The revolution that overthrew Assad has rendered Russia’s military presence in Syria irrelevant. Russia’s military bases in Latakia (province of Syria), which were valuable geopolitical assets for the Kremlin, have instantly turned into a headache, which cannot be eliminated without disregarding fundamental international agreements.
December 8th was the last day in the history of the dictatorial regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria. In a matter of days, the state terror machine that had controlled the Syrian population for 24 years collapsed. Although Assad is a doctor by education and took the Hippocratic oath «Not to harm people», he has resorted to a policy of genocide and the destruction of all who disagreed with his regime. Assad has cemented the image of one of the most brutal mass murderers in the World, with the blood of over a quarter of a million of compatriots on his hands. As a representative of the Alawites (the Shiite religious minority in Syria), he ruthlessly suppressed the resistance of the Sunnis, who make up the majority of the country’s population, in particular in the ranks of the armed forces. This explains the virtual absence of resistance from government units that carried out the march of justice from the province of Idlib and the border with Turkey towards Damascus. One after another, cities such as Aleppo, Hama, and Homs fell into the hands of the rebels, and as a result, parts of the Syrian National Army and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) detachments triumphantly entered Damascus. There was a complete surrender of Assad’s forces, while the rebels, on the contrary, were looking for members of his government to take power from them, avoiding violence. Moreover, one of the leaders of the uprising and the leader of the HTS, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, emphasizes that the goal of the Syrian revolution is to dismantle «the dead regime» and establish institutional rule in Syria through elections. Hopefully, that is how Syrians should finally find peace after 13 years of civil war.
A similar opinion is shared by the Turkish political leadership, which hails the development of revolutionary processes in the neighboring Muslim country, especially in the context of the probable formation of a government that will reflect the religious and ethnic configuration of Syria, where Sunni Islam prevails. According to them, the Assad regime pursued an aggressive policy until the last, resorting to terrorizing the population in the province of Idlib, which became the last straw and caused an unprecedented revolutionary movement. As a result, despite Assad’s diplomatic maneuvers to gain international support for his dictatorship, he suffered a total collapse, and the opposition forces, under the slogans of seeking freedom, justice, peace, and security, put an end to the history of the vile dictatorship. Thus, Ankara hails for a new reality, which will be characterized by the fact that «Syria with all its ethnic, confessional, religious components will belong to the Syrians.»
The latter thesis is very significant, as it indicates Ankara’s position on the undesirability of the presence on Syrian territory of external forces that acted as foreign support for anti-revolutionary forces. The most prominent role here belongs to Russia, which considered the Assad regime its strategic, if not the only real, ally in the Middle East. For a long time, the narrative dominated Russian propaganda: it was the Russian military intervention, missile strikes on opposition units by the Aerospace Forces, and the supply of weapons to Assad’s army that were decisive elements in keeping Assad in power in the critical year of 2015 for him. It was then that the Russians launched a three-year struggle against «terrorists» from their Military Bases in the Syrian province of Latakia, which, according to Assad’s Russian patron, Russian President Putin, ended with the defeat of the extremist forces. Moscow’s interference in Syrian affairs has been a significant irritant factor for the Turks, and at times has reached a situation of open interstate confrontation, as happened in the case of the destruction of the Russian Su-24, which violated Turkish airspace in November 2015 and was bring down by Turkish air defenses.
Thus, from a political, geostrategic, and security point of view, the Russian military presence on Syrian territory is undesirable for Ankara. It is not only related to the suppression of the anti-Assad uprising but also represents a military challenge for Ankara. Currently, the Russians have up to 2,500 troops in Syria, located mainly at the Air Base in Khmeimim and the Logistics Point of the Russian Navy #720 in Tartus. They are armed with air defense systems, missiles, armored vehicles, and ammunition.
The future of the Russian military presence in Syrian Latakia after the fall of the Assad regime has become one of the key issues currently being discussed. The Ministry of Defense, the Foreign Ministry, and the Kremlin do not fully understand what to do with their military infrastructure. Of course, a huge role in resolving this issue belongs to the Turkish side, not only from the point of view of Ankara’s influence on the interim government in Damascus, which is only in a state of structuring but also from the standpoint of the international obligations assumed by Turkey related to the regime and the functioning of the Black Sea Straits. The Russian military contingent, known as the Group of Russian Forces in the Syrian Arab Republic, has found itself in a complete hover and may become the object of inevitable revenge from the Syrian revolutionary forces, whom the Russian diplomatic team headed by S.Lavrov has only now stopped calling «terrorists» and nowadays calls the opposition.
