Ana Maria Luca and Nadine Elali

In a house in Wadi Khaled, a Lebanese village in the northern region of Akkar, several Syrian men who crossed the border into Lebanon to escape the Syrian security forces’ crackdown on anti-regime protesters sat around a living room, sipping from small cups of Turkish coffee and debating their political program. They said that they are all from the Homs district, that they were involved in protests and that they want democracy for their country: the Turkish type of democracy.

“We want a liberal system based on the separation of powers, a multi-party system, institutions. We like the Turkish Justice and Development Party’s economic ideas, its openness to the West. Relations based on dialogue [and giving] importance to institutions, principles and political opinions, is where we should start from,” an activist, who acts as a spokesperson for the group, told NOW Lebanon.

In Syria, Turkey has been seen as a supporter of the protests after it received around 240 refugees through the Hatay border crossing and hosted a meeting of the opposition in Istanbul. In Banyas, one of the cities where the crackdown on the revolt has been very harsh, protesters carried pictures of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is also the head of the center-right Turkish Justice and Development Party, which holds the majority in the parliament in Ankara.
Syrian opposition figures gathered on April 26 in Istanbul at a meeting organized by Turkish NGOs in support of the uprising in Syria. The chairman of the Movement for Justice and Development in exile, Anas Abdah, said that Turkey should get tougher on Syria.

But is Turkey really so supportive of the uprising in Syria? Professor Veysal Ayhan of the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies in Ankara says that the Turkish government is quite hesitant in taking a stance, especially since it has engaged Damascus heavily over the past eight years.

“When the revolts started in Daraa and the Assad regime used force against the demonstrators, the Turkish government supported the regime and started talking about the reforms in Syria,” Ayhan told NOW Lebanon, referring to the visits Turkish officials made to Damascus asking President Bashar al-Assad to grant freedom of speech and create a parliamentary system in his country.
During Erdogan's term in office, Turkey and Syria signed a free trade agreement, visa requirements on Syrians traveling to Turkey were lifted, and Bashar al-Assad visited Ankara in 2004 after 47 years of cold Turkish-Syrian relations.

“However, although Turkey expressed demand for reforms, it also abstains from criticizing the Assad regime for violating human rights. Apart from ‘We do not want to see any new Hama’ statement, there was no condemnation of the Syrian government for the deaths during the protests in Syria,” Ayhan said, adding that any change that might happen in Syria will affect Turkey in all aspects – politically, economically and socially.
Ayhan says that Turkey would prefer to be a mediator between the opposition and the regime in Damascus. “But the Syrian regime was not responsive and preferred to keep its alliance with the Iranian regime, and it’s been two weeks already since the Syrian regime stopped meeting with Turkish diplomats.”

“My personal opinion is that President Assad is not willing to make too many compromises. He won’t agree to give the opposition more rights and start real reforms; he just wants to give them some minor rights to keep them appeased so that he can continue his own way,” the analyst explained. “The Assad regime is not ready to start real reforms, while the opposition knows what it wants. The regime plays the card of sectarian strife in the country, but if we look at Syrian history, we don’t find any time when the Syrians engaged in any such sectarian conflict. They lived together for so long.”

The activists in Wadi Khaled say they know that it is as important for them to have Turkish support as it is to have the international community pressuring the Assad regime. One activist says he understands Turkey’s concerns. “There is something that we are aware of, and so is the international community, and that is that Syrian society is made of diverse sects and ethnicities. The majority [Sunnis] has been deprived for a long time of practicing its real ideas, opinions and convictions.”

“But we want free democratic elections, based on political headlines and ideas and projects. We hope not to see a senate representing sects, tribes. We want real national projects, a parliament seeking reform, fight corruption, aiming at dialogue and openness,” he said.