The Middle East, with Anatolia, Syria and the northern regions of Iraq at its center of gravity, has always been among the most valuable areas (and often the first) in almost every field throughout history. All the powers seeking hegemony on the global level have also turned to this region to maximize their power and consolidate their world domination. In Jean-Paul Roux’s classic work, “The History of the Turks,” he writes: “They came out of the northern forests, brave, disorganized, ingenious and at the beginning of their journey. They spread first into the steppe, then into China, and then, like a flood with no end in sight, to the west…” This is probably the reason for the intense westward flow of the Turks. The significance of the Middle East remains as crucial today as it has been in the past. The road to the summit of world domination passes through this land, the Middle East, of which Türkiye is a part.
Understanding the present in the Middle East requires comprehending the past. We all know more or less how the events in Syria started. In 2011, peaceful demonstrations started in Daraa. These demonstrations demanded elections and cultural rights. However, the Bashar Assad regime used severe force to suppress these peaceful demonstrations. As a result, the events spread throughout the country.
The Assad regime characterized the events as “foreign-sponsored terrorism” and used all the means at his disposal, including chemical weapons, to suppress these demands. Violence escalated rapidly across the country. At least 6 million Syrians have been displaced inside the country. At least 7 million have fled abroad. Türkiye, Lebanon and Jordan are hosting 75% of those who have fled the country. Syria’s rich historical heritage has also been largely looted and pillaged during this period. All the artifacts in the country that are defined as UNESCO cultural heritage have been severely damaged and most of them have been destroyed. Most of these were Turkish-Islamic artifacts.
At the end of this tragic process that lasted for more than a decade, a new era began in Syria when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) entered the capital, Damascus. Today, with the overthrow of the Assad regime, a unique political reality has emerged in Syria. This reality can be considered as the beginning of a process that will create radical changes both in Syria’s domestic order and international relations in the new era. From Türkiye’s perspective, the Syrian issue, which is one of the most important agenda items of Turkish foreign policy, has a profound impact not only on foreign politics but also on domestic politics. Therefore, it is very important to analyze the Turkmen issue in Syria from a multidimensional perspective.
Turkmen inhabitants of Middle East
Since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new states with artificial borders, blood and tears have never ceased in the region. Only about 150 years ago, the regions we now call Northern Syria and Northern Iraq were part of the Aleppo, Diyarbakır, Raqqa and Mosul Provinces of the Ottoman Empire. In this context, the Syrian Turkmen, who are an integral part of the Turkic World, became inhabitants of the region.
While the Anatolian geography was not yet Turk-Islamized, Turkish principalities and states were established in what we know as Syria. Aleppo was one of the places used as a base during the Turk-Islamization of Anatolia. From the seventh century onwards, we know that Oghuz tribes were present in Iraq and Syria. In the 10th and 11th centuries, we also know that an intense Turkish migration started to the region. Syrian Turkmen lived in almost every region of Syria, especially at strategic points. There was a significant Turkmen population in Aleppo, Latakia, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Tartus and Raqqa before the civil war started. However, this population had to migrate to neighboring countries. The majority of Syrian Turkmen are Sunni and Hanafi. There are a small number of Alawite Turkmen communities among them. The Turkish spoken by Syrian Turkmen is very close to the Turkish spoken in Antep, Kilis, Urfa and Diyarbakır. Turkmens have existed as a separate people in Syria for centuries.
According to our research, approximately 1.5 million Turkmen speak Turkish in Syria. Together with Turkmen who have forgotten Turkish, we estimate that the number of Turkmen in Syria is around 3 million. But we do not have a precise record. The regime did not have any data on this issue either. The main nuance here is this: Turkmen live in large communities in the regions close to the Turkish border, preserving their Turkish language. However, in the regions far from the border, where they live in smaller communities, they have forgotten Turkish. Therefore, Turkmen living in these small groups have either become Arabized or, as in Afrin and Ayn-el-Arab, Kurdishized.
Syria is the last example of a state in the Middle East where a dictatorship was overthrown with great celebration. Yet, Syria lacks solid institutions to stabilize a country that has experienced different levels of oppression and turmoil since the French left after World War II. In the future, there may be a gradual decline of all major powers in the Middle East, leading to an overall more unstable and turbulent geopolitics. As technology increasingly shrinks geography and creates a more anxious and claustrophobic planet, the sense of crisis and instability is likely to be greater in the region than we can imagine or cope with in the future.
In light of all this, every actor directly or indirectly involved in the deepening Syrian crisis is today reconsidering its position and renewing its strategies. At this point, the reorganization of Syrian Turkmens, who are an integral part of the Turkic world such as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Zazas, Kurmanjs and others, who are one of the important instruments for the national security of the Republic of Türkiye in Syria, stands before us as a very important issue. Türkiye’s urgent attention to this issue is vital for its national security.