We discussed the multi-front war, multilateral diplomacy, quickly-changing power balances, policies pursued by the world powers in Syria and the background for those issues, with the Middle East expert Hamit Bozarslan.
How would you evaluate the situation in Syria as of March 8? Can the Geneva talks provide a basis for a resolution?
Hamit Bozarslan: I don’t expect any outcome from that meeting. It is certain that whatever is happening there, it has a strategic or geostrategic aspect to it. However, things happening on the ground are quite different. So, I give more importance to what is happening on the ground. We are not able to answer certain questions: will there be a basis for an agreement between Russia and the USA? Will America’s Middle East fatigue lead to at least a partial exit from Syria or the Middle East? I am unable to answer all these questions. On the other hand, I don’t think the state of affairs in the USA or Russia is quite stable, either. One thing is certain: the reflection capacity of Europe and the USA about the whole world is close to zero. Especially their capacity to think about the Middle East is almost nonexistent. There is a huge fatigue there as well. It is impossible for these countries to just go back to the 19th century strategic or geostrategic concepts or categories. What Russia does, on the other hand, is to go back to the 19th century categories and seek to avenge the Cold War. Now, I don’t know whether it will be successful or not, but the Russian intervention changed the balances radically for sure. This is as far as I can see.
What are these 19th century categories, could you clarify a little?
According to these categories, the world is a stage for competition. This competition brings forth the phenomenon of power. According to this phenomenon, Russia needs to have its space under the sun. Open seas are the precondition for its status as a European power, and also for its status as a world power outside of Europe. These are Russia’s categories. Marx wrote very interesting texts on this subject. These are the categories that explain the Russian-Ottoman wars and the Crimean War. According to them, the factor that actually determines Russia’s status was its position against Germany. Not during the Crimean War, but after that. Especially after the 1878 War, we see that an important part of European politics was determined very clearly by a Russian-German contradiction. This was not the case in 1848 and 1853, but it was for the post-1878 period. But as I said already, Russia is capable of thinking about strategy. The most important thing for Putin is to use, one way or another, the Russian Empire as a resource, to reproduce it both as a historical resource and as a new horizon. His foreign policy is evolving in line with this strategy. In domestic politics, we see certain tendencies such as returning to the conservatism of tsars, rehabilitating and elevating the credibility of the tsarist system by certain means, and forging a serious alliance between the church and political power. And in connection to this, we see an interest in the Middle East and Mediterranean as a part of foreign policy.
You said that the same categories were not valid for the USA…
They are not valid for Europe, either. Europe cannot interpret the world through the alliances of the 1870s; this would be the end of Europe. The rejuvenation of a Germany-France competition would mean the end of Europe. Besides, it is impossible for Germany to imagine such power.
Etienne Balibar says the Europe project is over and blames France for that.
Of course, it is not possible to say that it is over only because of France. However, the end of Europe is a real possibility. The migrant crisis has been creating significant pressure since 2013, but Europe was not able to grasp the importance of this; it could not grasp the fact that this was also a European issue. A lot of people, in line with Jacques Delors, think that the 2004 enlargement of the EU was a big mistake. It is hard to say that Eastern Europe was successfully integrated in the system. There are a number of reasons. But Balibar is completely right about one thing: Europe is in a serious crisis, and I don’t know if it will overcome it or not.
If we go back to the USA…
In the 19th century, the USA did not have a Middle East or even a world policy for that matter. It was the First World War that made the USA a world power. Its former policy was economically based or based on supporting Protestant missionaries. Beginning with the First World War, and especially during the Second World War, it became an absolute world power. But the USA is experiencing a serious Middle East fatigue right now. I don’t think they intend to stay in the Middle East. There is a certain kind of narcissism in the Middle East, which sees itself as the center of the world. Now, it is not possible to translate that narcissism into English. Actually, nobody in the USA is able to grasp what is going on in the Middle East. Dependency on the Middle Eastern oil is zero right now. Nobody is sure of Saudi Arabia’s future, which bares a serious risk of domestic eruption. Therefore, the USA doesn’t want to get too much involved in the Middle East. Perhaps there are objectives such as protecting certain positions like Israel or keeping the current strategic balances intact, but apart from that the USA is not in a condition to battle for the Middle East; at least for now. But as I just said, none of these seem to be settled yet. Of course, there are also uncertainties that will appear with the USA elections.
