Introduction

The uprisings in Syria started out like all the other revolts that convulsed the Arab world in 2011: the protesters demanded better governance, freedom and dignity. Yet the events unfolded in a dramatically different way in Syria than in other countries. The special characteristics of Syria as a political entity and the nature of its regime and alliances played a part in the specific and tragic trajectory of the uprising. Turkey's response to the crisis was a function of both its objective condition as Syria's northern neighbour with a border of some 600 miles and the ideological proclivities of its governing party's leadership. Contrary to earlier expectations by nearly all Western actors and certainly Turkey's rulers, it became obvious fairly early that the crisis would last longer than anticipated. In fact, the uprising morphed into a struggle for regional supremacy and later mutated into a crisis of international magnitude. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) leadership anticipated that the Muslim Brotherhood, its ideological kin in Arab countries, would seize power in all the rebellious countries in a short span of time and therefore saw a window of opportunity for the same in the Syrian crisis.

However, it did not take long before the crisis became a liability rather than an asset for the AKP leadership's strategies to hold on to power. Ankara's early conviction that it could master the evolution of events in its southern neighbour proved to be naïve and overly optimistic. Rather, the ramifications of the crisis soon overwhelmed Ankara. As early as 2012, the AKP leadership had to face the magnitude of the spillover effects of the unfolding civil war. The Syrian government's decision in July 2012 to pull out from the eastern parts of the country was the first fallout from the crisis. Dubbed the ‘Rojava Revolution’, the formation of three Kurdish cantons by the Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat/Democratic Union Party (PYD) in early 2013 continuously complicated Turkey's stance in Syria. After all, the PYD was the Syrian affiliate of the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK) in northern Syria that had been at war with the Turkish state since 1984 and was recognised as a terrorist organisation by Turkey's allies.