. And then he became a bathest, which is kind of a total bullshit, uh,

Well, it wasn't. Once upon a time, you know,

The Ba'ath, which means the Renaissance, the renovation, was the best thing going in the Arab world. It was supposedly going to give them the capacity. Well, it was like Arab nationalism. It was a way to unite people on the basis. That way you could be an Arab Christian or an Arab Sunni or an Arab Shia and still be buddies. And Syria was in many ways the motherland of this idea of this movement. So what happened next is they put this together. It gets independence at some point.

Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez, I think understands if we're not in control, you know, if we're not making dinner, we're on the menu. Right? So I'm taking control and I'm going to hold it and the Alawites hold it for 50 years. And then in 2011, you have this, the Arab Spring, and you have a revolution there. And we at FDD, we were in touch with some secular, I would say, democratic groups that

in Syria that President Obama, and we tried to get President Obama to support them rather than, and we couldn't do it. He totally, you remember this very well because you thought maybe he would support them because they were kind of pro-American. We were talking with them. We were actually giving them some devices to communicate among themselves. Go ahead. I was going to say, don't forget this weird period of history where the Syrians joined

with the Egyptians for the Syrian Arab Republic. A non-contiguous country. Correct, non-contiguous country. And that was another weird moment in the sort of Arab nationalist trajectory of Syria. But, you know, I think getting back to your point about the hollowing out of the regime and sort of what happened on the march, I think, look, first of all, the regime was weak when they started to bring in the Russians and the Iranians and Hezbollah. They needed these

These forces in order like 2015. You're talking about, right? I think even before that, while the Iranians come in before the Russians, the fame, the famous meeting with general Qasem Soleimani and Moscow is 2015. And he emphasizes the need to get,

to Syria quickly. I mean, Qasem Soleimani, again, being the head of the Quds Force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran, he was whacked by President Trump, just so we know who we're talking about here. Correct. So you have this... We're going to get a similar view again.

But you have a Syrian army that can't do it on their own. And it becomes very clear. And I think that the Iranians hollowed out the regime. They didn't want Assad ruling. They ruled and they kept him in there as a figurehead. But I think then getting- Sort of a colony, Syria was, of the Islamic Republic. I mean, I have to say, I mean, there was commentary back in the heavy section of the war, probably the hottest section in 2012, 2016, where

where the Iranians were actually chastising the Alawites for being incompetent and being incapable. So I'm not sure that the Iranian regime intentionally wanted to hollow them out. I think the simple fact of constant combat and how few Alawites there are

uh, ended up gutting the regime and the Iranians, I, the Israelis get credit here because I think the Iranians realized they needed to have a permanent substantial force in the country when they attempted to do that. Uh, the Israelis hit those bases, they hit the, uh, all the effort to bring in and establish large Iranian bases. And when that failed, I think it's set in motion. What we just saw happen that you, they could not have sufficient ground forces in country.

to forestall such a rapid advance. Were there a lot of Iranian troops in Syria when this happened? Well, in the past, yes. There were a substantial number of guardsmen, more than just the Quds Force. They were rotating in the regular, there may have even been regular army units. And so a lot of Iranians were,

participated in the war. But they fled this time around. Well, they left. They were gone. They were already gone. They were withdrawn. Almost all of them were withdrawn. And the Russians didn't have nearly the troop numbers in the country. No, they were up to 20,000 at one point. I think they were very low at this point. So they really, all they had were the standard Syrian army, which we discovered was quite weak. So the one other thing that I just want to add is what the Israelis have been doing since roughly 2014 is what they call their campaign between wars.

where they've been targeting things primarily in Syria, weapons that were being smuggled into Lebanon, but also targeting specific bases and garrisons that included senior Iranian officials. They have been doing this in the gray zone, right? Not attribution, but knocking the hell out of Iran and Syrian assets, right?

throughout the country. That's been going on for almost 10 years. Now, it spiked over the last 14 months where the Israelis went after some of these assets even harder than they had been, where there were already thousands of things that had been hit. So I think the Israelis contributed to the hollowing out of the Assad regime as well. And one should say that, you know,

The Obama administration was not terribly cracked up about some of the aggressive Israeli actions against the Iranians in Syria. No, they're taking credit for it now. It's a bit of a push. By the way, one thing I neglected to mention, the other group that was within this new country called Syria are Christians. And even that's a shorthand because when you say Christians, you mean Christians.

Christians are Armenians, you mean Orthodox, you mean Catholics. I mean, there's quite a few Christian sects within what's in Syria, even to this day. And I think they're kind of wondering what happens to them now, which gets us to

Abu Muhammad al-Jolani. And my guess is that you've been doing some studying to try to figure out who this guy is and what his ideology is, what his theology is. And what his relationship is to the Sultan. What his relation is to the Sultan meeting Erdogan in Ankara, precisely so.

And he's been saying he's been smart. He's been put on a suit and trimmed his beard and saying nice things. I'm dubious of anything he says, but I'm curious to know what you think of Mr. Jolani. I think that we need to wait and see.

I had a Middle Easterner in my office this morning, and he said, distrust but verify. I think that's a good line. Yeah. And so he's making all of the right statements. He's letting women wear whatever they want.