Can the USA maintain this fatigue and noncombatant position at the expense of accepting Russia’s advance in the Middle East in terms of influence?
Yes, at the expense of accepting that influence… In the meantime if Russia gets stuck in the Middle East, this would mean, at least from the USA perspective, that it would not be very much involved in Europe. But how far into the future this interpretation might be valid, I don’t know. To my mind, there is a significant decline in state rationality. It is hard to talk about fully functioning mechanisms of checks and balances. It is hard to talk about the existence of a vision. I think foreign policy has never been this weak. Therefore, there are significant mistakes of interpretation. For instance, the Syrian opposition had been writing about what is eventually happening today, at the end of 2011: “If you don’t support us today, this war will become a Sunni or a denominational war tomorrow; it is possible that it will transform from a denominational war into a jihadist one; from jihadism, it is possible that it will evolve into a serious fragmentation; the phenomenon of migration will follow…” All these things have been known since 2011. The Syrian opposition had clearly stated this. At the beginning of 2012, there were only 300 jihadists in Syria. ISIS did not exist in early 2012 yet; the number of Al-Nusra militants in 2012 was no more than 300. However, we had enough information on how big the cost of the Syria crisis would be by the end of 2011. At the very least, we had enough information to act with foresight. However, none of these were taken into consideration, neither by the USA, nor by the EU or Turkey. We see the same phenomenon in relation to the 2008 economic crisis. The signs of 2008 were extremely visible in 2006. No measures were taken despite this fact. Many economists are expecting a big economic crisis in the very short run. Again, no measures are being taken again. In democracies there are periods of inertia. Today, we are experiencing a period of this kind of inertia.
What are the reasons behind this picture? How can we explain the status quo?
The hollowing out of politics, the situation of elites; prioritizing national interests, or things considered to be national interest, over the perspective of Europe; a certain form of fatalism, such as “We cannot do anything in the fields of economy and foreign policy.” There are many significant factors. This is probably the first time in the world history democracies have produced a discourse like “we don’t have any other alternative but fatalism.” This is the same for migration or economic issues. Perhaps the only exception to this is the field of security. As you fail in the fields of economy and foreign policy, you start to put weight on security and try to appease the society through security… Unquestionably, there is a serious crisis in democracies. The same crisis is not present in Russia. Or perhaps it is, but Russia is able to actively pursue a very aggressive foreign policy while integrating its own society. For instance, take France; security has never been such a sensitive issue in that country. But, there isn’t any discussion going on about security. A part of the French army, which is considerably small, is in a war zone right now, but we don’t see any discussion about foreign policy and war. We can talk about both the positioning of elites and the exhaustion of societies as the reasons behind this. The technocratic interpretation of politics lies behind problems such as the lack of alternatives produced by societies or the inability of societies to see the difference between right and left. Russia does not experience this fatigue in the same way.
With the fall of the socialist bloc in the early 1990s, the idea that the “end of history” had arrived and the free market economy would create a perpetual liberal democracy was dominant. We lived through the 1990s and started the 2000s with this idea. In 2005, the German Chancellor Schröder said in one of his farewell speeches, “The free market economy is seriously threatening democracy.” The Merkel period followed Schröder’s. Is it wrong to say that the return of security policies was one of the results of neoliberalism? And is it safe to say, for instance, that the November 13 attacks or those before them provided good cover and solid justification for the security state policies and the politics of security that resulted from neoliberal dynamics, and that these gained legitimacy after the Middle East crisis? Parallel to this, we also see the emergence of authoritarian regimes in Eastern European countries that joined the EU, and an overt acclamation of authoritarianism in these countries. For example, Hungarian leader Orban said, “I take Tayyip Erdoğan as an example.”
