Erdogan Seeks Trump’s Support to Shape Middle East How He Wants

With Donald Trump threatening to upend American foreign policy again, one old acquaintance is aiming to benefit from a new era of American dealmaking in the Middle East.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to capitalize on the demise of the Assad regime in neighboring Syria and the ceasefire in Gaza. Should the dominos fall the right way, there could be hundreds of billions of dollars of rebuilding contracts and new trade as well as geopolitical influence.

But Turkey’s opposition to US-backed Kurdish forces is testing plans to stabilize the region, according to Turkish officials and advisers familiar with the matter. Erdogan wants the groups to be disbanded, yet recent talks with the Biden administration yielded no result. A Turkish delegation is expected to visit Washington for discussions soon, the people said.

The US has long supported the Kurds in the battle against Islamic State. Washington refused to sell them out to Turkey because it viewed them as critical to keeping extremist militants from taking advantage of the chaos in Syria.

Turkey has been fighting separatist Kurdish militants for decades and is now seeing an opportunity to neutralize the threat. It views the Kurdish fighters in Syria as terrorists and allied to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK.

There are also commercial interests, according to people close to the Turkish government. As hundreds of Turkish trucks carry food, medicine and construction material across the border on a daily basis, Erdogan is hoping to assume a bigger role in Syria’s reconstruction.

With the need to build entire cities, hospitals, schools and dilapidated infrastructure, Turkish authorities are holding back-to-back meetings to coordinate its reconstruction effort, according to people in Ankara and Istanbul familiar with the matter.

Shares in Turkish producers of cement and steel have soared since Bashar Al-Assad was ousted, while Turkish Airlines flights to Damascus resumed on Thursday after a 13-year hiatus.

“Turkey is eying to capture the lion’s share in Syria’s reconstruction,” said Oytun Orhan, a Syria specialist at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Ankara. “When the Syrian opposition captured Damascus, Turkey won the opportunity to monetize its years of direct or indirect support for them.”

Turkey reckons its aspirations to have a bigger role in the future of Syria have tacit approval from both the US and Israel on condition that it does not target Syrian Kurdish forces and also softens its criticism over Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank, the Turkish officials and advisers said. They spoke on condition of anonymity.