He's not molesting Christian communities. They just read it. I just saw on the web as I was coming over to you, they just lit up a Christmas tree in Latakia. In Latakia, not in Damascus. He's sending all of the right messages, and I think we should be somewhat comforted by that. This question for you, but Will will have an opinion on this for sure as well.

As an Arab, is it likely that he would not like to be too much the client of a Turk, given the history of Ottoman domination of Arab lands? I think there's an inherent friction there, but right now, he's dependent on the Turks enormously.

He can't move left or right without Turkish support. And he knows that. And everybody's, the whole country is exhausted after 13 years of war. So he...

He wants to rebuild the country as well. I don't think there's any thought in his mind right now about how to get out from under the influence of the Turks. Well, I want to get back to that. You can't survive otherwise. There's influence and there's influence. Do you have any thoughts on this, on this Arab-Turkish thing?

Well, kind of thing I would expect you to have an opinion. Yeah. I mean, those folks who emphasize their Islamic identity try to play down, you know, ethnic loyalties. There's no getting around the huge differences between Turks and Arabs. I suspect Erdogan, I mean, I can't recall him mentioning it, but I'm sure he probably knows the fact that, you know, one third of the forces of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Gallipoli were Arab.

So, he'd probably like to emphasize such fraternal aspects as that, but I suspect he's well aware of the tension that exists between Arabs and Turks and probably doesn't want to overplay his hand. I think it's important to remember that the Turkish military is the best of the Middle Eastern militaries outside of the Israelis. I'm just talking amongst the Muslims. It's

It's the second biggest military in NATO, by the way. But it still has longstanding issues with logistics and moving tanks in the long distance without them breaking down. So I'm sure he's well aware of Turkey's limitations. All right. Let me – a lot of things I want to hit, and our time is limited. I do –

I do want to give a shout out, as it were, to our friend Jonathan Spire, because he had a piece unlike any other piece I ever saw, because we're trying to figure out who Jolani is. And the fact of the matter is he has ruled up in Idlib in one part of the country for like seven years. And so what Jonathan Spire says is, so we have some hints as to how he rules. And it wasn't an Islamic state kind of king.

kingdom that he had there. I mean, it wasn't that bad, but he didn't go in for mad excesses, no enslavement of non-Muslim women. On the other hand, it was a very authoritarian statelet under Islamic Sharia law. Women were required to wear hijab, music and alcohol were banned. No opposition was permitted to the edicts of his organization, H.E.S.,

Non-Muslims and women were not allowed to be in the representative bodies established. In his prisons, incarceration without trial, practice or torture were routine. So it's the old Saudi Arabia. It's old Saudi Arabia, a little Taliban-ish maybe? No? It could be. I mean, yes. And by the way, the highest religious authority in HDS is Abd al-Rahim Atun, who called the October 7th attacks the greatest act of Islam in this era.

and compared HCS's march from Idlib to Damascus to the October 7th attacks and request the Almighty to disgrace the Jews, suppress them, and curse them and those who support and back them. So I'm the Israelis. Well, and this is the next good question. If I'm the Israelis...

I think I believe you, John, you can start. This is a net gain for me that what we have now, because Assad is gone. The, the, the, the, the ring of fire is to some extent extinguished because of what they've done. They haven't left any hardware in the hands of Jolani and,

Um, so they can fly over Syria, no air defenses, a lot of good. I mean, it's good for them, but I don't think they expect to have a neighbor, you know, who's coming over with a basket of pastries on Sunday. No, I think that's, uh, there's no baklava coming. Uh, no, I, I look, I would, uh, I would say that, yes, they feel safer, but I think they feel safer primarily because they've just defeated Hamas. They've largely defeated Syria.

They've taken out all of Iran's air defenses. They've taken out their ballistic missile capabilities. And now on top of that, the regime that was the supply line for all the weapons and cash going into Lebanon also gone. So, yeah, I think they're happy. I think it's funny. I was having a conversation with a former president.

official out of Israel earlier today. And he was saying, look, on the one hand, yeah, it's good. On the other hand, no idea within Israel how to think about this because no one's been thinking about Sunni jihadism for a decade. Right. So they're completely just disconnected to our show. They should be. Right. But so, you know, I think that that's that's problem. One. The other is this question of normalizing an HTS regime. Hmm.

When you start to do that, you go down a slippery slope. Talking about 80% of the Muslim world, Sunni, you know, the Sunni world, right? You start to say, this is okay. You know, we've had a couple of Islamic experiments like this in the past. I'm thinking you got the Iranians on the Shiite side of the street, but you've got Sudan in 89. You got the Taliban in 96. We know how those went. Not great experiments here.

The idea right now is that we could be seeing the normalization of a sort of Ithwani Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi type of an organization that becomes a state and gets the blessing of the United States. What does that signal to the rest of the Arab world, the rest of the Muslim world? What is, if anybody knows, Qatar's role in all of this up to now? Going forward, one can imagine, but...

