Turkish Policy Towards War in Syria

Turkey is an important actor of the war in Syria. After the first months of the conflict the Syrian neighbour began supporting the opposition forces in the war and took a very critical approach to Bashar al-Assad’s regime, based on the assumption that the Syrian president must definitely resign from the office. It was a substantial change of the Turkish policy towards Syria in comparison to the first decade of the 21st century. The main goal of this article is an in-depth analysis of Turkey’s policy towards the war in Syria in order to identify the reasons for a specific, inflexible Turkish position. The author verifies positively a hypothesis that the Turkish policy towards Syria and the war there is a result of the interplay of many domestic and foreign policy factors in Turkey as well as the regional and international situation. The inflexible Turkish position is in this context a consequence of the more sectarian policy of the AKP government (reflecting the departure from the “strategic depth doctrine”) connected with the ideological factor as well as the negative consequences of the Assad regime’s actions for Turkish security and the increasingly complex Kurdish issue.