Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
Ian MacDonald
Turkey’s military presence in Syria and Iraq is entering a new phase. For years, Ankara has justified its cross-border deployments primarily through the fight against Kurdish armed groups and the need to prevent threats from spilling across its borders. But as political arrangements in Damascus and Baghdad evolve, the strategic rationale for maintaining Turkish forces is becoming more complicated. Ankara is now confronting a question that extends beyond battlefield security: how can it preserve its influence in neighbouring states without turning a temporary military mission into a permanent regional commitment?
Turkish Defence Minister Yaşar Güler has made Ankara’s position clear. Turkey will maintain its forces in Syria and Iraq until what it considers the necessary conditions for regional and border security have been met. Yet the conditions remain broad, leaving considerable room for interpretation. This is more than a military calculation. It reflects Turkey’s determination to retain strategic leverage while adapting to political changes that could eventually make its existing deployments harder to justify.
The central issue is not whether Turkey will withdraw immediately. It is whether Ankara can transform its military presence into a smaller, more politically sustainable security arrangement—or whether its deployments will continue to generate tensions with the very governments whose cooperation Turkey increasingly needs.
Syria: From military intervention to security partnership
Turkey’s role in Syria has changed considerably since its first major cross-border intervention in 2016. Ankara initially focused on containing Kurdish-led forces, particularly the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which Turkey associates with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Over time, however, its objectives expanded to include border security, counterterrorism, military influence and a decisive role in shaping Syria’s post-Assad order.
Turkey’s support for Syrian government forces during their January offensive against the SDF demonstrated the continuing importance of Ankara’s military and political weight. Its involvement has helped Damascus pursue greater control over territories previously administered by Kurdish-led forces. Yet battlefield cooperation does not necessarily mean that Turkey and Syria share the same long-term vision for the country’s security architecture.
For Ankara, the objective is to prevent armed groups it considers hostile from establishing a durable presence near its border. For Damascus, the objective is ultimately to restore state sovereignty across Syrian territory. These goals overlap in the short term but could diverge once the immediate security challenges become more manageable.
The relationship is already evolving from direct cross-border operations and battlefield support towards intelligence-sharing, training and closer security coordination. Such cooperation could give Turkey a means of protecting its interests without maintaining the same scale of military deployment. But it could also allow Ankara to preserve influence over Syria’s security institutions long after the circumstances that originally justified its intervention have changed.
This is where the question of sovereignty becomes unavoidable. Syria’s post-Assad authorities have an incentive to establish control over the northern border and limit the extent to which foreign forces operate independently on Syrian soil. Ankara, meanwhile, has an incentive to negotiate arrangements that would preserve its military presence, at least until it is confident that the threats it identifies have been neutralised.
The result may be a gradual renegotiation of Turkey’s role rather than a straightforward withdrawal. Damascus could accept Turkish training, intelligence cooperation or a more formally regulated military presence in the near term while seeking to reduce its dependence on Ankara over time.
The Kurdish question is central—but not the whole story
The future of Turkey’s deployment cannot be separated from the evolving Kurdish question. If negotiations and disarmament efforts lead to a durable settlement involving the PKK and Kurdish armed networks across the region, Ankara’s justification for maintaining forces in Iraq and parts of Syria would become more difficult to sustain in its present form.
Yet the security environment is more complicated than the Kurdish issue alone. The continued threat posed by the Islamic State, the presence of armed groups opposed to agreements between Damascus and Kurdish representatives, and unresolved internal security challenges all provide reasons for continued coordination between Turkey and Syria.
These concerns are real, but they can also become the basis for an open-ended military policy. When withdrawal depends on a broadly defined condition such as complete regional security, the threshold for leaving can continually move. A government can declare progress while maintaining that the remaining threats still require troops on the ground.
Turkey therefore faces a strategic choice. It can use improved relations with Damascus to negotiate a gradual transition towards a more limited security partnership, or it can preserve its current footprint while waiting for conditions that may never be fully satisfied. The first option would require confidence in Syrian state institutions and enforceable security arrangements. The second would preserve Ankara’s immediate leverage but risk deepening Syrian resentment and prolonging regional uncertainty.
The growing tension between Turkey and Israel adds another complication. Israeli strikes on Syrian military facilities that Turkey has considered for potential use demonstrate how quickly Syria’s changing security environment can become a theatre of competition between regional powers. A Turkish presence designed to protect Ankara’s interests could, under certain circumstances, expose Syria to a wider confrontation.
Damascus has reason to be cautious. It may need Turkish support to address continuing security threats, but it also has an interest in preventing its territory from becoming an arena for a prolonged Turkish-Israeli contest. Formal agreements governing military facilities could provide Syria with a mechanism to regulate Turkey’s presence now while preserving the possibility of reducing it later.
Iraq: A withdrawal that may not signal a retreat
Turkey’s position in Iraq presents a related but distinct challenge. Ankara has conducted repeated operations against the PKK and established a network of forward positions intended to support its cross-border security campaign. These facilities form part of a wider military posture rather than a collection of isolated deployments.
The planned withdrawal from the Bashiqa base in Nineveh, agreed in September alongside Iraqi commitments concerning PKK-linked groups in Sinjar, illustrates the limits of interpreting individual withdrawals as evidence of a strategic retreat. Bashiqa was established to train local forces fighting the Islamic State, and its location makes it less central to Turkey’s immediate border-security requirements than other positions closer to the frontier.