Anybody have a sense of how behind that? Honestly, all they have is money. I mean, the only thing that would be is if they've had, you know, established pipelines of cash that, you know, maybe they gave the Turks money and the Turks turned it into hardware. I mean, I don't know. It's an interesting question. That is, by the way, the model for Hamas. Those are the two primary Sunni patrons for Hamas. But it's interesting because...

I guess, what's today? Today's Wednesday as we're recording this. They opened up their, the Qataris opened up their embassy in Syria. They did. One of the first, I think they did it today. So they were one of the first to come running in. I mean, I just have to point out, I mean, so the Middle East is often defined by its biting, brutal ironies, but there's hardly anyone better than you take an individual, a Sunni Islamist,

who has reveled in attacking Israel. He revels in his anti-Semitism. And yet, he, in combination with the Israelis, are probably, and I'm referring to Erdogan, are probably most responsible for crashing the Shiite arc

in the Middle East. And are likely to be the beneficiaries of this at the same time. Well, both are, yeah. Both are. Michael, are you grimacing at some of these things you're hearing or are you agreeing with what you just heard? I'm agreeing and disagreeing. I think what Raoul just said is the key issue. The interests of the Turks and the interests of the Israelis overlap enormously. And they always have. And it's not just that the Shiite

or the Iranian resistance axis was crushed between the hammer of the IDF and the anvil of the Turkish military. It happened against the policy of the United States.

What if the United States had recognized a couple of years ago that Turkish interests and Israeli interests were the same, and it had worked to bring down the resistance axis on its terms, on the United States' terms, working to assign roles and missions to the Turks and the Israelis to structure a new Middle East?

We'd be in a wholly different position right now. What if the United – I don't remember. Did you advocate regime change when Trump was president for a time? I advocated working together with the Turks and the Israelis to structure a new Middle East. Oh, that was – yeah. And you – Saudis too. Saudis. Saudis? The three – the three chairs. The three whatever.

Legs. Legs. The U.S. has four legs to its position in the Middle East. Yeah. Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. But the only two countries— You had three before. You didn't have Egypt. You added Egypt.

There are four legs. Keep going. I'm sorry. I repeat, I'm sorry. But only two of them have militaries that can project power beyond their borders, the Israeli and the Turks. That's why the key to U.S. strategy is to work with the Turks and the Israelis to structure a new Middle East. So I have to ask, this is, you know, obviously we've watched each other on Twitter or whatever we're calling it now, X.

So when you talk about the overlapping interests of the Israelis and the Turks, this is always interesting to me. When you look at, for example, the fact that the Turks helped Iran evade sanctions between 2012 and 2016, $20 billion worth of funneling money to Iran, that would seem fundamentally against the interest of Israel and Turkey.

as we would understand it, or the Turkish support for Hamas that we've watched since 2010, 2011. These are things that would seem fundamentally at odds with the theory that you've just put out there. It's not a theory. It's a fact. We're looking at it right now. But if their interests are so overlapping, why would the Turks do these things? We spent the first five minutes

talking about how the Turks and the Israelis destroyed the Assad regime and delivered to Israel one of the greatest strategic victories that it's had in its history, really. I mean, the destruction of the resistance axis is huge.

So we should be thinking about that. That's because there's more work to be done. Oh, I mean, I think that's true, but I think that this was not done on purpose. Sure. It was, they were never working together. They have been, they have been at odds. I said they have overlapping interests. I didn't say they were, they were the, the amazing thing about this is that Turkey and Israel were each was following its own interest and

And they worked in parallel on this project. What if the United States understood that? They're not going to work together. They're not going to work well together. They don't get along. But what if the United States understood that these two entities have overlapping interests and it's in the interest of the United States to maximize the overlap where possible and minimize the friction, which you're talking about?

By the way, the Turks are not the only people, the only country that's allied to the United States that has allowed the Iranians to evade sanctions. Yeah, and the Turks don't have to be consistent. We can think of some very good… Well, mention the Hebrew… I don't want to… I mean, look, I think… I don't want to… I don't want to… I don't want to…

tarnish the reputation of our allies? I don't mind at all. Nor do I. That's what we do here. That's what I get paid for, I think. And besides, it's also fun. I'm just saying that this is not something... Let me just mention something good. This is... John, go ahead. I just want to mention, I mean, a very bad...

policy approach of the Biden administration, I have to say, because I really don't want the Trump administration to do it and there would be plenty of people in the State Department who would be in favor of it, is you give out bribes in the hope that it will change behavior. In other words, you say, oh, we don't want the Houthis to be terrorists, so we will remove them from the terrorist list. They will be so grateful they will no longer be terrorists. No, it doesn't work like that. You say, oh, Qatar, we want them to be a good...

major non-nation, NATO ally. So without them doing anything for it, we will make them, we will designate them a major non-NATO ally. No, they are not. They are not pursuing your interests or helping you. They are playing you. They're playing you like a green horn. You know,

in Dodge City, sitting down to play poker with Doc. You know what I mean? That's what they're doing. You just revealed your age. Huh? You just revealed your age. I'm afraid it's apparent to anybody. As the canyons put cameras out, okay, boomer. People don't know. Although... Although...

I'm also from Colorado. All the, all the 16 year old fans of your, of your podcast. I think I have to leave the room.

