Eurasia Press & News
Several considerations are pushing the new Syria and Russia to reorder their relationship and move it from hostility towards cooperation. Moscow is seeking to salvage the strategic agreements it concluded with the Assad regime, foremost among them the arrangements governing its military presence in Syria. A return to Syria would allow Russia to preserve its foothold in the Middle East generally and the eastern Mediterranean in particular, while retaining a valuable position in the broader arena of international bargaining with its Western adversaries.
Damascus, for its part, needs Moscow to balance its relations with Washington and the West and to diversify its regional and international partnerships. Israel’s determined efforts to obstruct Turkish assistance in building Syria’s new military establishment are also encouraging Damascus to reconsider its military relationship with Russia as an alternative avenue to reliance on Turkey. More striking still is Ankara’s apparent acceptance of a renewed Russian role, raising a broader question about the depth and complexity of Russian-Turkish relations in the new Syria.
Ankara appears to believe that reshaping relations between Damascus and Moscow around a new framework of cooperation could help resolve several difficult equations inside Syria. Russia maintains established relations with Israel that could influence the course of Israeli intervention in southern Syria. It also has longstanding ties with important Syrian communal constituencies, which may prove useful in navigating the complexities of the north-east, particularly the Kurdish question, and the Syrian coast, where the Alawite community is concentrated.
The Israeli factor is especially important, according to Turkish journalist and political analyst Ali Asmar. Russia, he argues, is unlikely to defend Syria militarily against Israel, yet it possesses longstanding political and security channels with Tel Aviv. Its presence therefore adds another international actor to the equation at a moment when Washington is seeking to prevent Turkish-Israeli rivalry from escalating into confrontation on Syrian soil.
Ankara also understands that forcing Russia entirely out of Syria could transform Moscow from a power with a stake in the stability of the new order into one searching for ways to disrupt it. As Asmar told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, “Containing Moscow within the new arrangement may be preferable to turning it into an adversary outside it.”
Syrian researcher and political analyst Mohammad Nazir Salem similarly argues that Turkey’s need for Russia as an international intermediary with Israel, and as a means of preventing direct friction with it inside Syria, finds a degree of acceptance in Israel itself. From the Israeli perspective, he says, a Russian presence can serve as a counterweight to the Turkish role.
A Legacy of Difficult Relations
The Russian Federation and the Republic of Turkey are each heirs to empires that fought numerous and often brutal wars against one another. In modern times, too, they repeatedly found themselves on opposing sides, despite periods of rapprochement and agreement on particular issues. Yet their relationship developed rapidly in trade and economics, and increasingly in politics, following the rise of Vladimir Putin in Russia and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey at the beginning of the century.
The two countries nevertheless came close to direct confrontation after Turkish air defences shot down a Russian military aircraft that had entered Turkish airspace in November 2015. The incident unfolded against the backdrop of Russia’s direct military support for the Assad regime in its campaign against the Syrian popular uprising, which later evolved into an armed rebellion, while Ankara first supported and subsequently backed opposition forces fighting Assad.
The two capitals eventually moved beyond the aircraft crisis and established a political track for dealing with Syria, together with a hotline intended to prevent military friction after Ankara’s direct intervention in the country. Their relationship nonetheless remained volatile and closely tied to the changing Syrian battlefield, which culminated in the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024.
At the time, Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin, often described as “Putin’s brain,” declared that “Turkey stabbed Moscow in the back.” Moscow’s actual conduct was considerably more restrained. During Operation Deterrence of Aggression, it adopted a position close to neutrality, refrained from providing the Assad regime with decisive air support, withdrew forces from its scattered positions across Syria to the Hmeimim and Tartus bases, and issued no overtly hostile statements towards the new Syrian administration.
According to Turkey’s Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, SETA, this behaviour suggested the existence of an undeclared understanding among Russia, the new Syrian authorities and regional powers, particularly Turkey. SETA also considers Syria an asset of considerable negotiating, security and strategic value to Moscow. It provides leverage in negotiations with Ankara because of the two countries’ competing interests, forms part of Russia’s conception of its national security, and offers a platform for projecting influence into the Mediterranean and towards Africa.
For Turkey, meanwhile, Syria occupies a strategic position comparable, in this analysis, to the place Ukraine holds in Russian security thinking. Ankara therefore seeks to neutralise the pressure points that Russia and other powers might use to threaten its regional stability.
