New hotbed of conflict in Syria: US, Israel seek to prevent Turkey from benefiting from Assad’s fall

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has visited Syria, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also plans to make a trip to Damascus in the near future. Turkey’s embassy has reopened in the Syrian capital after 12 years, following the regime change in the country. Ankara seeks to be the main player in Syria and occupy the position that used to belong to Moscow and Tehran. However, the US and Israel are determined to prevent Syria from turning into a strategic stronghold for Turkey, Russian Izvestia writes.
Middle East expert f Russia Andrey Ontikov points out that in the short term, the Turks and the Israelis are winning. "The Turks have managed to install their loyal groups in Damascus. Qatar is another country likely to benefit from this, as there is talk about reviving the project of building a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey and Europe via Syria," the expert explained. Israel, in turn, is expanding its occupation zone in Syria. The prospects of Israel leaving the area are unclear. "The Israelis aren’t going there to leave," the analyst asserted.
Ontikov stresses that in the long run, the Americans pose a threat to Turkey as they plan to create an independentKurdistan. The political scientist believes that a future Kurdish state could include parts of Syrian and Iranian territories, as well as a large portion of Turkey.
Alina Sbitneva, a researcher with the Department of the Middle and Post-Soviet East at the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, notes that Turkey has firmly entrenched itself in Syria and has no intention of letting it go. The expert added that Ankara was actively building relationships with the new contenders for power in Syria, even though ties were established some time ago. "Russia has invested too much in the region to cede it to anyone easily. President Vladimir Putin said last week that Bashar Assad’s fall did not mean a defeat for Russia, as it also has more important strategic goals, and the presence of Russian military bases is further proof of that," the specialist remarked.
The political scientist emphasizes that it’s not the Russian bases that pose the main problem for Turkey but US policies and Israel, which is Washington’s active ally, staking claims to vast territories in Syria, the expert concluded.