Anyway, that very bad thing. And I don't want to see this in terms of Giovanni, by the way, of, oh, let's pull him off the terrorist list because then maybe he'll be a good guy. By the way, the Saudis also can't be thrilled with the idea of another Muslim brotherhood state nearby. The Emiratis can't be thrilled with that as well. And even the Egyptians, although...

Their hair's on fire right now. Egyptians, Jordanians, and Emiratis are all really worried. The Saudis are in between. Really? Why are the Saudis in between? Because, I mean, the Saudis are very – Saudis do not want Muslim Brotherhood. They're much rougher on the Muslim Brotherhood than – I don't know. Al-Arabiya is already in Damascus. They got into Damascus very early, and the Saudis are sending more of a –

Let's wait and see. It doesn't look that bad. Maybe because they think they can be influential with an Arab. One thing that has to happen in Syria, and I've seen you tweet about it, there has to be reconstruction. I mean, it's a country. It's devastated and poor. Who's going to pay for it? I'm not worried. Yeah, that's exactly. I'm not as worried about Jolani as you are. Well. Because there's a reason to distrust but verify. And you went through all the reasons. Right. But the mood in the country is that they want to rebuild.

There is something nationalistic about Jolani. He did leave the global jihad and take a more nationalistic path. That's been happening over years. So he said publicly in terms of going through the list of things that he needs to say, he said that he has no interest in pursuing conflict with Israel.

So that's— I mean, the question, I think, would be— Can I just—just a couple more thoughts? Sure.

Everybody wants to rebuild the country. The Turks want to rebuild the country. And the Turks know that if they have a Taliban-style government in Damascus trying to extend Taliban-style rule over all of Syria, they'll have a rebellion on their hands in Syria. The character of the Syrian public is such that there's no way this guy can impose Taliban-style rule on it. And then secondly, the Turks want investment.

And they're not going to get it if they don't mollify the international community. So I think there's a lot of levers to influence everything, including the composition of the government. I mean, did you want to say something before I go? Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say, one, I mean, take a wild guess that the future of Syria or the next 20 years is going to be a cluster F.

But that aside, I think that the principal issue for those who are arguing that we've got a potential jihadist problem is not that Jolani is part of the global jihad. I mean, if you look at the Taliban, I don't believe even today there is a single instance of a Taliban joining the global jihad.

They nevertheless did lend their territory to that effort. So the issue would be whether Jolani would be willing to lend his territory, which is a lot closer to Europe, for that effort. That's why we have an idea.

Well, if cells like that start to develop, then there's an idea. But there's also a Turkish military. The Turks themselves have an interest. I noticed how you excluded the Americans from that. Once again, you're allowing the Turks and the Israelis to do the weightlifting.

Well, I think that... Is that because of your fondness for America first? Yes. Yeah. That's part of it. Well, but Trump probably would prefer to work through others rather than do it himself. I don't think that's an unreasonable analysis. That's exactly why... First of all, we could do it, but the mood in the United States, the mood in the United States, well, for those of you who have not been watching for the last eight years, is against U.S. military...

operations in the Middle East. So we have to work through allies. And I repeat, I repeat, there are only two American allies in the Middle East who have the ability to project power beyond their borders. So I want to talk a little bit more about what everyone wants, knowing that you're something of an Erdoganologist. And there's two ways to look at this. I talked, it was an Israeli, a former Israeli diplomat I talked about, who was a remarkably

I would say sanguine about all this, saying, you know, the Turks will want to get the money to rebuild. They have a lot of construction companies. They've worked in Kurdish Iraq. They're going to want to do that, and they have a chance if things go well. On the other hand, Erdogan has said the following. The Syrian cities that we call Aleppo, Idlib, Damascus, and Raqqa

We'll become our provinces very soon. That sure sounds neo-Ottoman to me. I mean, there's a difference between these two ambitions. One, we'll rebuild it. We'll be influential. The red carpet will be rolled out when I visit Damascus. And the other is, I'm taking back my damn colony. Yeah, I don't think those kind of statements are useful in understanding what the Turks will do.

And this, because he says this for domestic consumption, is that your argument? Mainly? Yeah. I think, well, you just have to look at what their policies, their policy is a unified Syria. They want to return the refugees.

That's a, they have a, they have a, there's like 4 million Syrian refugees in Turkey right now who are coming back, which is, which is a, which, which is, was a very damaging issue for him in the last election because he was, he refused to, to, to deport them.

But because it was a damaging issue, he wants to repatriate them. They're not going to go back unless there's a vibrant economy. They need jobs to go back to. So I think if you just look at what their official policies are, it's a better indication rather than any more. There's a lot of Ottoman nostalgia in Turkey. And Erdogan will play to it in some of his policies. I don't think that's what he's going to do. I mean, some of it is real. I mean, I think it's...

I mean, I would agree that there is a lot of Ottoman nostalgia. There's also a reality. But, I mean, we should remember that, I mean, Turgut Ozil did call Bernard Lewis during the first Iraq war. And he asked him whether he thought he could take northern Iraq. That is, are there enough Turks left in northern Iraq that it could sustain a Turkish occupation? To which Bernard said, there are not.