One of the most interesting subjects for me in the 1990s was this: although the formal institutions of democratic system were preserved in Turkey, Israel and Russia, at the same time the autonomy of the state could be expanded enormously, to the extend that a minister in Turkey could accuse his own state of state terror. There was no problem with that. But, at the very same time, the autonomy of the state had never been so large. With the 1990s, the models implemented in Turkey, Russia and Israel began to be copied in many other parts of the world. Thus, I think the crisis is not just an economic one. Of course, the economic aspect is very important. Besides, Schröder himself also did his best to make the market economy hegemonic. The most serious rupture in German social democracy happened during the Schröder period. Schröder weakened the German welfare state considerably. We need to add some factors next to the economic one: the collapse of the Westphalian state in the Middle East. We witness this collapse not only in the Middle East but also in an important part of Africa. A big majority of states created in the 20th century is in a process of disintegration. The fall of the state brings the fall of the society with it. Since states are not very much liked by the leftist thinking, it tends to expect the emancipation of society after state disintegration, but what happened was just the opposite. State disintegration causes social fragmentation. This fragmentation escapes our attention most of the time, but it is also a question mark whether the societies will persist. In Europe, on the other hand, there is a serious process of disintegration. This process does not only concern the foreigners or people with foreign origins. A lot of people who turned to Islam in France are now fighting in Syria. This disintegration crisis affects a very large section of the society in both economic and political terms. In political terms, the inability to make sense of the world and lack of imagination of an alternative world are prevalent. Bringing all these factors together, we witness a serious crisis experienced by the western democracies. The transition into a system of security has always happened this way throughout the history of the world. It emerges as an answer to the problem of failure to overcome these crises. Because only in this way can you guarantee state legitimacy and construct obedience to the state.
Within the disintegration process you have mentioned, we see that France particularly, is trapped in political, economic and a general social impasse. It seems as though there are no suggestions or positive projections concerning the resolution of this situation. Isn’t it alarming that this problem cannot be discussed in detail, especially after the trauma created by the November 13 attacks?
Of course it is very alarming. Whatever happens in France is in fact happening in Britain and Sweden as well. Therefore, we can say France is not a unique or special case. One of the problems is that, it is impossible for France, Britain or Germany to imagine themselves outside of the national framework. For instance, everybody knows that it is impossible that France’s economic problems will be solved by only France itself or within the French context. Nevertheless, a vision outside of a French framework cannot develop, either. Everybody knows that a trade union movement in France is not possible anymore, but nobody is able to think of a European trade union movement either. A movement like Syriza appears; yet it fails since it is trapped in the Greek context. In short, one of the questions is: will Europe be able to preserve itself? Will it be able to reform itself? And will Europe be able to gain political meaning? The second problem is the absence of even a tiny bit of difference between the right and the left. It is clear that a democratic society should stand on two feet. The first foot is consensus, because without consensus a society cannot determine its identity and boundaries. And the second one is dissensus. Without dissensus, a society cannot reform itself, create social alternatives, and obtain a necessary level of dynamism. Without consensus, society’s likelihood of disintegrating becomes intense, but if you lack dissensus on the other hand, it is inevitable that the society drifts into an authoritarian or totalitarian identity. What we mean by “dissensus” is controversy, division, rupture, disagreement. But it is a legitimized disagreement, a rupture; a rupture that provides possibilities for negotiation. A democratic society is not only a unified, but also a divisible society. Democracy generates divisions as well, not just unity. But there has to be a unity about certain points on how these divisions will at least be renegotiated or legitimized.
Yes. By being able to read and legitimize society through those ruptures, by being able to transform those ruptures into regenerating resources for society.
Let us mention Balibar one more time. He prioritizes the dissensus foot. He claims that democracy is only possible through dissensus and contention. He says that consensus emerges only as a result of dissensus. However, according to your views, an opposition crisis marks the state of affairs. Social opposition is weak and ineffective. Perhaps this is because, as you said a minute ago, it cannot imagine a new horizon. Does that lack of vision correspond to the inability to go beyond solutions confined in national borders?
One of the problems we see in Europe, as I said before, is the inability to go beyond national borders. This is true for both economy and foreign policy. The second factor affects Greece and even Turkey: European democracies today are middle class democracies. Although the middle classes raise certain demands, they still are timid, because some of them are worried about losing their status. The dynamics that form middle class also yield individualization. The experience of withdrawal from the society and turning towards the individual is intense. Another phenomenon that accompanies the rise of middle class is unemployment. Like the texts written by Marx on Indian villagers, there are millions today not even worthy of exploitation. Unemployment creates a mass of millions, which is not even worthy of exploitation. This cannot generate a dynamic mass. The working class was a dynamic mass, because it could come together on concrete grounds. It could meet in a factory, in a workshop. Unemployment is a process that completely severs the unemployed from all socialization circles in six months. I think this class phenomenon is one of the underlying factors of crisis experienced by European societies. On the one hand, there is the rising middle class, and on the other, unemployment as the only alternative to middle class.
