Geopolitics of Gas and Turkey Intervention in Syria

Abstract

In January 2011, the Tunisian Revolution started an unrest which soon spread to the rest of Middle East and North African Regions. I order to gain political power, a severe competition between regional and trans-regional powers took place in Syria in March 2011. The Turkish-Syrian relations grew darker in the past six years. This study tries to find the reasons of Turkey’s non-constructive intervention in Syria between August 2011 and the end of 2015. The hypothesis of this article assumes that Turkey considers Syria as a gateway to the Middle Eastern energy, thus, Ankara seeks a compatible government in Syria to help it become an energy hub. Cancellation the Arab-gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey by Assad in order to replace it with that’s of Iran, revealed the fact that Syria is not a reliable partner for Turkey. Hence, from the beginning of the crisis, Turkey has developed the policy of overthrow Assad.

Keywords

• "turkey"
• "energy"
• "transit"
• "syria"
• "gas"