The nation of Turkey has recently announced its call for a ceasefire in Syria, asking Bashar Assad to resolve the disputes with his people and speak with his adversaries. At a joint news conference in Ankara which included Hakan Fidan and his Iranian counterpart, Hakan said that Turkey and Iran would be continuing diplomatic efforts, despite the fact that the two Middle Eastern countries are on opposing sides of the current conflict in Syria. Syrian insurgents recently launched a cripplingly fast offensive towards the largest city of Aleppo, and have since captured almost the entire city. This advance was humiliating for Bashar Assad, especially considering Turkey supports the insurgents and his allies of Iran and Russia are preoccupied. While Turkey has been trying to make peace with Syria in order to suppress the Kurds at its southern border and ensure the safety of Syrian refugees, Iraq and Iran especially have expressed their support for Assad’s regime. Meanwhile, the conflict in Syria has caused other countries to worry if the conflict will spill over into bordering nations.
Syria has been turbulent since 2011, and now their civil war is flaring up again. Now that Iran and Turkey, two more powerful countries, are starting to work towards reconciliation instead of aiding the conflict, it may come to an end fairly soon. However, this won’t mean that the civil war is entirely over. So long as Assad is in power because he is a dictator, insurgents will likely be rising up against him. The fact that Aleppo has been mostly taken is especially bad for Assad, who will have to hold back the insurgents in an attempt to quell any worries from neighboring states as well as to protect his own security.
Negotiations between Hakan and Assad have previously fallen flat, and Turkey is not very happy about that. The fact is, the war in Syria has been going on since 2011, and it is likely the Middle East’s priority to end the conflict so it doesn’t escalate any further than it already is. It is even more apparent when Iran and Turkey, two opposing countries, are working together to end it. With what we’re talking about in class, it could be argued that constructivism supports this by saying that Iran and Turkey have a shared goal: ending the conflict. And the identity of the insurgents and Assad’s regime fundamentally differ, therefore they will argue about it and come to blows.