much better for the US to have an option for providing energy to Europe, which would not involve Turkey, otherwise Turkey could become extremely demanding. And if Turkey controls Syria, this alternative will be gone. That should explain why the US is reluctant to overthrow Assad. Besides the Americans cannot hope to normalize their relations with Iran while they are chopping their major allies in Iraq and Syria.
I am not saying that this is the only reason. The Americans would also have to go against the Russians and many Europeans in order to overthrow Assad, but I believe that these considerations are of secondary importance to explain the change in the Obama policy towards Assad.
In the 7th paragraph of the following article of Public Radio International, titled “Did Barack Obama just signal a shift in US policy toward Syria?”, May 2014, you can read the following:
“He (Obama) seems to be signaling a potentially significant change in Syrian policy,” said Fredric Hof, who served as President Obama's special representative for Syria in 2012. “But without spelling out in great detail what that change is exactly, or pledging that he would try to do something big enough to alter the situation on the ground decisively in Syria.”
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-05-28/did-barack-obama-just-signal-shift-us-policy-toward-syria
What we read in most newspapers is that Obama needs Iran and Assad in order to combat the Jihadists of the ISIS army in Syria and Iraq. That can’t be true. ISIS and the Islamic State are mainly funded and supported by American allies i.e. by Qatar and Turkey, even though Qatar and Turkey would not admit so. But it is mainly in the Qatari, Saudi and Turkish interests to break Iran’s influence in Syria and Iraq, since that would stop the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, and would also allow the construction of the Qatar-Turkey pipeline. For the Qatar-Turkey pipeline see the following Wikipedia link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar-Turkey_pipeline
Moreover when they are telling us that they are bombing ISIS, we do not know what exactly they are bombing, and if ISIS has or has not been informed before hand about the strikes. I am not saying that everything is a theater. I am saying that the Americans might be simply controlling ISIS with their strikes. If the Americans really wanted to take ISIS out they should have been able to do so by now. In the 3rd paragraph of the following article of the Telegraph, titled “How our allies in Kuwait and Qatar funded Islamic State”, September 2014, you can read the following:
“Islamic State (Isil), with its newly conquered territory, oilfields and bank vaults, no longer needs much foreign money. But its extraordinarily swift rise to this point, a place where it threatens the entire region and the West, was substantially paid for by the allies of the West. Isil’s cash was raised in, or channelled through, Kuwait and Qatar, with the tacit approval and sometimes active support of their governments”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/kuwait/11077537/How-our-allies-in-Kuwait-and-Qatar-funded-Islamic-State.html
At the following Reuters article, titled “Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki says Saudi, Qatar openly funding violence in Anbar”, March 2014, you can read about the Iraqi president accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar for funding ISIS.
https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/us-iraq-saudi-qatar-idUSBREA2806S20140309
If you google “ISIS funding” you will find many sources arguing that it is the Persian Gulf States that are funding ISIS. Actually it is these states that have the economic incentive to destroy the Iranian zone of influence i.e. Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon, which is actually what ISIS is doing. When Saddam Hussein was ruling Iraq, Iraq and Iran were in very bad terms. After the US attack on Iraq on 2003, and the overthrown of Saddam Hussein, Iraq came increasingly under Iranian influence, with Nouri al Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq from 2006 to 2014, being a man very close to Iran.
However until now the Americans have been very tolerant towards ISIS. ISIS makes the Qatar-Turkey pipeline possible, and also until very recently the Americans considered Iran as an enemy. The Qatar-Pipeline can send Qatari natural gas to Europe, if the US-Iranian rapprochement does not work out, in order to reduce the Russian influence. Under different scenarios, ISIS, the Kurds, Turkey, Qatar, Iran, they could all help to reduce Russian influence, and maybe Chinese influence, and the Americans are not closing any doors. The problem is that there are so many conflicting interests in this region, that it is very difficult for the Americans to keep all doors open at the same time.
