Turkey Made a Bet Against Assad—And Lost
Back in 2011, Erdoğan supported the rebels against the Syrian regime in hopes of gaining influence across the Middle East. Things haven’t gone according to plan.
Before the war in Syria broke out in 2011, a budding personal friendship between Bashar al-Assad, the leader of Syria, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, augured close economic ties and an open border. That would be only the beginning: Turkey saw Syria as the launching pad for its plans to become the dominant economic force in the Arab world, a region it had largely retreated from after losing its vast Arab provinces with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
But the Syrian uprising forced Turkey to reconsider. Erdoğan severed his ties with Assad and cast his lot with the popular, predominantly Sunni opposition, making the bet that they would overthrow the