Its handover could therefore represent a relatively inexpensive concession by Ankara, particularly if Baghdad takes meaningful steps to establish state authority in Sinjar. The agreement is transactional: Turkey relinquishes a position while Iraq is expected to address security concerns that Ankara considers fundamental.
The decisive question is whether the arrangement leads to further closures of Turkish forward bases. A withdrawal from one facility does not necessarily mean that Turkey intends to dismantle the wider network supporting its operations against the PKK. The pace of implementation will also depend on developments on the Iraqi side, making the timetable vulnerable to delay if the agreed security measures are not carried out.
For Baghdad, the challenge is to demonstrate that the Iraqi state can exercise authority over its territory without allowing security cooperation to become a justification for indefinite foreign military deployments. For Ankara, the challenge is to determine whether Iraqi commitments can provide sufficient assurance to reduce its military footprint without sacrificing operational reach.
The two governments may therefore continue to negotiate a phased arrangement in which withdrawals are linked to measurable security steps. Such an approach could reduce friction while avoiding the political risks of demanding an immediate and comprehensive Turkish departure. But unless the parties establish clear benchmarks, a gradual process could become a permanent cycle of conditional promises.
The wider regional equation
Turkey’s decisions in Syria and Iraq will also be influenced by developments beyond their borders. A wider regional confrontation involving Iran and its partners, including the Houthis, could alter the calculations of governments and non-state armed groups alike. An escalation involving the United States and Israel could similarly reshape regional security priorities and place additional pressure on states seeking to avoid being drawn into a broader conflict.
Such scenarios remain contingencies rather than certainties. Nevertheless, they underline a central point: Turkey’s military deployments are embedded in a regional security environment in which local disputes can quickly acquire wider strategic significance.
Ankara’s broader defence relationships may also affect its calculations. If Turkey becomes more directly involved in regional security arrangements, including through commitments associated with the Mecca Defence Pact, it may face competing demands on its military resources and diplomatic attention. Whether that produces a stronger incentive to consolidate its positions in Syria and Iraq or to reduce commitments will depend on the nature and scale of any regional crisis.
There is also a wider question of strategic influence. A fully functioning Syrian state with diversified defence relationships would have greater capacity to negotiate the terms of its relationship with Turkey. As Damascus develops ties with other external partners, Ankara may find that its influence can no longer depend as heavily on a direct military presence. That prospect could encourage Turkey to institutionalise its role through training, intelligence cooperation and formal security agreements rather than relying exclusively on forward deployments.
But such a transition requires trust, and trust remains difficult to establish where sovereignty, Kurdish autonomy and competing regional ambitions are concerned.
What would a genuine withdrawal look like?
The most reliable indicator of Turkey’s intentions will not be another declaration or memorandum. It will be observable change on the ground.
In Iraq, that means the closure of additional forward bases and the reduction of the military network that supports Turkey’s operations. In Syria, it would mean a demonstrable shift from direct military control towards arrangements negotiated with Damascus, accompanied by a clearer definition of the scope and duration of any remaining Turkish presence.
Such changes would not necessarily eliminate Turkish influence. A smaller military footprint could coexist with substantial intelligence, training, diplomatic and economic engagement. Indeed, a negotiated transition could allow Ankara to preserve important security interests while reducing the political costs of an open-ended deployment.
Conversely, if bases remain operational and withdrawal continues to depend on conditions that are never precisely defined, Ankara will have preserved the flexibility to stay indefinitely. That may appear advantageous in the short term, but it risks undermining relations with Damascus and Baghdad, encouraging local opposition and complicating Turkey’s wider regional diplomacy.
The comparison with Russia’s military presence in Syria offers only limited guidance. Russia’s principal facilities have served its broader regional reach, whereas Turkey’s deployments are tied to a long land border and security concerns that Ankara regards as fundamental. Turkey’s military footprint is therefore unlikely to be reduced simply by converting its facilities into a residual training mission.
A smaller footprint, not a clean exit
Turkey is unlikely to abandon its security interests in Syria and Iraq. Its geography, its concerns about the PKK, the continuing threat from the Islamic State and its desire to shape the regional balance all argue against an abrupt departure. But those same interests do not necessarily require Ankara to maintain its present military posture indefinitely.
The more plausible outcome is a gradual, uneven reduction of selected positions, accompanied by efforts to formalise security cooperation with Damascus and Baghdad. Some facilities may close, while others remain in place under revised arrangements. The pace will depend less on political declarations than on whether the neighbouring governments can demonstrate effective territorial control and whether Turkey considers the resulting security guarantees credible.
The deeper test for Ankara is whether it can distinguish between maintaining influence and maintaining troops. A military presence can deliver leverage, but it can also impose diplomatic costs and make neighbouring states more determined to reduce their dependence on Turkey. If Ankara wants its role to remain sustainable, it will need to turn its security relationships into arrangements that its neighbours regard as legitimate and temporary—or at least as subject to clear negotiation.
For now, Turkey’s withdrawal is more likely to be a process than an event. The critical question is not simply how long Turkish troops will remain in Syria and Iraq, but whether Ankara can eventually secure its borders without making an indefinite military presence the price of regional stability.
