Temporarily Aligned Interest: Cooperation Between Turkey and The United States in The Syrian Civil War

The Syrian Civil War, starting from 2011 and still ongoing, is one of the largest conflicts in the region which highly affected the overall stability of the region and has involved several parties. With multiple factions fighting each other inside the territory of Syria and sometimes clashing through the border regions of neighbouring countries, it is inevitable for Syria’s neighbours such as Turkey to react. With the decreasing regional stability of the Middle East, a region which has caught the interests of many other powers such as The United States due to its abundance of resources (primarily oil), western nations too eventually take action towards the civil war. Condenming the Syrian Government under President Bashar Al Assad for alleged human rights violations towards their own citizens, the United States along with Turkey sided with anti-government rebellions and actively supported them by supplying weapons and munitions, along with providing military training. However, despite having mutual interest on supporting anti-government rebels and later countering ISIS offensives, the Interests of Turkey and US are not always in-line with each other.


Introduction
Eversince the end of the second world war, the Middle East region has been littered with conflicts. Rebellions, coups, and riots escalated within countries in the Middle East during the 1950s, such as in Cyprus, Iraq, and Lebanon. Furthermore, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 has led to general disapproval by Arab nations, leading to several wars such as Arab-Israeli war of 1948, involving multiple Arab nations such as Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt;Six-day war of 1967, andYom-Kippur War of 1973. Additionally, the middle east is a region which is rich in oil, one of the most important natural resources in the modern age. Their abundance of natural resources naturally led nations from other regions, especially western nations, to take interest in it. ISIS came into prominence that the US see the need to directly intervene, in order to protect their assets and allies in the region. In this paper both the interests of US and Turkey in Syria will be described, and one will see how they may not always be in line with each other despite having common interest at a glance.

Prof. Dr. Raymond Hinnebusch
This journal primarily analyzes the relations between Turkey and Syria eversince the start of the Civil war in 2011. In this journal, a lot of the internal domestic factors of Turkey which led to the formation of their foreign policies towards their neighbouring country.
One of the main argument in this article is within Turkey, there are identity politics Jurnal Diplomasi Pertahanan, Volume 7, Nomor 3, 2021 E-ISSN 2746-8496 4 embedded with their agenda towards Syria, as they seek to bring down Assad's regime and replace them with a more Sunni-aligned faction, which at one point included ISIS.

U.S.-Turkey Realignment on Syria (2015) by Kadir Ustun
Using the 2014-2015 siege of Kobani as a case study, this journal explains the obstacles faced by Turkey and US as they tried to lift off the siege of Kobani by ISIS militias. This journal shows Turkey's domestic view towards the smaller factions in Syria, such Free Syrian Army, and Kurdish YPG and PYD groups, and how they distrust Kurdish groups due to historical hostilities even though the US tries to support them as they are also acting as an anti-Assad-Government rebel group. Ustun concluded that The US and Turkey is struggling to cooperate as they still do not know how to best handle the civil war situation.

Economics and Geopolitics of the Middle East (2008) by Richard N Dralonge.
This book provides a comprehensive outlook of the geopolitical condition of the Middle East up to 2008. Even though this book was written prior to the Syrian Civil War, the information presented here is very useful in helping understand backgrounds of multiple ongoing events, and also provides a clear outlook to relations within nations before they are changed by the civil war, such as Iraq and Syria.

Research Methods
This paper is to be written through Qualitative research method, with academic journals and books regarding theories and case studies used as the main references.
The previous literatures in this subject such as one written by Kadir Ustun and Prof. Dr.
Raymond Hinnenbusch provides a detailed case study of certain aspects of the case. In this paper those researches will be used to combine multiple perspective to create a comprehensive big picture regarding the foreign policy of Turkey and United States towards Syria. Other sources related to the topic too will be used to provide additional perspective surrounding the subject.
In this case foreign policies will be analyzed using a realist point of view, in a sense that all actions of a nation-state are done in order to pursue each of their own national interest. The opposing liberal point of view would see that nations would cooperate in order to maintain peace and reduce conflict. In the realist point of view however, conflict reduction is needed in order for a nation to be able to pursue their own national interest.
When nations cooperate it means they share a common national interest to some extent.
However every nation has different needs, shaped by a lot of factors such as their economical condition and their geograhpical situation. Between Turkey and The US,  Being a part of NATO and also trying to become a full member of EU, thus it is within the interest of Turkey to promote democratic values by ceasing support towards Assad regime and encouraging a more democratic opposition to take over the government. Some sources however stated that Turkey initially supported ISIS along with Al-Nusra Front which had ties to Al-Qaeda during the start of the Syrian civil war. This was due to the fact that they are regarded as the most effective fighters that can take down the Assad regime. During the initial years ISIS fighters were allowed safe haven in Turkey, and they too, like the case with FSA, received supplies of armaments and equipments to be used agianst The Syrian Government. Other than that, Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has an agenda to promote Sunni-muslim factions to take over Syria's government. ISIS, being a sunni muslim radical organisation is seen as one of the potential allies in achieving this agenda.