Uh, and also, you know, never mentioned the idea again. So, but it, it's definitely percolates in the Turkish bloodstream. All right. Two more questions that I really want to get. I know we're a little short on time. Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Chris von Hollen agree on very little. They do agree on this. They both threatened to impose sanctions on Turkey.

If Ankara does not pressure Syrian rebel groups, which it backs, into agreeing to a ceasefire with the Syrian Kurds who are allied with the Americans in a mission to suppress the Islamic State, which still holds parts of the country, and the Kurds also are essentially the guards at detention camps for

For something like 10,000 Islamic State warriors, if they decide we have to defend ourselves or flee, those guys, those Islamic State combatants, warriors, terrorists, they all leave and go someplace else. Probably not. I am with Graham and Von Hollen on this. I know that, you know, it seems to me, and here's where I know we're going to differ, Mike.

Let Turkey find a way with American help to make sure that the Kurds who are working with the Americans are no threat to Turkey. Not so hard there. There's one case where you could have a diplomatic solution. I don't say that often.

I'm all in favor of that. Okay. I'm all in favor of working with the Turks to find a solution to the problem. It doesn't include killing Kurds. It doesn't have to kill Kurds. We don't have to kill Kurds. I don't want to kill Kurds. What would you do with Kurds? Just sort of curious. So the problem is not Kurds. The problem is that the United States allied with the PKK in northeast Syria.

The YPG is the PKK. So if you think Jolani can reform, surely the YPG, these Kurds who are tied to a terrorist group, terrible thing to do. Not tied to, they are. They can reform too. And by the way, Erdogan is not opposed to terrorism. He's opposed to terrorism directed against Turks because he's perfectly happy to support Hamas, which directs terrorism against Israelis, even in such barbarous ways as October 7th. So we should understand it's not a matter of principle. It's a matter of self-interest. I'm totally talking about self-interest.

our self-interest, Turkish self-interest, and the interest of the people on the border who live on the border, Kurds and Arabs. The United States, in a moment, Obama...

in a moment of supreme irresponsibility, made the United States the ally of the PKK. The PKK wants to break up Turkey into two states, a Kurdish state and a Turkish state. It's a terror organization. It's recognized as a terror organization by the United States. The equivalent would be, in Israeli terms, would be if the United States started building up a force under Hamas in Jordan,

And the Israelis were to say, you're building up Hamas on our borders. And the United States would say, oh, don't worry about that. You should be happy that we're here doing this.

And then you have people in Congress saying— But you don't think that the Kurds who are allied with the Americans are, after when work is done and after they've had their cocktail, they're figuring out ways to strike Turkey? Sure they are. They want to build Rojava. They want to build an autonomous Kurdish state. A little autonomy for the Kurds of Turkey would go a long way towards making peace in that country, wouldn't it? No, not at all. I can show you all kinds of—the equivalent would be to build up a Hamas state in Jordan under American tutelage.

That's what they've done. The Turks are not going to accept it. The Kurds are a separate people. PKK. I know, but the only reasons a PKK is because the Kurds feel oppressed and persecuted in Turkey and elsewhere. Is that why we have a Hamas in Gaza?

We have a mosque in Gaza because they want to wipe the Israelis and the Jews out of the Middle East. The Kurds do not want to wipe the Turks out of Iraq. They want to split up Turkey. The PKK wants to split up Turkey. Autonomy would go a long way. Let them speak their languages. Let them have their culture. They can have autonomy. They can have autonomy under non-PKK inside Syria. The problem the Turks have is that the United States made an alliance with the PKK.

So all we have to do is undo that. That's not easy. It's not easy, but we have to undo that. What are we going to do to continue to suppress the Islamic State in that region if we don't have Kurdish allies? The Turks will suppress the Islam. They have no interest in having an Islamic State on their border. And they built up the Syrian National Army, the Turks did, which is their proxy, which is working along with HTS-1.

in Syria precisely for this purpose. But historically, though, I have to disagree. If you actually look at the flow of ISIS fighters into Syria and Iraq at the height of the Islamic State, it was Turkey, it was the MIT that actually facilitated the flow of those fighters. They created the Islamic State on their border. It was in their interest. Now, after the U.S.,

You know, obliterated it with the help of the YPG, by the way. Now the Turks are saying we want something else. Now they're saying we want something that's ruled by HTS. We disagree with ISIS. We don't want that any longer. But they actually created the ISIS problem. There's there's the MIT will actually admit to it. I read the history very differently. How so?

It's like, do you remember when Obama said there's the JV team and there's the varsity? Who was the JV team? It was ISIS. So the US turned a blind eye to ISIS.

In the beginning. ISIS came out of Mosul, took Mosul. Where was the United States in all this? Nowhere. But that doesn't mean that we endorsed ISIS. It doesn't mean that we wanted it. The Turks followed a very similar policy. They turned a blind eye to it precisely because the Americans refused to work with them. But if you go back, Mike. Why did the Americans pick ISIS?

