Turkish involvement in the Syrian civil war began diplomatically and later escalated militarily. After a decade of relatively friendly relations with Syria from 2000 to 2010, Turkey condemned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the violent crackdown on protests in 2011 and, from the beginning of the war, Turkey trained defectors of the Syrian Army in its territory under the supervision of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT), among whom emerged the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in July 2011. The Turkish government's involvement further evolved into border clashes in 2012, and direct military interventions in 2016–20 and 2022, resulting in the Turkish occupation of northern Syria since August 2016. In December 2024, Turkish proxy forces were involved in the 2024 Syrian rebel offensive which toppled the Assad regime in Damascus, becoming one of the most influential parties during the conflict.
Until 2016, Turkey had addressed the Syrian civil war through international diplomacy and targeted sanctions. Tensions between Syria and Turkey significantly worsened after Syrian forces shot down a Turkish fighter jet in June 2012, and border clashes erupted in October 2012. On 24 August 2016, the Turkish Armed Forces began a direct military intervention into Syria by declaring Operation Euphrates Shield, mainly targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It had also fulfilled other pre-existing Turkish policy goals, such as limiting the influx of the refugees of the Syrian civil war.
Turkey strongly supported Syrian dissidents, as it became increasingly hostile to the Assad government's policies and encouraged reconciliation among dissident factions. Turkey financed the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, also known as the Syrian National Coalition, and facilitated the establishment of the Syrian National Army.
Background
Turkey and Syria have a history of tense relationships. According to Turkish officials, between 1957 and 1998, Turkish forces laid 615,419 antipersonnel mines along the Syrian border "to prevent illegal border crossings." Under the Mine Ban Treaty, Turkey is required to destroy the mines, but has missed deadlines. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report stated that as of 18 November 2014, over 2,000 civilians were still in the Tall Shair corridor section of the mine belt since Turkey had been refusing entry for cars or livestock, and the refugees did not want to leave behind their belongings.
In 1957, Turkey threatened Syria with war if it allowed Russian military to build bases there, which led to the Syrian Crisis of 1957. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, the two governments could not agree on sharing the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, with Syria and Iraq criticizing Turkish dam projects on these rivers in Anatolia. In addition, the Syrian government used to support the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its affiliated groups, preferring to use the Kurdish issue as a trump card in its relations with Turkey, particularly in the 1990s and in 2011, when it withdrew from parts of Northern Syria and gave them to the PKK-affiliated People's Protection Units (YPG) rather than letting it fall into the hands of Syrian opposition.
Turkey and Syria had a rather strong bond in the 2000s, due to lax migration laws between the two countries. Since the Justice and Development Party was chosen as the ruling party in Turkey in 2002, it took a new direction in its policy in Middle Eastern relations, leading to bilateral relations between Syria and Turkey improving. The normalization of relations started in late 2004, when Erdoğan, then Prime Minister of Turkey, flew to Damascus to sign a free trade agreement. This more liberal approach towards neighboring countries included open border policies with Syria, and more dialogue on cultural and civil-society levels.
Although the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the Turkish government refrained from an immediate condemnation of the Syrian government's actions, initially pursuing a policy of reform advocacy before ultimately denouncing the regime. On 29 March 2011, Prime Minister Erdoğan stated that Assad did not provide a "negative" response when he advised him to listen to the Syrians demonstrating to demand democracy in short order, adding that the Syrian President told him that they are working to lift the state of emergency and to allow the formation of political parties. Furthermore, Syrian opposition activists convened in Istanbul in May 2011 to discuss regime change, and Turkey hosted the head of the Free Syrian Army, Colonel Riad al-Asaad.
On 22 June 2012, a Turkish McDonnell Douglas RF-4E Phantom II reconnaissance jet was intercepted and shot down by the Syrian Army in international airspace, greatly escalating tensions between the two countries. In October 2012, numerous clashes took place along the Syrian–Turkish border, straining bilateral relations and resulting in dozens of civilians and military personnel killed. Syria has repeatedly urged the UN Security Council to "put an end to the crimes of the Turkish regime."
Refugees
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, Turkey has accepted over 3.5 million Syrian refugees, most of whom were accommodated in tent cities administered by the country's emergency management agency. Satellite images confirmed that the first Syrian camps appeared in Turkey in July 2011, shortly after the towns of Deraa, Homs and Hama were besieged. In March 2015, the population of Syrian refugees in Turkey was 30 percent in 22 government-run camps near the Syrian-Turkish border.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated that Turkey was ready to resettle the Syrian refugees in the northern area that Turkey had invaded in October 2019, and that Turkey would pay for it if necessary. On 9 December 2019, various local accounts indicated that Turkey was moving Syrian refugees into its zone of operations in Northern Syria for the first time; one million people were planned to relocate to the cities of Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, leading to fears of population change.
Mistreatment of refugees
Since mid-January 2016, Turkey has forcibly returned thousands of Syrian refugees to war zone, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces reported that Turkish security forces have shot and killed Syrian refugees and asylum seekers, some of whom attempted to cross the border into Turkey. On 10 May 2016, a video by HRW showed Turkish border guards shooting and beating Syrian refugees trying to reach Turkey, resulting in deaths and serious injuries, but Erdoğan and a Turkish official denied the authenticity of the video. On 18 May 2016, lawmakers from the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights said that Turkey should not use Syrian refugees as a bribe for the process of visa liberalization for Turkish citizens inside the European Union.
