Donald Trump's years as president of the United States will be remembered not only for how he disunited the country, but also for how he sowed the seeds of antagonism among traditional friends around the world. Take the Middle East: Yemen was on the cusp of uniting again, but Trump encouraged the inexperienced young Arab leaders to widen and deepen the fratricide in the country. If Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's government in Israel is forced to make a choice between the frying pan and the fire, this is because the Israeli nation was given false hope about the possibility of establishing regional peace without making amends with its Arab population and the neighboring Palestinians. Again, the culprit was Trump whose approach to the Middle East peace was similar to a real-estate deal among contending buyers. Israel is about to mark its 75th anniversary far from the joy of the celebration.

Luckily, Trump was unable to spread his menace in the region despite the fact that the neocons he inherited from former President Barack Obama's administration, who have been transmitted to incumbent President Joe Biden's administration, are still in a position to promulgate their mischief. However, luckily again, the regional governments seem aware of the calamities that could occur if American exceptionalism is not rejected. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are leading the post-U.S. normalization process; they are mending their ties with their Arab and other Muslim brothers. Meanwhile, the Yemen issue appears to be approaching a final and peaceful solution.

The only thorn that seems to remain in the area is Syria. Actually, it is not a thorn but a splinter, fully embedded in the skin of many nations. Jordan and Turkey top the list of those nations. Russia should also feature on that list, not only as a victim but also as an inducer and provoker of problems.

One can understand, if not appreciate, the initially Soviet but now Russian desire to keep Syria as a beachhead in its historical quest to reach the warm seas; however, no one can see the logic in Moscow accepting the brutality of the Baath regime in Syria under father and son, Hafez and Bashar Assad, when it did not exert any corrective influence during the tumultuous years of the Arab Spring. Peace-loving Syrian people tried to have free and fair elections in their country, at least twice – in the spring of 2013 and in mid-2015 – almost toppling the Assad regime. But, Russian President Vladimir Putin (and Iranian mullahs) came to the regime's rescue, risking a full-scale civil war and eventually leading to 40% of the country being under American occupation.

The history of those years is long and yet to be written; but today, thanks to the Americans’ preoccupation with the inglorious and criminal Russian war in Ukraine, Bashar Assad appears to be the closest he has ever been to reaching a peaceful solution in Syria since the early days of the protest in 2011. After a quarter of a million deaths, 1.3 people fleeing to Jordan and another 3.4 million migrating to Turkey, the Baath regime appears to be endorsing the Syrian people's return. Last week Assad issued a legislative decree, granting general amnesty to Syrians who committed terrorist crimes before April 30, 2022. He refers to the Syrians who he targeted with barrel bombs for demanding free and fair elections "terrorists" since they picked up guns to defend themselves and their families, but now is not the time to nitpick at terminology.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced a plan to facilitate the voluntary return of a million Syrian refugees to their country, with the support of national and international nongovernmental organizations. Erdoğan made the comments via teleconference at the inauguration ceremony of a new project in Idlib in northern Syria that will house 50,000 families. Since the general thaw in the political atmosphere in Syria, half a million Syrians have returned home from Turkey. The number of refugees who have returned from Jordan is around 100,000.

Terrorism in the region

Normalization in Turkish-Syrian relations is important as it would not only guarantee the return of refugees but also prevent the dismemberment of the country. The American forces the Obama administration put in the country under the guise of fighting the Daesh terrorists in Syria created, armed and trained the SDF, an umbrella group dominated by the PKK terrorist group's Syrian offshoot, the YPG, as their allies. There are organic links between the PKK, an internationally recognized terrorist organization, and its extension in Syria, the YPG, which was rebranded by U.S. Army Gen. Raymond Thomas in 2015.

The U.S. forces are now holding two-fifth of Syria under their occupation and with their help, the SDF has control of the Syrian oil fields.

The longer the U.S. occupation of Syria continues, the faster the ultimate neocon plan for the Middle East draws to fruition. The original plan was to create an autonomous "Kurdish" region in Iraq, pushing the people to declare independence from Iraq and eventually, unite with the Syrian Kurds to fulfill late U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s dream of "United Kurdistan." (Wilson’s map had parts of Turkey and Iran carved into that imaginary country. Wilson even submitted his map to the U.S. Congress in 1920.)

But the contemporary revival of this pipedream didn’t work: Iraqi Kurds never acquiesced to merging with a terrorist-controlled region in Syria and Turkey’s active intervention to prevent an autonomous PKK administration in northern Syria put an end to it. Yet, the U.S. occupation forces maintain pockets of SDF-controlled so-called "cantons" in the area.

Russia and the Syrian regime should be aware of the dangers that the migration created in Syria: the country needs its people back. The ethnic and sectarian/denominational balance of Syria is important not only to prevent the U.S. plans for a so-called Kurdish state but also to counter the Iranian dreams of creating a "Shiite Crescent" from Yemen to Lebanon.

Homes, schools and hospitals in northern Syria are important for the people's return, but the people themselves are important and needed to keep the country in one piece. Erdoğan has signaled the possibility of talks between the Syrian and Turkish governments. These talks may eventually open the way for the final curtain.