This year will, God permitting, be the year the Syrian civil war comes to an end.

It has been 4,311 days, or 11 years, nine months and 18 days, since March 15, 2011, when the unrest in Syria and several other countries began as part of the Arab Spring protests. Governments had been toppled, protesters had been killed and armed forces intervened; however, nowhere did such an innocent popular political demand escalate into a civil war that killed 410,000 people, with 13,000 people executed by the government. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the sheer number of children killed in the conflict had risen to 25,286 and about 20,000 women had also been killed. Moreover, the United Nations reports that 5.6 million have fled the country, and over 6 million have been internally displaced.

In those 4,311 days, the Syrian government lost sovereignty over the border areas; today the regime maintains illusory control over the west and south of the country. In fact, the regime sustains itself by conceding control over large areas to U.S. occupation forces and their "boots on the ground," the YPG, the Syrian affiliate of the PKK that is recognized as a terrorist group by the European Union, the U.S., Türkiye and many other countries.

On the northern border area, there are regions under the control of pro-Türkiye Turkmen groups, some Arab groups like the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-supported Syrian National Army (SNA) up to the Euphrates. The Russian army also maintains bases in the north around Ain al-Arab (Kobani): They claim they are keeping an eye on the U.S.-supported YPG, but observations made in the field show that the Russians seem to be holding the YPG’s hand rather than keeping an eye on them.

Astana talks

It is no wonder, the 2017 Astana Process, the peace talks initiated by Türkiye, Russia and Iran in Kazakhstan's Astana, with members of Syria’s government and armed opposition leaders did not work. The Astana talks resulted in a cease-fire agreement and the establishment of four de-escalation zones, but the Syrian government’s attacks against opposition-held areas in the de-escalation zones did not give the country a chance to foster a democratic environment to produce a constitution in Geneva. The Assad regime never wanted fair and free elections that would create a democratic environment to end the civil war. Perhaps, like his father Hafez, Bashar Assad knows that his dictatorial regime will be pushed into history’s dustbin in the first free elections. But that was in 2017.

The military and political developments in the region could have taught a lesson or two to Bashar: The so-called international coalition against the Daesh terrorists in Syria is just a front to dismember Syria to create a Kurdish state. Merging with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq, the Kurdish state would (I am explicating the old and new conservative U.S. narrative here) correct the mistakes made by the British and the French after World War I, provide a permanent fence for Israel against Iran and a good "example" for the ethnic Kurds in Türkiye and Iran.

Assad should now ask himself: How did those Daesh terrorists come to Syria all the way from Afghanistan without the Pakistani, Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish governments noticing? How did 1,000 hand-picked PKK terrorists, with the help of G.I. Joes, defeat Daesh's new self-proclaimed "caliphate" created overnight in Syria? Finally, where did the fearsome, head-rolling Daesh terrorists go right after the U.S. Central Command started supporting the YPG in Syria and took Syrian oil fields and refineries under its control?

But, starting in 2011, instead of focusing on the realities of his own country, Assad has created his own reality in his mind. A major component of his delusion is that Türkiye is going to occupy the northern part of Syria and Iraq as its unredeemed lands taken from the Ottomans at the end of World War I.

I cannot speak on behalf of the 85 million people of Türkiye, but I know who can: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He said, on the record, on several international platforms, that Türkiye is respectful of the territorial integrity of Syria and Iraq. Is there one single example of any Turkish official saying one thing and later doing the opposite? What about the Annexation of Hatay (Alexandretta) to Türkiye, Bashar might ask? Türkiye never ceded the territory to any nation. France, twisting Ottoman arms, occupied not only the Arab provinces but also Turkish towns and cities in 1920-21. The Turkish Alexandretta had remained outside of the Turkish national borders by the Ankara Agreement of October 1921. It was never part of the Lausanne Peace Treaty; and when France, in a unilateral decision, wanted to cede it to the newly created Syria, Türkiye opposed it in 1937. The whole province was bestowed with independence by France, which, later in a plebiscite, opted to join Türkiye.

If Türkiye is in northern Syria now, it is solely for exercising its right stemming from the international human rights law that gives states both a right and a duty to protect individuals under their jurisdiction from terrorist attacks. Should the Syrian government improve the cross-border security for the people north of the joint border, Türkiye would not start its over-the-border operations against the terrorist activities of the PKK and its extension.

Türkiye's new peace initiative with Syria

Now, once again, Türkiye has started a new peace initiative with Syria, thanks to Russian mediation. The security teams negotiated major issues in Moscow. The Russian, Turkish and Syrian defense ministers met in Moscow last week, the first such talks since the war broke out in Syria, in a clear sign of the normalization of ties between Ankara and Damascus. It will be followed by the talks between the ministers of foreign affairs, which, hopefully, will culminate with a presidential summit among the three countries. Who knows, it could be followed by Assad visiting Ankara.

All these could lead to a major guarantee Türkiye seeks from Syria and its one-and-only ally in the world, Russia: the removal of PKK/YPG terrorists from Syrian territory. Syria has its own ethnic Kurdish people who have been denied basic human rights and government services since the creation of modern Syria.

The peace and order in – and the territorial integrity of – Syria can be maintained by democratic reforms in the country. Syrian Kurds are the essential component of Syria – not the PKK terrorists who have been infiltrating from the north and east for the last 30 years. Hafez Assad suppressed Kurds’ and Sunnis’ demands in order to sustain the regime's sectarian minority dictatorship in the country.

Perhaps, the reason that Arab Spring turned into this long and devastating Syrian conflict is this dictatorship. For the Assad family and their small sect, it is about time to wake up from these unreal dreams and end that dictatorship.