The fall of the Assad regime nevertheless altered the Turkish-Russian equation in Syria fundamentally, according to Dmitry Brijaa, a researcher at the Centre for Arab-Eurasian Studies. Turkey has become the most influential external power in Syria’s new political environment. That does not necessarily mean that Ankara has an interest in driving Russia out altogether. A limited and regulated Russian presence may instead serve the regional balance, provided it does not once again develop into a centre of influence capable of imposing its will on Damascus.
Turkey also has a strong interest in preventing a vacuum that other powers could exploit.
Brijaa told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that a complete Russian withdrawal could create greater space for the United States, Israel or other regional actors to expand their influence. Ankara may therefore find Moscow useful as a balancing power, though under new rules in which the Syrian state retains sovereignty over its decisions and Turkey remains the most influential regional actor in its immediate environment.
Russia also possesses instruments that cannot easily be discounted: its position on the UN Security Council, its military capabilities, its international relationships and its long experience with Syrian state institutions. From Ankara’s perspective, maintaining an organised relationship with Moscow may therefore be more advantageous than allowing Syria to become another theatre of confrontation between them.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Perspective
With factions it supported now in power in Damascus, Ankara is seeking political and economic gains from its relationships with Syria’s new actors while avoiding measures that could provoke Moscow into escalating tensions in other arenas, including Ukraine and Libya, according to the Centre for Arab-Eurasian Studies.
Turkey also hopes to strengthen its negotiating position with Russia on matters such as trade and energy, while regarding continued Russian influence as one element of balance against the expanding regional presence of the United States and Israel.
The new Syrian administration, meanwhile, views Moscow within the framework of a broader strategy for rebuilding the Syrian state and its military institutions while reinforcing its international legitimacy amid continuing domestic fragility, according to Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, RUSI.
Ankara’s central security role does not remove the need for other partners. Turkey lacks the institutional and material capacity required to undertake the comprehensive reconstruction of Syria’s armed forces on its own, while its involvement is naturally shaped by its own strategic priorities. Moscow therefore remains one of the few alternative security partners capable of reducing excessive dependence on Ankara, given its long military relationship with Damascus, an assessment also shared by the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
Russia is also less constrained by Western legal frameworks or by reputational concerns over supporting coercive systems of rule. More importantly, alienating Moscow could carry serious risks. A number of senior figures from the former regime are now in Russia.
The existence of Russian military training programmes alongside Turkish ones reflects a deliberate effort to maintain balance, according to the Politics and Society Institute. By drawing on the expertise of both countries, Damascus can preserve a degree of strategic flexibility.
Moscow, for its part, regards its Syrian presence as a geopolitical asset. The institute argues that Russia manages that presence through a logic of reciprocal geopolitics, using Syria as bargaining leverage with Ankara on questions including the Black Sea and Ukraine, while also employing it as a pressure point against Washington in the wider confrontation between Russia and the West.
To deepen cooperation with Syria’s new rulers, however, Russia will have to take Turkish interests into account, according to the Stimson Center. The comparison is with Moscow’s approach in the South Caucasus, where Azerbaijan, Ankara’s ally, confronted and defeated Armenia, Russia’s traditional partner.
Moscow continues to assert its primacy in the South Caucasus and also in the Black Sea, yet it has been compelled to accommodate Turkish interests. This was reflected in its acceptance of developments that led to Armenia’s withdrawal from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.
Salem argues that replacing the Russian role in arming the Syrian military will also prove difficult, given the Syrian armed forces’ longstanding dependence on Russian equipment and systems. Any future Russian role, however, is likely to remain within limits deemed acceptable by Turkey and coordinated with Damascus.
This pattern, he says, appears to have been reflected in the recent memorandum of understanding between Ankara and Moscow, which reduces Russia’s former dominance and recasts its presence in more functional terms.
Brijaa puts the matter succinctly: Turkey has no need to expel Russia from Syria; it needs to change Russia’s function there. Ankara wants Moscow as a limited partner with which agreements can be reached, rather than as a dominant power capable of controlling Syrian decision-making.
The next phase, in his assessment, is likely to resemble managed competition within a new balance of power in which Turkey occupies a much stronger position than it did before Assad’s fall.
