Normalizing Bashar al-Assad’s Regime

With the relative decline of US power in the region, other imperialist forces such as China and Russia have asserted their own interests. Regional powers like Iran, Turkey, Qatar, as well as Saudi Arabia have done the same, pursuing their aims, balancing between the rival imperialist powers, and sometimes openly defying the US. The Saudi leadership’s decision to cut oil production and maintain high oil prices even at the cost of triggering inflation encapsulates its new independence from Washington.

In this new scenario, the regional powers are all determined to consolidate a form of authoritarian stability. Despite their persistent rivalries, the states want to lessen their open conflicts, improve their economies, and thereby bolster their rule all to avoid a repeat of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. 

Thus, Qatar put aside its objections and allowed Damascus to return to the Arab League to avoid angering the leadership in Riyadh and other Arab capitals. Qatar has also been steadily mending ties with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. 

Syria, Turkey, and Kurdish Self-Determination

Similarly, Turkey has started a process of normalization with the Syrian regime. Thus, in May, the foreign ministers of Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Iran met in Moscow for high-level talks on rebuilding connections between Ankara and Damascus. 

Ankara’s shift is motivated by two main objectives. Firstly, Erdogan sought to gain votes ahead of the 2023 Presidential elections by accelerating the forced return of Syrian refugees to Syria. Over the past two years, there has been a rise in racist and xenophobic attacks against Syrians in Turkey, and Erdogan has deported thousands of them.

During the election campaign, the opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu adopted an even more severe stance, promising to expel greater numbers. By contrast, Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Çavusoglu stated that there he had worked out a roadmap with the Syrian regime for the return of the refugees developed following their meeting in Moscow.  

The other motive for Erdogan’s rapprochement with Syria is their shared determination to deny Kurdish aspirations for autonomy. In 2022, Erdogan stated that “it is necessary to finish what has been started” and escalate the deployment of the Turkish army and Syrian proxies against Kurdish forces in Syria. 

Already their joint operations in the Afrin region in 2018 led to massive violations of human rights and the forced displacement of approximately 137,000 people, predominantly Kurdish residents. Erdogan successfully used these threats of new military operations against Kurds in Syria to whip up Turkish nationalism and defeat his opponent in the runoff election. 

But it remains unclear whether Syria will deliver for Turkey. For its part, Assad’s regime has declared that no progress in the relations between the two countries will occur without the end of the Turkish military presence in Syria. 

Turkey remains frustrated with Damascus’s inability to meet its demands for the return of Syrian refugees and putting an end to Kurdish rule in northeast Syria, also known as “Rojava.” The Syrian regime is politically, economically, and militarily too weak to intervene in the north and it sees the return of millions of refugees as a political and security threat, and an additional economic weight it cannot bear. 

No Hope for Syrian Reconstruction through Normalization

Assad’s re-integration into the Arab League will not facilitate reconstruction and economic recovery in Syria. While sanctions remain a significant obstacle to attract foreign investments, they are not the only one. There are several others. 

First, Syria lacks a secure and stable economic condition, making it far too risky for local and foreign corporations to invest in the country. Second, Damascus has proved itself incapable of preventing the constant depreciation of the Syrian pound, further undermining investors’ willingness to set up operations. Third, the country does not have functioning infrastructure and Damascus has not invested funds to rebuild it, instead diverting most of its expenditures to the war effort, public sector wages, and subsidies, but even these are declining. 

Fourth, the country simply lacks the funds to invest. Deposits in private banks dropped from $13.87 billion in 2010 to $1.9 billion in 2022. Finally, the country suffers from a shortage of skilled labor, which is exacerbated by high rates of emigration by young graduates. 

In this situation, Damascus will try to use the normalization process to secure aid and investment. But any reconstruction under Assad’s regime will not serve the country’s popular classes. 

Its policies are not designed to remedy the country’s economic problems and social inequalities. Instead, it prioritizes consolidating its own despotic power, ensuring its security, and using disbursed funds to curry favor with its clientelist supporters. 

Inequality and injustice are at the heart of the Syrian regime’s policies, and no amount of funds it secures will make this leopard change its spots. It will merely use them to bolster its manipulation of state assets, carry out crony privatization, and complete the neoliberal deregulation of the economy. 

All of this will be done to the detriment of the country’s popular classes. Seeing a country where 90 percent of the population live below the poverty line, few refugees and IDPs will return willingly to the country, and those who are forced to do so will find themselves in desperate conditions and abject destitution. 

The normalization of Syria thus serves the interests of Bashar al-Assad and his despotic regime rather than the country’s people. It also serves the interests of authoritarian leaders throughout the region who are determined to secure their power and crush the last remnants of the waves of struggle for social transformation from below that began in 2011.