Because Obama was practicing America first. And he was letting others lead. Why did he pick the PKK? He was leading from behind. But what was the... When he went and chose a terrorist organization that Turks regard as the number one security threat to their country. This is 2014. 2014.

Number one security threat to their country. Actually, that's a bit overdone. They always play that line for the Westerners. No, come on. Why did he choose Obama? Oh, because they were an organized military force and they could actually fight. Yeah. Organized military force that had good relations with Assad and Iran and Russia.

Because Obama in 2014, Obama, let me finish. Obama in 2014, you won't accept this because you know it's right. You know it's right and you know that your position collapses here. He was aligning with Iran and Russia and if you went with the Turks against ISIS, if you

If you worked with them... What have I told you before? You're a little bit too teleological. The Turks were backing... Teleological. We can't have you sandwiched like that in this broadcast. Can I make the argument? Yes, go ahead. Go ahead. I've heard it before, but go ahead. If you've heard it before, then you

tell me what it is. No, no, no, no. You do it better than I do. It's your own argument. It's a very simple argument. What is Obama's priority in 2014? It's the JCPOA. What becomes the JCPOA? He's empowering Iran. He's empowering Assad. He needs Iran and Russia in order to get the JCPOA. That's his number one priority. The Turks are anti-Assad. If he works with the Turks to solve any problem in Syria, he queers the deal with Iran and Russia. So he has to find a proxy that's okay with him. So we borrowed a

A Turkish, Iranian, Iranian, Russian proxy. Historically, the PKK is the Russian instrument against Turkey. Let me just say, if I agree with you there, can we now go back to this question, this point that you made, which is that the Turks don't want an Islamic state on their border. They created one.

No, I'm answering your question about they created one. That is anti-Turkish propaganda, pure and simple. The Turks have one issue, one major issue in northern Syria, and one issue only, and that's the PKK. Do you have to fight it with ISIS? When the United States is aligning with the PKK, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? You're going to create the Islamic State? They didn't create the Islamic State.

They kind of did. Do you remember that Donald Trump said that Barack Obama created the Islamic State? Yeah. The Islamic State started in Iraq. It was created by Obama's alignment toward Iran. There was a vacuum in the Sunni world. The Turks didn't step into help. Not stepping into help is not the same thing as creating it.

When you look at the rat line of fighters that came in, when you look at the oil that the Islamic State was able to sell through Turkey, when you look at the antiquities that the Islamic State was selling through Turkey, this was the rat line. The Turks opened this. This is not really anything that we can dispute any longer. Of course we can. And I would just say that- Dispute it in the sense that you're saying they built it. There's a difference between saying it's the JV team, I'm not going to do anything about it and saying they built it.

This is not something that they went in with their forces. What I would say is that Obama and the Turks were both complicit in the rise of ISIS. I wouldn't blame one over the other. The Turks have also been victims of ISIS and al-Qaeda attacks many times. It's called blowback. It's called blowback. This is what happens when you... Turks are all about the state. They're all about the state. They're all about stability.

They're not... Stability inside the state or outside the state? The Turks are not like the Iranians out conducting terror attacks across the world. They're not doing that. They've been supporting ISIS. They've been supporting Hamas. They've been helping Iran evade sanctions. They're supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. That's a little different. No, but I mean, when you look at the instability around the region right now, I look at Turkey as a core component of it. This is a...

What you're presenting is a prosecutor's brief against Turkey rather than an analysis of Turkish policy. So the policy is different. We have to differentiate the fact that they support a bunch of different terrorist groups and terrorist entities, terrorist states, but they actually want stability. Just so I understand. They want stability on their border. This is what they want. On their border. But if it's instability...

Two states away, that's fine. What do you want? Let me ask you this. What do you want in Syria? What do you want in Syria? And how are you going to get that? I want a Jeffersonian democracy. How are you going to get that by supporting the PKK? I'm not getting one. I don't want to support the PKK, by the way. I'm all in favor of going hard against the PKK and the YPG if they're terrorist organizations. They are. Great. We agree. Okay, good. So then let's get rid of that.

Let's get rid of that. And that's the number one impediment between us and the Turks. Here's why I disagree. I understand that Turkey has a grievance over the U.S. aligning with the PKK, with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, because it has terrorist ties. I will give you, it's a grievance. It's a legitimate grievance. However, we can say, sorry for that, but for many years now, Americans in Syria,

have aligned with this group to fight ISIS, and we have worked well, and they are our allies, and we protect our allies. You should understand that about the U.S. No worse enemy, no better friend. So what we're asking you, and I'm going to give credit where credit's due, is that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken

Do I agree with him? Very often. He told Turkish foreign minister, please give us assurances that your government will limit actions against those U S allies in the region. Nevermind the past. Nevermind. Just limit the actions against our allies. Cause you know why there are allies and it's not enough for it to say for you or them, uh,

Oh, yeah, but they consider themselves PKK and we have a grievance and so we're going to kill all of them and you should just get out of the way, you Americans. Because we Americans should not get out of the way when our allies are being murdered. So three points here very quickly. Number one, our ally is Turkey.

