Fierce fighting between Druze militias and Sunni Bedouin factions in Syria’s southern Suwayda province has jolted Ankara into an all-out diplomatic sprint, underscoring President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s determination to keep his war-scarred neighbor in one piece. For Turkey, the latest bloodshed is more than a humanitarian crisis; it is a strategic alarm bell that Kurdish self-rule in northern Syria—and perhaps fresh refugee flows—could soon follow.
Al-Monitor correspondent Barin Kayaoglu reported the clashes, Israeli airstrikes, and Ankara’s reaction on July 20, citing a UK-based war monitor tally of more than 600 dead and quoting Erdogan’s vow that Turkey “will not accept” Syria’s breakup. Those remarks, coupled with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s behind-the-scenes calls to Syrian, U.S., and Gulf counterparts, reveal an urgent effort to douse a fire that could jump Turkey’s long, porous border.
The conflagration began when local Druze gunmen skirmished with Bedouin fighters, prompting Israel to bomb Bedouin convoys and Syrian army positions around Damascus and along the Palmyra-Homs highway. Jerusalem framed the strikes as a bid to shield Syria’s Druze minority; Damascus counter-deployed troops before agreeing to a tenuous cease-fire. Ankara’s gripe is clear: every Israeli bomb and every sectarian flare-up chips away at the geographic status quo Turkey prizes.
That status quo already looks fragile in the north, where the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have run a de facto Kurdish region for nearly a decade. Although the PKK announced in May that it would disband as part of a nascent peace push with Ankara, Turkish officials fear any formal Kurdish autonomy next door could embolden militants to scuttle the process at home. “Present risks in Syria are even higher than in March,” warns Ayhan Doganer of Istanbul’s EDAM think tank, noting that the Druze network stretches into Lebanon and Israel, adding layers of volatility.
Turkey also has its eye on the domestic ledger. Roughly three million registered Syrians—and an unknown number of undocumented compatriots—already strain Turkish jobs, housing, and politics. Fresh displacement from a partitioned Syria could inflame nationalist backlash just as Erdogan and his coalition partner, Devlet Bahceli, court voters wary of new arrivals. Sealing the frontier is not a cost-free option; allowing Syria to splinter may be worse.
Hence the diplomatic blitz. Fidan has phoned Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack, Jordan’s Ayman Safadi, and Saudi Prince Faisal bin Farhan in the past 48 hours, while Erdogan hosted UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed in Ankara to drum up reconstruction funds. Washington, for its part, has nudged Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa and Kurdish leaders toward a “one state, one army” formula, according to University of Oklahoma scholar Joshua Landis—music to Turkish ears, though hardly to Kurdish ones.
Whether the United States can restrain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is another matter. NewLines Institute analyst Nicholas Heras argues that Netanyahu’s domestic calculus, including restive Druze voters, limits Trump-era leverage. Yet Turkish analysts insist only U.S. pressure can curb Israeli raids and keep Syria’s “fault lines” from exploding. “If those lines rupture,” Doganer cautions, “no one will survive that political earthquake.”
For now, Ankara is betting that rapid diplomacy, Gulf investment, and a fragile cease-fire can keep Syria stitched together. Should that bet fail, Turkey could face renewed insurgency risks, another refugee wave, and the very Kurdish autonomy it has spent years trying to prevent—an outcome Erdogan calls unacceptable, but which the guns of Suwayda threaten to make inevitable.
Map: Wikipedia Commons