By Simon Cameron-Moore

Reuters
 

ISTANBUL: Turkey’s efforts to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to swap repression for reform have so far come to naught, exposing the limits of its influence in a country where Iran also wields clout.
Having embraced Assad as a new found friend in recent years, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been reduced to hand-wringing over the killing of unarmed civilian protesters after the Syrian leader turned tanks against their own cities.

Analysts say Turkey, a NATO member, has been turning away from the West over the past decade. But the changed landscape created by the recent Arab revolts has shown that Turkish leverage with Muslim states in the old dominions of the Ottoman Empire was not as strong as it hoped.

Erdogan, whose foreign policy over the past decade has been to eliminate all Turkey’s old problems with neighbors, increase trade and become a regional power, says that when the first Arab popular uprising broke out in Tunisia, he urged Assad to reform.
Late last month Erdogan sent his intelligence chief to Damascus to try to persuade Assad to take the reform path, but there was no sign of success. “Could Turkey have done anything more – I don’t think so,” said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Bilgi University.

“The real problem concerns Turkey’s claims of influence, its abilities and capacities,” he said. “It could not induce Bashar Assad or the Baathist regime to implement reforms in time.”
As a storm of uprisings blew through North Africa and the Middle East, Erdogan has been more circumspect over Arab autocrats killing protesters.
“Syrian issues are almost an issue of domestic policy for us,” Erdogan said Monday in an interview with Channel 7.

Paul Salem, from the Carnegie Endowment think tank in Washington, said Turkey would have done better in the eyes of many Arabs by speaking out more strongly against the actions of Assad and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s security forces.
“The uprisings are effectively calling for the Arab world to be more like Turkey, democratic, with a vibrant civil society and political pluralism, secularism alongside Islam, and a productive and balanced economy,” Salem wrote in the Los Angeles Times this week.
“This could have been Turkey’s moment in the Middle East: the moment was lost.”

Syria, a country dominated for nearly five decades by an Alawite minority close to Shiite Islam, poses the biggest test for Turkey as it competes with Iran for influence in Damascus.
“So far, the Iranians have more influence on the Syrian government than the Turkish government,” Walid Saffour, the London-based president of the Syrian Human Rights Committee, told Reuters late April.
“But I think if the Syrian government is sane enough to listen to the language of logic, it will listen to the advice of the Turkish government.”
Hard-liners in the Syrian government could be antagonized if Erdogan pushed harder for urgent reforms and more restraint.

“Because Turkey couldn’t unequivocally support the Syrian regime the way Iran has, the Syrians are rather cross with Turkey,” said Ozel. “Relations are going to be frostier.”
Turkey and Syria, which share an 850-kilometers border, have come along way since 1998 when they almost went to war over Kurdish militants operating from Syrian territory.
Erdogan and Assad have had a visible rapport. In the past couple of years visa requirements were dropped for travel between the two countries, and Turkish and Syrian ministers have held regular strategic cooperation meetings.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, Erdogan revealed growing uncertainty over Assad’s intentions regarding reforms.
“Honestly I am having doubts,” he told the ATV news channel, saying he was unsure whether Assad was being blocked, he feared reforms would not work, or was being indecisive.
Some analysts say Turkey, a Muslim member of NATO, wants to keep dialogue going with the likes of Gadhafi and Assad, rather than join a chorus of condemnation that leaves such leaders feeling they have little to lose by lashing out.

Critics say that Erdogan’s reluctance to choose sides stems from concern over Turkey’s sizable business interests in Libya and Syria. Though in the case of Libya, Erdogan’s first priority was evacuating over 20,000 Turks working there.
Others say Erdogan habitually cuts fellow Muslim leaders more slack. It is a familiar position for Erdogan to be in. Two years ago he congratulated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his victory in an election the opposition said was fixed.

Despite having good relations with repressive governments, Turkey’s leaders say they want democracy to triumph in the region.
But when uprisings have flared in countries that are riven by religious, sectarian or ethnic fault lines, and lack institutions strong enough to ensure unity throughout any upheaval, Turkish leaders have measured their words.
For Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq now pose more risk than Syria, with its mix of Sunnis, Alawites, Kurds and Druze.