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00:00Joining me now from Washington is Henri Barkey, a Middle East specialist with the Council
00:04for Foreign Relations. Thank you so much for your time. We've just heard from the Turkish
00:09president who says Syria must never be divided again and Turkey will act against anybody
00:15seeking to compromise its territory. Now this is Ankara's primary concern is defeating the
00:22Syrian Kurds who are also working with the Americans in fighting the remains of ISIS.
00:27So it doesn't exactly bode well for stability in the region, does it?
00:32No, it's going to create complications for the new Syrian government as well because
00:37it is not in the interest of the new Syrian government to have a situation where part
00:47of the opposition, the Syrian National Army, which is part of the opposition fighting an
00:53American ally, because let's face it, the new Syrian government will need America's
00:59support. It will need, the United States has a $10 million bounty on Mr. Golani, the head
01:08of HDS. HDS is considered a terrorist organization. These things have to change. So you need to
01:14have fairly decent relations with the United States. So to have part of your coalition
01:20attacking US allies who are not doing anything against Turkey, they're just defending their
01:27own territory and fighting ISIS, it doesn't augur well. But Erdogan thinks that he's always
01:36stronger than he thinks he is. So that's partially the problem.
01:40The Turkish president also saying that he's hoping Donald Trump, when he enters the White
01:45House next year, will withdraw American troops from Syria. Is that likely to happen?
01:53I suspect not because, look, Mr. Trump tried to do that twice when he was president before.
02:00In both instances, his advisers, the Pentagon, the State Department, told him not to do it
02:07and he changed his mind. The United States only has 900 troops in Syria fighting with
02:17the Kurds. 900 troops is not a huge number, one. Two, you have to think also of the consequences
02:25of withdrawing because the Syrian Kurds today have a number of prisons where they keep ISIS
02:33prisoners. There's more than 40,000 ISIS folks there. Imagine if all those were released.
02:39ISIS has not been defeated completely yet. We saw the United States initiating 75 attacks from
02:46the air the other day against ISIS positions. So imagine if you had 40,000 ISIS folks running all
02:53over Syria and Iraq. We will be back to 2014 and that will bring back the United States again into
03:01the region. So it's a very small price to keep 900 American soldiers there. Not to mention,
03:08of course, that at a time when Iran has suffered a severe defeat, one of Iran's most important
03:18demands in the past has been for the Americans to withdraw from Syria.
03:21So why give Iran a victory when Iran is weak? So on all these accounts, it doesn't make sense.
03:30How close is Ankara with HTS? How much sway do they actually hold over Mohamed al-Jilani?
03:39This is a really $64,000 question, as we say here. HTS is not a wholly owned subsidiary
03:48of Ankara. Ankara had a relationship with HTS. Ankara provided aid, allowed people to cross
03:55the border and join the HTS. But Ankara also considered HTS as a terrorist organization.
04:07Ankara has a direct wing, if you want, of the opposition called the Syrian National Army.
04:13The Syrian National Army has fought with HTS against Bashar al-Assad's regime,
04:20but also separately against the Kurds. But there were times when HTS and the Syrian National Army
04:26fought each other. Again, if the Syrian National Army starts acting as a surrogate for the Turks,
04:35it's not going to earn, shall we say, brownie points with HTS, because HTS at the moment
04:44wants one thing, stability in Syria. It doesn't want to fight the Kurds.
04:50It wants to come up with a solution with the Kurds that is not one of violence. And it needs
04:59time to do all these things. But we see that the Syrian National Army is moving against the Kurds.
05:07At some point, I think the Syrian government will have to say to the Turks, enough.
05:16But you will see that there will be other relationships between Turkey and Damascus
05:22as time goes by. I mean, Turkey is the most important economic power there. So
05:28the Syrians do need Turkey. It's early days yet. There's
05:33incredible instability. It's a developing story. But I do want to ask, could we see a situation
05:40where power sharing occurs between the Kurds and HTS? I mean, can they find enough common ground?
05:50Yes, but it's very difficult to imagine how that would come about because after all,
05:59the Kurds are a minority, not a very large minority in Syria. Yes, they control
06:06a fairly sizable amount of territory, which they will have to give away most of it. I think what
06:13the Kurds want is some kind of, shall we say, cultural and, shall we say, a little bit of
06:21local autonomy in the regions and be left alone. And that's what the Turks don't want.
06:31The Turks are afraid that what happened in Iraq after the Gulf War will happen in Syria as well,
06:38which is the creation of an autonomous Kurdish region that is recognized internationally.
06:45And if that were to happen in Syria as well, they're afraid that Turkish Kurds will start
06:51wanting the same thing. So for the Turks, this is a strategic issue, and they will do everything to
06:57prevent a deal between Damascus and the Syrian Kurds. And this is why the United States will
07:06come in and has to play an important role. But we don't exactly know what the Trump administration's
07:12position will be when all these issues become relevant. And Ankara, I imagine, is also concerned
07:18about possible new refugee flows being triggered by further instability.
07:25Yes, but at the moment, the refugees seem to be leaving Turkey, leaving Lebanon, and all trying
07:31to go back to Syria to essentially reclaim their houses, their possessions. So if there was another
07:39civil war in Syria, of course, there will be refugees. But at the moment, to tell you the
07:48truth, it's hard to see another civil war emerging because HTS is too powerful. The Syrian National
07:57Army or the Kurds, or the remnants of, shall we say, the Alawites are not strong enough to stand
08:04up to HTS. So it's hard to see another civil war emerge anytime soon.
08:10Henri Barkhi, thank you so much for your time.