How do you evaluate Varoufakis’s initiative for establishing a party of Europe (Democracy in Europe Movement / DiEM 25)?
It is impossible to disagree with Varoufakis. It is impossible to change balances in France or Greece, to shake the foundations without a party of Europe. The example of Greece is very important. Actually, the success of Syriza ended the political power of a completely corrupt elite and provided the opportunity for a new government. Athens is an extremely dynamic city, so is Thessaloniki. But we also see that it is impossible to make economic policy with merely referring to the Greek context. It is impossible for a country of ten million to overcome the economic crises, especially since it is integrated in European economy and lacks monetary resources. However, in a geography with a five hundred million population, it is possible to imagine much different economic alternatives. But the problem is where Varoufakis is heading, because middle classes do not give weight to alternatives other than center right and center left. The case for the unemployed is a shift towards populism. Varoufakis’s point of view is both correct and necessary. I don’t think a national politics, a national trade union; a national imagination is possible in Europe anymore. Varoufakis’s initiative shows an alternative EU is possible in contrast to the existing EU. But, another EU is not possible for the time being. As I said, there are the middle classes phenomenon, the unemployment issue, the economic crisis becoming a systemic issue, the utilization of the economic crisis as an obedience producing or as an immobilizing factor, and the security issue. For instance, if there were four-five attacks like the November 13 Paris attack tomorrow, all Europe would see a complete security regime as legitimate. The obstacles are too many. But, sometimes you have to fight battles you know you will lose. There is something called martyrdom (şehadet) war in the Islamic jargon. Defending a war despite the fact that it has already been lost. When we look at 1920s and 1930s we don’t see anybody who believes that democracy would win in extremely weak British and French democracies. Everybody is sure that the future is an authoritarian one. Germany, compared to France and Russia, compared to Britain, is much more successful; the remaining, very weak opposition is carrying out a martyrdom war in a sense. An opposition that says, “We lost, but we should still struggle for democracy.” Even Raymond Aron was not sure that democracy would come in the 1930s. But, he thought that they should not walk out from the struggle even though they know they would lose the battle. Perhaps, we need to be able to think that way. Too many wars were lost, or the danger of losing them was great. We need to keep saying that democracy is forever. We need to make sure that authoritarian regimes would not dominate tomorrow. We need to be sure that the society cannot collapse completely in a country like Turkey. However, it is necessary to embark on certain wars, at the same time.
Let us go back to the Middle East… There are some important points in Mike Whitney’s article, which was published in Globalresearch on 24 February and was translated into Turkish for sendika.org: He says that, the USA is trying to pull Russia into a swamp, a war that it cannot win, and for that purpose, gets on Turkey’s nerves and provokes border conflicts against the coalition led by Russia. He claims that, with this military initiative, the USA aims to weaken Erdoğan regime, cause its elimination, and therefore, wants to kill two birds with one stone.
It is certain that the USA wants to distance Russia away from Europe. However, I am extremely suspicious whether the USA has a foreign policy strategy. The Obama regime, in particular, revealed this very clearly. The USA does not have a foreign policy. There is one for Africa; there is one for Asia. But I am not sure it has a foreign policy towards the Middle East. Resolving the Iran issue for the USA was paramount. It achieved a significant progress on that front. Apart from that, the USA could read none of the phases in Syrian crisis. It could not even read the ISIS phenomenon. Just to give one example, the city of Fellujah had fallen on January 4, 2014. The fall of this city did not generate any reaction in the USA or Europe, other than small newspaper coverage. Mosul fell on June 4. If something could have been done on 5 January, however, the development of ISIS could have most probably been prevented. Namely, world powers, including the biggest powers, can sometimes go completely blind.
In the same article, it says that the USA did not care much about the presence of ISIS, which in fact works to the USA’s advantage in some respects; of course, to the extent that its teeth are pulled against the West.