And when we started arming, training, and equipping the PKK. It's a grievance. No, no. When we started arming, training, and equipping the PKK, we told them, the PKK, this was transactional, temporary, and what was it? Temporary, transactional, and I'm missing one. But anyway, temporary and transactional. Tactical. Temporary, tactical, and transactional. Right? We told them that from the beginning. So they're not an ally.

They're not an ally formally. They're not an ally in terms of the relationship that we developed with them. The Kurds you're working with are not an ally? The PKK. But you're calling every Kurd, and you're probably right. Every Kurd we're working with in Syria, PKK, you're probably right, but they have been our allies. The organization that we contracted with is the PKK. And we told them from the beginning this is temporary, transactional, and tactical. So we should now abandon them and let them go?

them be killed because because i didn't say that abandoned the courage once more i didn't say that i didn't say that but but we we we stabbed our ally in the back when we made this relationship and we told the people we made the relationship with that you're we're not marrying you we're having an affair with you we told them that from the very beginning so but i agree with you we have a moral obligation we have a moral obligation to see to it that they are not slaughtered

Right. And so what we should do is we should we should affect the transfer of power whereby all of the PKK fighters go to the Kandil Mountain in Iraq. They can go back to where they came from. And then the the and the the Kurdish population, we need guarantees from the Turks that they will be ruled by Kurds.

And that Kurds who are acceptable to the Turks, and we need some kind of international guarantees to see to it that there's a transfer of power that doesn't result in bloodshed. That's doable. Oh, it's doable? You're going to use the American muscle to make that doable? I thought you were into retreat. I didn't say retreat. I'm reading the political landscape.

I know, but you just recommended. I don't get to make the world the way I want it to be. I have to deal with what exists. No, but you just recommended a policy that would require a great deal of American muscle.

So, uh, it has muscle on the ground and we're, and we have leverage over Turkey in a lot of ways. And if we sit with the Turks, this is the number one, this is the number one issue between us and the Turks. I think, I think one, you're overestimating the capacity of the United States to twist Turkey's arm. If that's the case, then this is, this is finished anyway, because the Turks, the Turks, these guys have lost the YPG, the SDF, this, this, they lost when, uh, when Assad fell.

They are, that enterprise is finished. The question is, does it finish with violence or does it finish through negotiations? Those are the only choices. And you've discussed it with the Barzani's?

Barzani hates these guys. Barzani's are the Kurdish leaders in Kurdish Iraq. Barzani hates the PKK. I just don't understand this chessboard. The Peshmerga can be part of- Peshmerga's military in Iraqi Kurdistan. They can be observers and participants in the transfer of power to assure that Kurdish majority areas are ruled by Kurds

And that there isn't a lot of... Do you think Turkey actually would be willing to facilitate that? Totally. This is the number one thing that they want from the United States. Number one. Oh, they're always... The Turks are regularly in favor of population movement. It needs to be YPG-free, but to create something that looks like a somewhat independent, autonomous Kurdish region. Sure. As far as the new Syria. What they want to make sure is there's no PKK there. That's the issue.

How about if the PKK were to renounce terrorism, just the way you're saying Jolani may renounce terrorism? The MHP in Turkey, the Turkish Nationalist Party, a little while ago put out a proposal, which was widely understood to be a trial balloon, that if they would renounce everything,

They would release Ocalan from prison. Right, right. I remember that. Being the PKK leader in prison in Turkey. Yeah, yeah. So there is some kind of – So that's a possibility. And Ocalan seems to be – there are real tensions now between Ocalan and the Kandil Mountain where the current PKK leadership is. And so there seems to be something like that brewing. But that's a huge –

You know, that's like saying when we have a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians and X, Y, and Z, I mean, there's so many different elements to that. A very simple thing. You could make a special envoy and you could... I would love to do that. This would get rid of a huge impediment between the United States and Turkey. The biggest impediment to cooperation between us. I'm always for terrorist groups renouncing terrorism, whatever that is.

Again, as you say, distrust would verify, but that, but, and again, I'm sorry, I don't, yes. Listen, we agree. We don't want to see the Kurds attacked and have the Americans have to stand by and watch. We have a moral obligation. I agree we have a moral obligation. We do. I just don't think we should, we should, we should, we should pursue it the way we are.

Well, I mean, presumably they are. Again, I'm giving Blinken credit. He's going to the Turks and saying, here's what I'd like you to do. Make sure you don't have your groups who are not non-terrorist groups killing Kurds who are our allies. That would be problematic for us. That's reasonable. You haven't heard me call Blinken reasonable that many times.

All right. Maybe last, very last, just a few words, because I think it's fascinating that people at FCD have worked on it. Captagon, Syria was the international capital for this terrible opioid drug throughout. And Hezbollah was probably making literally billions of dollars off this. I think one thing that's probably crushed, and probably, I don't know, you can tell me, that Jolani won't want to see that resurrected, even though it can make a lot of money from Captagon. Am I being naive?

I have no idea. I mean, you know, they thought the Taliban were going to stop opium exports. And there was a time where opium exports declined and then opium exports started going up again. So.

You know, obviously the country is going to remain dirt poor for generations. So I don't know. It's a temptation. I don't know how much of the infrastructure is left. I don't know how involved it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if down the road we started seeing Syria export more.