First of all, it should be noted that the agreements on the basing of Russian troops in Syria were concluded with the overthrown Assad regime, and it was its security they were supposed to guarantee in exchange for Moscow receiving geopolitical preferences. Thus, the purpose of deploying the group disappeared, along with the escape of B.Assad. For the East Mediterranean players, the Russian bases are a symbol of the projection of the Russian military presence in the Mediterranean Sea, a tool for international capitalization of the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea, and a means of providing logistics for expansion in Africa. During the final visit to Moscow, the fugitive Bashar Assad had laid the last hope to retain his power precisely on the Russian military. He has asked Putin to use the full firepower of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria against the rebels to raze their bases in Idlib province to the ground. The Russians began to fulfill this request, and between November 27 and December 2, 2024, Russian airstrikes killed 81 civilians in Idlib and Aleppo, injured 304 people, and demolished the Al-Watan clinic.
Moreover, just a few days before the fall of Damascus, Russian special services in Latakia were working on implementing a scenario to proclaim like in Ukraine a Syrian analog of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”/ “Lugansk People’s Republic”, the so-called “Latakia People’s Republic”. It could become a center of resistance to the revolution and a site of concentration for Assad’s loyalists with the aim of his future restoration of power. However, due to the rapid collapse of the Assad regime, it turned out to be impossible to implement these plans like guaranteeing the security and inviolability of Russian military bases in Syria.
There are reports that B.Assad was able to escape from Syria precisely using the aircraft of the Russian Air Forces that managed to reach the Air Base in Khmeimim. Part of the military commanders of the Russian group in Syria fled to Moscow with him. Therefore, the matter of evacuating equipment and weapons from Russian military bases in Syria is a hot topic, because this could become one of the first bright achievements of the December revolution in Syria and a geopolitical victory for Turkey.
Publicly, there are reassuring Kremlin remarks that Putin officials are in direct contact with representatives of the armed opposition in Syria, which supposedly gave the Russian side guarantees of the inviolability of diplomatic representations and the security of military bases. It is difficult to judge how reliable these guarantees are, given the storming and pogrom by the rebels of the Iranian embassy in Damascus and the evacuation of Iraqi diplomats to Lebanon.
Given the above, Turkey’s weight and position for the Russians is becoming increasingly important in the future of their bases in Syria. Moscow is working out the evacuation plans for personnel, equipment, and weapons from Latakia and remains worried about the Turkish position. It is quite possible that armed revolutionaries in the prevailing chaos will attempt to seize Russian objects, as they had previously easily seized the bases and arsenals of the Syrian army. The Turks may turn a blind eye to this, referring to the uncontrolled course of the popular revolution.
That is why Moscow can conduct secret negotiations, mainly with Ankara, on the unhindered evacuation of its military and their weapons from Syria to other Russian bases, including in Crimea. The Russians are asking Turkey to facilitate passage to the Black Sea for Russian ships with military cargo that want to leave Tartus. Over the past 9 years of presence in Syria, the Russians have accumulated a lot of weapons that were used by a contingent of over 7,500 people. Currently, the most valuable items are being transported to Russia by military transport aircraft, but they can only take a minimal volume of weapons. As is known, up to 90% of the cargo to provide the Russian military presence in Syria was transported by sea.
However, Ankara is obliged to reject the Russians’ appeal to grant permits for the passage of Russian warships with weapons to the Black Sea through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. The Montreux Convention obliges Ankara to close access to the straits for military vessels of any state at war, even if Turkey does not participate in this war. Since the weapons that Russia wants to transport by sea can be used in the war against Ukraine, the Turkish side must deny the Russians their intentions.
Especially considering that on February 27, 2024, Ankara officially recognized the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a war and introduced restrictions, stopping the movement of Russian ships. Also in January 2024, referring to the provisions of the Montreux Convention, the Turks refused to let through two minesweepers that the British Navy transferred to Ukraine. Accordingly, Ankara must continue to adhere to the course taken, proving its role as a supporter of the security of the Black Sea region. Such an approach not only improves the international image of Turkey but also gives it significant advantages. At the very least, it will significantly complicate and delay the Russians’ ability to remove weapons from Syria for use in other theaters of operations. Moscow may decide that this plan is too costly and abandon it, handing over the existing weapons to the new Syrian government or simply destroying them on the spot.
Therefore, this option is quite acceptable for Turkey, as well as for the entire world community, which strives for a more stable and secure World.