As the Syrian civil war enters its third year, evidence is mounting that it will be difficult for Turkey to surgically extricate itself from the crisis while retaining any advantages gained. The chilling statement by Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on May 1, as reported by Al-Monitor’s Ali Hashem in Beirut, not only raises the stakes for Ankara, but also suggests that Turkey could face animosity in a region where it once hoped to play a stabilizing role as a soft power.
A number of analysts in the region believe that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s approach to the Syrian crisis has put paid to Ankara’s desire to be an impartial regional force for good. Turkey has not only been a strong supporter of the Sunni-led Free Syrian Army, but also of radical Sunni groups, like the al-Nusra Front, which aims to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad through military means and which Shiites increasingly view with fear and enmity.
Detecting a strong Sunni bias in the Erdogan government’s Syria policy, Shiites across the Middle East are also increasingly looking at Turkey as a country in that camp. This was discernible in Nasrallah’s speech, during which he warned, "Syria has real friends in the region, and the world will not let Syria fall into the hands of America, Israel or takfiri [radical Islamist] groups." As Hashem put it in his Al-Monitor report, “It was as if Nasrallah was warning the opposition and its regional and international backers that the war is no longer between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels, but a regional war fought in Syria.”
To no one's surprise, Nasrallah’s statement raised eyebrows in Ankara, where the concern is that the sectarian war in Syria will eventually spread to Lebanon. This prospect appeared to be one step closer following Nasrallah’s accusation that the Lebanese state had failed to protect its citizens in towns near the border with Syria where clashes have been reported between anti-Assad forces and Hezbollah elements.
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