It's a threat to Jordan, not least, isn't it? My guess, by the way, is that if Iran doesn't have its foothold in Syria, Iraq will be the place through which Captagon flows. It was Shia militias in Hezbollah that was primarily feeding this across the border into Jordan. From there, it would be smuggled out to the Gulf.

My guess, though, is they well, I know that they opened up a market in Jordan with a deliberate attempt to destabilize the country, erode the social fabric. Which is also what Iran wants, not what Tehran wants. Yeah, yeah. And so I think so this is this is what the what the Iranians were doing. I think they'll find other militias in Iraq to do the same. They'll just bring it in from other routes.

into Jordan, but also obviously send it out to the Gulf. This is the, it's not as deadly as fentanyl, but it's highly addictive and it is all the rage across the Middle East.

Anything you want to say about that? Nothing. Do you, as anybody, particularly you, Michael, want to say anything else, any other points before we let you go? Because I know you have very important people to meet with. I think what we should all aspire to is a Syria, a stable Syria that is a buffer between Turkey and Israel, like Jordan is a buffer between Israel and Iraq. The Turkish interest and the Israeli interest

enormously in that regard. And we can achieve that. That's what we should be working for. A Syria that doesn't allow its territory to threaten Turkey or Israel, that's easily doable if the United States adopts that as its policy. And we don't have to change... No, Michael. We don't have to make drastic changes to reestablish

Recep Tayyip Erdogan or to Bibi Netanyahu and their major goals in order to make that happen. It's an easy lift, but there needs to be leadership.

I've just, whenever people talk about stability in the Middle East, I start to shake because that's one of the old-fashioned words that we're always bandied about. Just a Syria that doesn't allow its territory to threaten Israel and Turkey. That's what Israel wants, that's what Turkey wants. The reality for Israel is that Syria could stay an utter bloody mess, and it's not really a problem for them.

The only problem for them is that if they have a coherent state that can fly airplanes, shoot missiles, import tanks, that's when it becomes an issue for Israel. If you've got disarray and chaos in Syria for quite some years, which I think is going to be the case, it's not a big issue for them. For the Syrians, it's obviously an issue. For the Israelis, not so much. What I'm arguing against is that a lot of Israelis...

And a lot of pro-Israelis are saying that because Erdogan has supported Hamas in Gaza, that Israel should support the PKK against Turkey.

And I think this is a big mistake. I must say, I haven't heard that specifically. And I think that is a mistake. Because this will create... No, I think that would be a huge mistake. SDF, YPG, the Kurds, you have lots of...

That's why I kept insisting on saying PKK, PKK, PKK. I know, I know. Because there's a lot of very fuzzy language being used. Well, I just don't want to see a lot of dead Kurds and have somebody say, no, they're not Kurds, they're just PKK. I don't want to see the U.S.-Turkish conflict over northeast Syria become an Israeli-Turkish conflict.

And that that then then Syria. I agree with that. I totally agree with that. Then Syria becomes an arena for. But here's what here's what I don't want to say. We totally agree. Totally agree. But here's but here's what I also don't want to see. I don't want to see Turkey turn or rather Syria turn into a Turkish and Qatari backed jihadi state.

that threatens Israel or Jordan. And I think that there are a lot of people out there that are saying Jolani might be moderate and we should wait and see and, you know, don't trust and verify and all that. I have to say, I think there is a risk right now. You know, let's just be honest. Al Qaeda has just taken over Syria and

When we look at that fact alone, that should be reason for concern. I don't think the Israelis need to start working with the YPG. I don't think that we need to start looking at new alliances. I think we need to move. My work here is done. But here's the thing. No, but here's where I think we need to take this. Because I don't think your work's done. It's not. It's not done. It's not done. You've got a lot more work to do, Mike. You've got to let her with one goal.

I want to pocket it and go. Just be careful of holding up that banner of mission accomplished. We've learned that. But my FDD mission is accomplished. We're leaving an agreement. No, but you know what? But here's where I think where this needs to go. I think Syria needs to be integrated into the Arab League. I think they need to be it needs to be pulled out of the arms of the Turks, to be quite honest. I think we need to put it into the into the hands of hopefully like the Emiratis, the Saudis pull them into not that these are the most

like high functioning states. But I'd like to see Syria return to the Arab fold without the Ba'athists, without the Islamists, without the Turkish, without any of that influence and try to actually plug them into a system where they can get investment and things can stabilize.

I want to change the title of this organization to Foundation for Defense of Democracies to Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Ottoman Empire. No. No, thanks. Hard pass. Hard pass. A few more podcasts before we get to Michael Doran. You've got to admit, the Middle East was a lot better under the Ottoman Empire.

I'm with Ben Gurion in that regard. Well, Bernard Lewis would say something along those lines. Yes, he would. I said when he was a great friend of this organization. Michael, thank you for being here. Good sport.

John Ruel. I think it's a very lively, productive, interesting conversation for me and for our listeners and to you, our listeners. Grateful to have you with us as well here today on Foreign Policy. I was a little bored. You look bored. You look bored. I can poke you some more if you want.

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