I believe this is the main reason of the American-Turkish conflict. The Americans want to have all doors open, while the Turks want the Americans to overthrow Assad and put all their bets on Turkey, something that both the Americans and the Europeans do not want. Moreover there is a lot of trade between the Turks and the Russians.
At the following Deutsche Welle article, “Russia and Turkey agree on South Stream pipeline project”, August 2009, you can also read that in 2009, Erdogan singed an agreement with the Russian President Putin, in order to allow the South Stream, a Russian natural gas pipeline, to pass from Turkish waters in order to reach Europe.
https://www.dw.de/russia-and-turkey-agree-on-south-stream-pipeline-project/a-4548193
The Russians wanted to avoid Ukrainian waters, since the Russian-Ukrainian relationship is very problematic. The Russian pipeline South Stream (red line), was in 2009 the competitor of the Nabucco pipeline. The Nabucco pipeline (black line) was the pipeline supported by the Americans and the Europeans. I guess that Turkey would receive transit fees and even discounted energy prices from both the Russians and the Americans for accepting their pipelines, or maybe that’s what the Turks were hoping for.
However the geopolitical shifts are very quick nowadays, and tomorrow the US-Turkish relations might improve, while the US-Iranian ones might collapse. If the American-Iranian rapprochement effort collapses, the Americans might have to turn against Assad again. But the West needs Iran’s energy, and Iran wants to sell this energy to the West, so it is difficult to see how in the end they will not manage to find a way to work things out.
And if the US-Iran relations do not deteriorate, it is difficult to see how the US-Turkey relations will improve, unless Turkey accepts that it will not be the one and only energy hub of the region. Many analysts say that this is not the first crisis between US and Turkey, and that the two countries can overcome it as they have done in the past.
I also want to include a few articles that describe the deteriorating relation between the Americans and the Turks. The following RT (Russian Today) article, titled “Turkey disappointed that Obama does not overturn Assad”, describes Erdogan’s frustration about the American refusal to overthrow Assad.
https://rt.com/usa/174700-erdogan-talk-obama-syria/
To emphasize the deterioration between the US-Turkish relations I will also mention the following Financial Times article, titled “Turkey to buy $4 billion air defense system from China”, September 2013. In the 6th and 7th paragraph of the article you can read the following:
“Western diplomats said they were surprised and disappointed by Ankara’s preference of the Chinese group…..and emphasised their worries that the system would not be interoperable with Nato’s defence architecture.”
https://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/326c5442-278c-11e3-8feb-00144feab7de.html
The following article of CBC says that Turkey, a prominent NATO member, was very silent during the crisis in Ukraine, and it mentions the large sums that are involved in the Russian-Turkish energy trade.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-crisis-why-turkey-is-silent-as-nato-operations-ramp-up-1.2625991
In the 3rd paragraph of the following Guardian article, titled “Turkey denies new deal reached to open airbases to US in fight against Isis”, October 2014, you can read the following:
“On Sunday, the US said Turkey had agreed to let US and coalition forces use its military bases, including the key Incirlik airbase close to the southern city of Adana…But Turkish officials insisted that no decision had been taken
on Incirlik”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/13/turkey-denies-agreement-open-air-bases-us-isis
At the following CNN article, titled “Russia to build first nuclear plant for Turkey”, May 2010, you can read that Russia and Turkey agreed to build a nuclear plant in Turkey.
https://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-444748
I must also say that the shift in the Obama policy towards Assad, which is a byproduct of the US-Iran rapprochement, is not harming only the US-Turkish relations. Qatar, who hosts the American bases in the Persian Gulf, has spent approximately 3 billion dollars hopping to overthrow the Assad regime.
In the first paragraph of the following Financial Times article, titled “Qatar bankrolls Syrian revolt with cash and arms”, May 2013, you can read the following:
“The gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels”.
https://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86e3f28e-be3a-11e2-bb35-00144feab7de.html
Therefore even though Qatar wants badly to overthrow Assad, their partner, the United States, will not do them the favor for the moment. However the trauma in the American-Qatari relations due to the
The Crisis in the American-Turkish Relations: The Creation of an Independent Kurdistan Page 2