One thing is clear: if ISIS weren’t using a suicide strategy, a whole bunch of people in Europe would be ok with the existence of an ISIS state. The disturbing issue is ISIS’s attacks outside of a designated region and, whether it is ISIS or Al-Qaeda, production of violence by a radical Islamic organization both in America and Europe. This concerns them a lot. Apart from that, of course they could accept ISIS. An ISIS state similar to Saudi Arabia would not disturb them at all. But if we go back to Russia again, at the moment the most important thing for the USA is to limit Russia’s activity in Europe as much as possible. The USA knows one thing very well: it is not certain in the long run that a Russia investing in the Middle East can handle the resulting economic burden. The armament issue was one of the reasons for the end of the Cold War, if not the only reason; it was also the issue of Afghanistan. But I am not so sure if Russia will take the bait or not. Nobody could have guessed in 2014 that Russia would commit to this level of military investment in Syria. At the very least, it wasn’t thought that Russia had the military capacity to so. This became a reality in 2016. Syria is definitely not a new Afghanistan for Russia. Russian soldiers do not participate in the war directly. Or when they do, they do it through aerial bombings. At the moment, ISIS does not have weapons similar to the ones given to Afghan resistance by the USA. They don’t have the weapons strong enough to shoot down fighter aircraft. I don’t expect the USA is going to go to war with Russia over Syria. We are talking about nuclear powers here. Raymond Aron expressed this very clearly: “Peace is impossible, yet war is also out of question.” It seems impossible for me that nuclear powers would go to war with each other. The USA had to tolerate the annexation of Crimea. In fact, everybody had to tolerate it. I think September 2013 was crucial; Assad’s resort to chemical weapons in September 2013, the USA’s threat of intervention, and the last minute agreement between Lavrov and Kerry. This agreement actually revealed everything. The language used by Putin, the letters of that agreement were very interesting; they were letters that were completely based on masculinity. The discourse was this: There is no honor in Europe and the USA. There is no masculinity or manhood left in them; they have been feminized. This is also a return to the tsarist Russia in some respects. After that agreement, we see that Russia clearly concluded that these cowards in the USA can do nothing! The annexation of Crimea happened right after that. And Russia’s intervention in Syria continued to increase. We see the balance of power at the USA or world level, but we fail to see the domestic balances within America. The isolationist tendency is growing intensely at the moment.
Yes, and actually, Obama was able follow an isolationist path to a certain degree. But, right now, he has gone significantly beyond that. It is impossible to make a prediction about the elections… There is a close affinity between Trump and Putin, an affinity close to cooperation. Many people interpreted Trump’s speeches on Islam as Islamophobia, yet in fact they were not, or at least they have an Islamophobic aspect next to others. He roughly says: “There is no reason for us to bother and deal with this. Let us let them massacre each other. As long as this does not have an effect on America and the West, they can do whatever they want.” Many people actually, not just the Islamophobes, express this. It is not easy to explain thousands of suicide attacks organized by the world of Islam. It is not possible to explain this in France with Sykes-Picot, with the war in Algeria, or with underdevelopment. A whole bunch of people take this position. Tomorrow, let’s say, if somebody like Trump takes the power, the attitude towards Russia, at least at the beginning, can change into a positive one.
Trump’s election victory seems like a slim possibility…
But the same is true for Tec Cruz too. Although he has a much more conscious Islamophobia, he is the same. Cruz is a much more civilized yet a much more radical version of Trump at the same time.
At the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned Syrian opposition’s projections. Yaşar Yakış, who was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the AKP government in 2002-2003, states in an interview with Neşe Düzel on April 23, 2012, that: 1) This dispute will create a Kurdish region in the north of Syria and the south of Turkey. 2) A “Cebel Alevi” Republic—the notion of a “boutique state” did not yet exist in 2012—will be established in the Damascus-Latakia region. 3) In general, Wahhabism will gain prominence in Syria. In the conclusion of this interview, when he tells that the image of Turkey is not as favorable in the Arab world as we might think, Yaşar Yakış says, “I would not bet anybody on Assad’s departure in one year; I would never bet on his fall.” But in 2012, Assad’s departure was seen as a matter of days.
Those forecasts are becoming a reality today. It is possible that Syria will be divided into three parts. But, there as well, we see the depth of the crisis and how its character mutates from one summer to the next. The crisis, at the beginning, was a domestic crisis of Syria. At this point, it is a fragmentation crisis. Secondly, it is now a part of an Arab civil war. It was not possible to talk about an Arab civil war in 2011, but today, we are facing a war that involves a significant number of Arab countries. Just as the references to 1914 talk about it as a European civil war; we are facing a similar civil war. Thirdly, we have to talk about a denominational war, the biggest responsibility of which falls on to Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s shoulders. That means the redefinition of Middle Eastern borders on a denominational basis. And fourthly, we have the emergence of the international dimension of the war with the intervention of Russia. This is a process in which the whole issue is becoming more complicated. How far this process will go? Will a simplification follow? I cannot forecast at the moment. But in May 2011, 300 people were killed in Syria, and we were terrified and terrorized asking how the murder of 300 people was possible. Today the death tall is most probably around 300,000. An international organization says it is 470,000.
