{"id":9880,"date":"2012-05-17T09:34:55","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T16:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=9880"},"modified":"2012-05-17T09:34:55","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T16:34:55","slug":"turkish-and-saudi-designs-for-carving-up-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=9880","title":{"rendered":"Turkish and Saudi Designs for Carving Up Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Saudi Arabia advocates a Syrian Sunni Islamist regime &#038; is establishing ties with the more radical elements in the country&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\n17 May, 2012 &#8211; Arab News Blog<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2026Although Saudi Arabia and Turkey share a common goal in Syria, there are some tensions between their positions. First, for Turkey, managing the Syrian crisis is not a way to limit Iranian influence; instead, it is a means of protecting Turkey from chaos on its southern border. Refugees have already started flooding into Turkey \u2014 and the longer the conflict drags on, the larger the burden Ankara will have to shoulder. Further, the influence of the Turkish Kurdish party on some Syrian Kurds is worrisome for Ankara.Moreover, the Saudi and Turkish visions for post-Assad Syria differ. Saudi Arabia advocates a Sunni Islamist regime and is establishing ties with the more radical elements in the country. Turkey, on the other hand, favors the participation of all actors. Ankara is engaging and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, while also pressuring the group to accept a more participatory and representative Syria to prevent civil war in the post-revolution era.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, Saudi Arabia\u2019s involvement in Syria threatens to undermine Turkey\u2019s \u201czero problems\u201d foreign policy. Saudi Arabia is already casting the conflict in Syria as a sectarian one. Thus, Ankara\u2019s close cooperation with Riyadh \u2014 and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood \u2014 places Turkey squarely within the so-called Sunni camp. Such a development would limit Turkey\u2019s soft power in the region. In other words, although opportunities for rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Turkey arise from time to time, there are hard limitations to their relationship. They want different things in the region, and have different policies for getting them. On the other hand, as long as there are clear economic benefits in this bilateral relationship, both sides will gloss over their differences as long as they can.\u201c <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arabnewsblog.net\/2012\/05\/17\/saudi-arabia-advocates-a-syrian-sunni-islamist-regime-is-establishing-ties-with-the-more-radical-elements-in-the-country\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8230;more<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"igit_tsb_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crookedbough.com%2F%3Fp%3D9880&amp;text=Turkish+and+Saudi+Designs+for+Carving+Up+Syria&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saudi Arabia advocates a Syrian Sunni Islamist regime &#038; is establishing ties with the more radical elements in the country&#8221; 17 May, 2012 &#8211; Arab News Blog \u201c\u2026Although Saudi Arabia and Turkey share a common goal in Syria, there are some tensions between their positions. First, for Turkey, managing the Syrian crisis is not a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=9880#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[1965],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9881,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880\/revisions\/9881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}