page_title: Foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War
section_title: Turkey
hierarchical_section_title: Foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War / Support for Syrian opposition / Turkey
caption_attribution_description: English: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, right, delivers remarks in honor of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on May 16, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
context_page_description: Foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War refers to political, military and operational support to parties involved in the ongoing conflict in Syria that began in March 2011, as well as active foreign involvement. Most parties involved in the war in Syria receive various types of support from foreign countries and entities based outside Syria. The ongoing conflict in Syria is widely described as a series of overlapping proxy wars between the regional and world powers, primarily between the US and Russia as well as between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
  The Syrian Ba'athist government is politically and militarily supported by Iran and Russia, and actively supported by the Lebanese Hezbollah group, the Syrian-based Palestinian group PFLP-GC, and others. Since 30 September 2015, Russia, the only foreign power that has its military assets openly and legally stationed in Syria, wages an intensive air campaign against anti-government forces in Syria, on the side of and at the request of the Syrian government.
context_section_description: The government of Turkey, a NATO member with the alliance's second largest army, had had a relatively friendly relationship with Syria over a decade prior to the start of the civil unrest in Syria in 2011; Turkey, while joining calls for the Syrian government to end the violence, initially objected to the demand voiced in August 2011 by the US that Bashar Assad resign. Turkey trained defectors from the Syrian Army on its territory, and in July 2011 a group of them announced the birth of the Free Syrian Army. In October 2011, Turkey began sheltering the Free Syrian Army, offering the group a safe zone and a base of operation. Together with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey has also provided the rebels with arms and other military equipment. Tensions between Syria and Turkey significantly worsened after Syrian forces shot down a Turkish fighter jet in June 2012 and border clashes in October 2012. In early February 2016, Reuters referred to Turkey as "a major sponsor of the insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad". Turkey provided refuge for Syrian dissidents from early days of the Syrian conflict. In early June 2011, Syrian opposition activists convened in Istanbul to discuss regime change, and Turkey hosted the head of the Free Syrian Army, Colonel Riad al-Asaad. Turkey became increasingly hostile to the Assad government's policies and came to encourage reconciliation among dissident factions. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has tried to "cultivate a favorable relationship with whatever government would take the place of Assad." In May 2012, Syrian opposition forces started to receive arms and training from Turkey and the United States. Turkey's subsequent arrangements with Russia and Iran (from early 2017) caused a rift in its relationship with the Syrian opposition, as the opposition leaders criticized Russia's plan to create safe zones in Syria as threatening the country's territorial integrity.
  Turkey maintained a small enclave within Syria itself, the Tomb of Suleyman Shah on the right bank of the Euphrates in Aleppo Province near the village of Qarah Qawzak (Karakozak). The tomb is guarded by a small permanent garrison of Turkish soldiers, who rotate in from a battalion based at the Turkish border some 25 kilometres (16 mi) away—even as the civil war unfolded around them. Up until Syrian forces shot down a Turkish warplane in June 2012, the garrison numbered 15 men in total. Following the incident, the Turkish government doubled the number of soldiers stationed at the tomb to 30, while Prime Minister Erdoğan warned that "the tomb of Suleyman Shah and the land that surrounds it are Turkish territory. Any act of aggression against it would be an attack on our territory and NATO territory." In February 2015, the army launched a raid into Syria in order to move the tomb closer to the border.
  Until September 2014, Turkey did not overtly participate in the international airstrikes against ISIL. Turkey had repeatedly said it wanted the US to focus its air strikes in Syria as much on removing Assad as on fighting the ISIL; it had also demanded a "safe zone" in the area extending from the Syrian town of Kobanî on the Turkish border, westward to the town of Azaz, that would be protected by air power and that was purported to enable Turkey to transfer back to Syria some of an estimated 1.8 million displaced people camped on Turkish territory.
  In October 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden stated that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had "poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Al-Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and al Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world."
  On 22 July 2015, Turkey agreed to let the US use the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey to launch air attacks against the ISIL, a deal that was seen as a major shift in policy on the part of the once-reluctant American ally (in March 2003, the Turkish parliament voted against allowing Turkey to be a base of op
caption: Joe Biden accused Turkey of supporting jihadis in a speech at Harvard's Kennedy School on October 2, 2014
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