Anti-government forces in Syria
At the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, Turkey trained defectors of the Syrian Army, a number of whom announced the birth of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), under the supervision of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), in July 2011. In October 2011, Turkey began sheltering the FSA, offering the group a safe zone and a base of operations. Together with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey has also provided the rebels with arms and other military equipment. Turkey's geo-political maneuvering, according to scholars such as Ataman and Ozdemir, is in line with its larger ambition to limit Iranian influence on the region.
Army of Conquest
Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have supported the Army of Conquest. The coalition included al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, which were linked to al-Qaeda, as well as other Islamist factions such as the Sham Legion, which received covert arms support from the United States. According to The Independent, some Turkish officials said they were giving logistical and intelligence support to the command center of the coalition, but said they did not give direct help to al-Nusra Front, while acknowledging that the group would be beneficiaries. It was also reported by some rebels and officials that Saudis had given monetary support and weapons to Islamist groups, with Turkey facilitating their passage. Al-Ahram reported that U.S. President Obama chose not to confront Saudi Arabia and Qatar over the issue at a May 2015 meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, although al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham troops made up 90% of the troops in Idlib, where they were making substantial gains against the Assad government.
In 2013, Turkey had reportedly criticized the timing of the designation of al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organization, but in June 2014, Turkey began classifying al-Nusra Front as a terrorist group, a decision that was seen as them giving up on the group. In June 2014, İhsan Özkes, a parliamentarian from the Republican People's Party, stated that a directive had been signed by Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Güler, ordering the provision of support to al-Nusra against the Democratic Union Party (PYD), but Güler said that a directive with the letterhead of the Governor's Office of Hatay could not be signed by a minister, directly proving the document's inauthenticity.
On 9 January 2017, Turkey summoned the Russian and Iranian ambassadors to express its disturbance over airstrikes of the Syrian Army in the Idlib Governorate. On 5 May 2017, Mehmet Görmez, the Turkish president of religious affairs, met with Harith al-Dhari, an Iraqi Sunni cleric who was designated by the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee as someone affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2010.
Turkistan Islamic Party
According to Arab media, the rural town of Zanbaqi near Jisr ash-Shughur, Syria, has developed into a base for an estimated 3,500 Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party members and their families. They further stated the MİT was being involved in transporting these Uyghurs via Turkey to Syria, with the aim of using them first in Syria to help al-Nusra Front and gain combat experience fighting against the Syrian Army before sending them back to Xinjiang to fight against China if they survived. Arab news organizations also reported that Turkish intelligence organized the Chechens in Junud al-Sham, al-Nusra Front, and Ahrar al-Sham, as well as the Uyghurs in the Turkistan Islamic Party, to collaborate with the Army of Conquest. Turkish media agencies, on the other hand, denied this and stated that it was a scheme by the Chinese government to promise a holy cause and new lands to Uyghur forces with Islamic tendencies, which would eventually be cited by the government as the reason for more oppressive policies towards the Uyghur people. The validity of the Chinese statements had also been challenged by Sean Roberts of Georgetown University in an article on global terrorism. Conversely, other reports emphasized the Uyghur fighters' ties with ISIL, which led to the 2017 Istanbul nightclub shooting against Turkey.
2020 Idlib clashes
On 3 February 2020, Syrian and Turkish forces exchanged fire in Idlib, Latakia and the northern Aleppo countryside during the 5th northwestern Syria offensive. Turkey and the SOHR reported that seven Turkish soldiers, one civilian contractor, and 13 Syrian soldiers were killed. Turkey's president Erdoğan demanded that Russian forces in Idlib "stand aside"; he nevertheless dismissed the possibility of direct conflict with Russia, saying that Turkey and Russia would talk about the issue instead. On 10 February, Syrian government forces shelled a then-recently built Turkish observation post at Taftanaz Military Airbase, killing six Turkish soldiers and four Syrian rebels, according to the SOHR. On 11 February, Turkish Armed Forces shot down a Syrian Government helicopter, Mil Mi-17, near Nayrab, killing all its crew. On 27 February 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in the Balyun airstrikes carried out by the Syrian Air Force. In response, Turkey and proxy forces started to target the regime forces and their allies until they recaptured Saraqib, and cut the Damascus-Aleppo M5 highway once again. The deadline to withdraw to the initial de-escalation lines behind the Turkish observation points, previously set by Erdoğan to halt the Syrian regime assault in Idlib Governorate, ended by the end of February.
On 1 March, Turkey initiated a military operation code-named Operation Spring Shield (Turkish: Bahar Kalkanı Harekâtı) against the Assad regime, which aimed to protect local Syrians and to install a lasting ceasefire, according to Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. From 27 February to 5 March, Turkey claimed the Turkish military neutralized 3,138 Syrian Army soldiers and militia, and destroyed the following material: 3 fighter jets, 8 helicopters, 3 UAVs, 151 tanks, 47 howitzers, 52 launchers, 12 antitank weapons, 4 mortars, 10 arsenal depots and 145 military, technical and combat vehicles. The Turkish Armed Forces also released 12 minutes of drone footage that wrought havoc. According to the SOHR, Turkish troops killed 165 Syrian soldiers and fighters loyal to the regime. On 5 March, Turkey and Russia announced that a ceasefire in Idlib would come into force at midnight, a decision taken in light of the rising number of human rights violations since the offensive began in the region. Despite the two countries reaching an agreement, Turkey said that it still held "the right to retaliate with all its strength" against future attacks carried out by the forces of the Syrian government.