Rise of ISIS
In 2014, The world was taken by surprise by the seemingly sudden appearance of the commonly defined as a terrorist group that is ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Or also known as Islamic State of Iraq and The Levant, ISIL). ISIS at first glance appeared similar to other insurgent groups, but they had military power that was able to drive the heavily armed Iraqi Security Forces, which was trained and equipped by the United States, out of a lot of key cities in Western Iraq region, and also Syria. Not only did they manage to drive the Iraqi army, but in the process they committed massacres towards anyone who did not comply to their beliefs and actively shows and publish their atrocities. Not only did they eliminate people who believes anything other than their cause, but they also intentionally destroy cities of historical significance, such as Palmyra and Mosul (Curry 2015).
Prior to this instance, ISIS started as one of the small insurgent groups which participated in fighting against the US-led coalition forces occupying Iraq since 2003.
Most of their efforts were unsuccesful as they were wiped out almost entirely by US-

United States Involvement
The appearance of ISIS as a major insurgent power with capabilities of disrupting stabilities not only in the Middle East region but also on a global scale (as seen by the terrorist attacks outside of Iraq and Syria) establishes themselves as a threat to western nations, especially the US. The image of ISIS as a very brutal and powerful terrorist organisation with influences all over the world, and also openly claiming to be responsible of deadly terrorist attacks, has spread universal fear. This universal fear leads to the justification of direct intervention in order to remove this threat.
The US thus sees it as part of their national interest to help eliminate the threat of ISIS, in order to protect their homeland from potential threats, their assets in the middle east and also their allies (in this case Israel and Iraq). By 2014, Obama has authorised the redeployment of the US military to the middle east region with Iraq being its initial property. The initial troops deployed included ground troops to assist and advice the Iraqi Security Forces in fighting ISIS troops on the ground additional ground troops for security of US bases, Air force and navy air controller deployed among ground troops to direct air attacks, air crews to fly close air support and their mechanics to maintain their aircrafts and other equipment. security to their borders, and also still has to manage the large amount of refugees in Syria which they had to either provide asylum or deport.

Conclusion
The dynamically shifting situation in the Middle East has influenced the international community in a lot of ways. Alliances form and break as one conflict ends and a different one starts. In the case of Syrian Civil war, it has major impact from the beginning to Turkey as its bordering nation which was formerly very close to each other before the start of the Turkey's view towards the Assad regime changed as they did not approve how The Syrian government treated the protestors with violence, which leads to the civil war at the first place. Thus, Turkey starts supporting anti-government militias by training and equipping them as in their view, Taking down Assad's regime and having them replaced by more democratic one will ensure a better stability. This was however further complicated by Turkey's distrust of Kurdish groups, and also having to deal with large influx of refugees from Syria which creates problems for Turkey in a domestic level. However, cooperations with Turkey sometimes clashes due to their distrust of Kurdish groups and also the reluctance of the US to get involved in combat with Syrian governmental forces. With ISIS threat eliminated the US reduced its military presence in Syria, remaining only to provide aid towards allied militia factions and to serve as a balancer to Iran and Russia's influence. The US did not continue to assist Turkey in managing the security of their borders as the civil war rages on in Syria. Further research can be done more on how the domestic issues of the US leads to their intervention in Syria, and a more comprehensive reseach regarding how Syrian Government reacts and redevelop their policy as they face military intervention from both Turkey and The US would certainly be a welcome perspective for this topic.

Thank You Note
I would like to thank Prof. A.A. Banyu for encouraging me (and other students) to write this Journal, it may not be the best and still ridden with mistakes but I have learned a lot in the process and I too hope this journal can help provide additional insight to other readers.