The limits of Ankara’s tolerance are nonetheless clear. Turkey can live with a restricted Russian military and political presence, but it will not accept a restoration of the previous model, in which Moscow could impose military and political arrangements independently of both Damascus and Turkish interests. Nor would Ankara accept the use of Russian bases or networks to rebuild centres of influence operating alongside the institutions of the new Syrian state.
Asmar broadly agrees. Turkey, he says, is less interested in removing Russia altogether than in dismantling the old Russian model. It can accommodate a circumscribed Russian presence operating under Syrian sovereignty, while rejecting any return to military bases enjoying extensive political and security autonomy or to a level of influence that would allow Moscow to intervene directly in Syrian decision-making, as it did under Assad.
This pragmatism has further limits. According to Asmar, Turkey would oppose any attempt to re-establish Russian influence parallel to the Syrian state, to use the Syrian coast as a source of leverage, or to obstruct Turkish-Syrian military cooperation.
The recent agreement concerning Hmeimim and Tartus, which returns an important portion of civilian facilities to Syrian administration while converting military installations into joint training centres, comes close to the model Ankara appears prepared to accept.
Drivers of Cooperation and Sources of Friction
Seeking to rebalance its economy after Western sanctions, Russia has worked to draw Turkey closer. Ankara, meanwhile, regards Moscow as an important partner in projects involving nuclear energy and space technology. Turkey’s first satellite was launched aboard a Russian rocket in 2014, and the two countries signed agreements covering cooperation on Turkey’s Akkuyu nuclear power plant. According to the Egyptian Enterprise Center for Policies and Strategic Studies, such interests have provided powerful incentives for closer cooperation.
The two countries also agree on preserving Syria’s territorial integrity, an issue of particular importance to Turkey, which regards the emergence of an independent Kurdish entity as a security threat.
Their shared commitment to combating terrorism in Syria has also reinforced their mutual dependence, including in efforts to prevent the re-emergence of Islamic State, or ISIS, in Syria and Iraq, according to the Stimson Center. Both sides therefore retain strong incentives to continue their engagement on regional security.
Within this context, Ankara regards cooperation with Russia over Syria and the broader Middle East as a strategic necessity. Turkish officials maintain that relations with Moscow suffered no rupture after Assad’s fall.
More significantly, according to the Stimson Center, Ankara views Russia as providing a counterweight to Israel, which it sees as opposed to the emergence of both a unified Syria and a geopolitically powerful Turkey.
Moscow, in turn, needs Ankara as a conduit to the West, despite continuing direct talks with Washington. With Russia and the United States still unable to reach agreement on a ceasefire in Ukraine, both may once again look to Ankara as a mediator.
Russia’s dependence on Turkey has also grown in the energy sphere. All pipelines carrying Russian gas to Europe are currently out of operation except TurkStream, which passes through Turkey.
On Syria specifically, Asmar identifies several reasons why Ankara may see value in maintaining a carefully calibrated Russian role. Turkey has little interest in turning Syria into an exclusively Turkish sphere of influence, since doing so would encourage other powers, above all Israel, to organise against Ankara.
Russia’s presence, alongside Syria’s relations with the Gulf states, Europe and the United States, also gives Damascus greater room for independent manoeuvre. “The paradox,” Asmar says, “is that this could make Turkish influence more sustainable and less likely to provoke regional sensitivities.”
Turkish-Russian disagreements may still emerge, although a return to the confrontations associated with the Idlib period appears unlikely.
Brijaa also believes friction remains possible, though its character will differ from the previous phase. Future disputes are less likely to take the form of military confrontation. They may instead centre on Russian bases, ports, arms contracts, reconstruction, the Syrian coast and the distribution of influence within Syrian state institutions.
The relationship will therefore continue to combine cooperation with competition.
Salem considers a return to the clashes seen before Assad’s fall improbable because Russia is now in a substantially weaker position and, in practical terms, its Syrian presence is protected by Turkey.
A new variable has also entered the equation: the United States, which is seeking to reduce Russian influence in Syria and across the Middle East. Salem points in particular to the US Congress’s request that the American government assess Russia’s role in assisting Iran during the recent war. In his view, this reflects a growing American and Western inclination to curtail Moscow’s influence in Syria.