And three million refugees just in Turkey…
And more than one million in Lebanon… In other words, if this had happened in France, it would have meant 900,000 deaths, 32-33 million domestic and international migrants, and that cities like Lille, Marseille, and Lyon had fallen.
How do you evaluate Turkey’s Syria policy?
We witness a serious destruction of rationality in Turkey. This makes Turkey a completely unpredictable country. This is a phenomenon that scares Europe and America, yet probably, makes Russia happy, because it is much easier to maintain war mentality with such an unpredictable country. Therefore, Turkey’s strategy is a strategy of total madness. Many people wrote about the Kobane issue: that Kobane could have been a condition for peace between Turks and Kurds. It could have provided an opportunity for a new alliance. Kobane, and after that, Cizre and other cities, resulted in the approximation of a big section of Kurdish movement towards Iran. For instance, I don’t find an alliance between Iran, Russia, Armenia and the PKK impossible in the near future. However, this was not inevitable. Shooting the Russian jet down was a disaster even in terms of Turkey’s—to put it in those horrible terms—strategic interests. Will Turkey be able to regenerate that internal rationality? I am not very sure.
In Rojava, a ”rationality” similar to the one in Kurdistan Federal State in Iraq was actually possible. Practices in Iraq could have been replicated with Kurds in Syria. How did we arrive here from “zero problem with neighbors” policy?
There is this fact: Davutoğlu becomes the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2009. The “zero problem with neighbors” policy is followed during 2010. Erdoğan receives the Gaddafi Human Rights award in November 2010. Whatever happens after that is initially a shock for Turkey. By 2012, however, Turkey thinks that, not an empire per se but a coalition of parties similar to the AKP under the leadership of Turkey can be formed. The Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, The Ennahda in Tunisia, The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria… When PYD begins to controls the border, Turkey’s last window towards the expansion of this strategy is closed. And it is impossible for Turkey to redefine the closure of that window… In fact, when we read Davutoğlu, especially his Strategic Depth, we see that his approach is not “zero problem” or anything like that. Davutoğlu says this: The 19th and 20th centuries were centuries of modernity. Thank god the modernity is over; we are now in globalization and globalization requires an almost social Darwinist war that requires an expansion beyond the general Islamic environment. And it is necessary to be powerful to win this war. But this power is not just physical power. Apart from that, what Davutoğlu clearly understands from deep strategy is a Middle East under the rule of Turkey. The redefinition of Turkishness with reference to Islam and redefinition of Islam with reference to Turkishness or Turkish leadership is a preexistent leitmotif in Turkish conservatism, in the National View (Millî Görüş) approach, in the Gulenist movement, and in the ideational universe of Davutoğlu.
However, the conditions in 2010 were not conducive for this because at that time there was a rapprochement with Gaddafi, who massacred thousands of Islamist prisoners. The opportunity arose in 2011. Right after the Arab revolutions, in 2011, a conference was held in Istanbul. Several Islamic intellectuals from the Arab world participated in this conference. They underlined a single issue there: “we are neither Ottoman provinces, nor European dominions.” I think the AKP was not able to do a correct reading at that moment. The AKP was perceived as a model. An idea such as “why can we not achieve what the AKP has achieved” emerged there. But nobody imagined Turkey as the dominant power.
Let us conclude this way: If this were a street interview, you were asked by a TV channel “what will happen in Syria?” and you had thirty seconds to answer, how would you reply?
I can say in thirty seconds that: I don’t know what will happen in Syria. One thing is clear: in Syria every summer the conflict has assumed a different image for the last five years. The character of war is so violent that all existing dynamics melt away in very a short time and evolve into even more violent dynamics. Therefore, I call this “malédiction estivale” [summer curse]. There is a summer curse in Syria. Every year, every summer, the Syrian conflict is redefined. Under these conditions, it is very hard for me to foresee 2017. If there is an agreement between Russia and the USA, stability may emerge, but I am doubtful about that.
