News Analysis: Syrian crisis leads to further Turkish-Gulf approach: experts

The Syrian crisis has led to further coordination between Turkey and the Saudi-led Gulf states whose positions on Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Iran and other regional issues are almost identical, said Egyptian and Arab political experts.

The Saudi capital city of Riyadh has recently seen an official meeting between the Turkish foreign minister and his counterparts of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to coordinate positions and mobilize support for the Saudi-Qatari proposal presented to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to put an end to the Syrian crisis.

The meeting has come a couple of days before the international conference on Syria held in Lausanne, Switzerland, sponsored by the United States and Russia and attended by the foreign ministers of key regional players including Egypt, Iran and Iraq.

Since it erupted in March 2011, the Syrian crisis has claimed the lives of about 500,000 people and displaced more than 10 million so far.

IDENTICAL POSITIONS

Although all parties concerned with the Syrian issue agree on the necessity of a peaceful, political solution to the crisis, both Turkey and the Gulf states are in principle against the presence of Bashar al-Assad as future Syrian leader.

"The Turkish and Gulf positions are similar and almost identical. Saudi Arabia sees that Assad has no place in the future of Syria, a position that is supported by both the other Gulf states and Turkey," said Saeed al-Lawindi, researcher at Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Lawindi argued that the Turkish, Gulf approach on the Syrian conflict is more concerned with Assad's departure than the unity of the Syrian territories, stressing that it is different from the positions of some regional key players like Egypt and Iran.

For his part, Omar al-Hassan, head of the Gulf Center for Strategic Studies, said that the Gulf-Turkish ties have always been there as seen in Turkish attendance of several past Arab and GCC summits.

"The tense relations between the Gulf countries and Iran contributed to closer relations between them and Turkey who both seek a political solution for the Syrian issue while leaving Assad's destiny to be determined by the Syrian people," the Arab expert told Xinhua, describing Gulf-Turkish ties as "strategic."

Hassan said the GCC-Turkish closeness is in favor of various Arab issues and it could pave the way for Egypt-Turkey reconciliation, adding it also serves as a strategic bloc in the face of the Shiite-based Iranian expansion ambitions in the region, particularly in Syria.

EGYPT'S DIFFERENT VISION

Egypt has recently voted on two rival draft resolutions at the UNSC for a relief in Syria, particularly in Aleppo, yet both failed to be approved by the world body. The one proposed by Russia, whose military is currently assisting Assad forces in Syria, failed to get enough "yes" votes for approval while the French-Spanish draft resolution was vetoed by Russia.

"Although the Saudi representative to the UN described Egypt's vote for the Russian draft resolution as 'painful,' no official statements came from either Saudi Arabia or Egypt to confirm any deep disagreement between the two countries," Al-Ahram researcher Lawindi told Xinhua.

Egypt later explained that its supports for both UN draft resolutions was based on their contents, "not on political bids that have already become a barrier to the work of the council," as stated by Egypt's representative to the UN.

Although Saudi Arabia and Turkey agree on Syria, they disagree on Egypt's military removal of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, which is supported by most GCC states excluding Qatar and is fiercely rejected by Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the strongest Arab states whose stability represents stability to the whole region," Lawindi continued, foreshadowing a possible future Egyptian-Iranian approach to face that of the Turkish-GCC.

At the recent UNSC meetings in New York in September, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi did not hold any meetings with Saudi officials or representatives while his foreign minister held talks with his Iranian counterpart and with the Syrian representative to the UN.

"The disagreement on Syria's Assad between Cairo and Riyadh is obvious and we hope it will not develop, because Egypt and the Gulf states cannot do without each other," Hassan, the Gulf Center chief, told Xinhua.

The expert added that all parties seek a political solution for the Syrian crisis yet Assad's future in Syria remains the main disagreement, "which still can be resolved." Endit