The U.S. intelligence community considers Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkey-backed Syrian opposition group that is today on the verge of taking Damascus, to be a terrorist group. “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a coalition of northern Syria-based Sunni Islamist insurgent groups that evolved from Jabhat al-Nusrah, or ‘Nusrah Front,’ al-Qa’ida’s former branch in Syria,” the Director of National Intelligence’s “Counter Terrorism” guide reads. It does acknowledge that HTS’s leader Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani [Jolani] broke with Al Qaeda in 2016 “because of strategic disagreements.” The U.S. Department of the Treasury added Jawlani to its Specially Designated Nations list in 2013 and, four years later, the FBI offered a $10 million bounty for information leading to his arrest.
[Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham] has tried to rebrand itself, urging calm and emphasizing the importance of protecting all communities.
Many counterterrorism analysts affirm Jawlani’s change of heart. The Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister, who follows Syrian Arabs closely, has suggested for several years that Jawlani was moderating, and has highlighted his calls for tolerance in recent days. The New York Times also suggested Jawlani’s conversion is sincere. “Since breaking ties with Al Qaeda, Mr. al-Jolani and his group have tried to gain international legitimacy by eschewing global jihadist ambitions and focusing on organized governance in Syria,” Jerusalem-based correspondent Raja Abdulrahim wrote, adding, “Once seen as one of the Syrian opposition’s most militant factions, the group has since taken a more pragmatic approach to both governance and its relationship to other rebel groups.” Lebanon’s Daily Star, the country’s main English-language newspaper, explained, “Despite its terrorist designation by Western countries, HTS has tried to rebrand itself, urging calm and emphasizing the importance of protecting all communities. Jolani also pointed to Aleppo’s cultural history, vowing that it would remain a place of unity for diverse groups.”
Nor was Jolani the only extremist to rebrand.
An unnamed Free Syrian Army commander, meanwhile, gave an interview to the Times of Israel beseeching Israel to support the Syrian opposition over Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “We are open to friendship with everyone in the region—including Israel. We don’t have enemies other than the Assad regime, Hezbollah, and Iran. What Israel did against Hezbollah in Lebanon helped us a great deal. Now we are taking care of the rest,” he explained.
It is understandable that Western officials want to believe such statements. After all, Assad is odious; few will shed any tears at his downfall. Wishful thinking also enters play. It can be comforting for diplomats, academics, and think tankers to believe there is no danger to an Islamist regime in Syria or that worst-case scenarios with Al Qaeda on the Israeli border with Syria or radicals attacking an already vulnerable Jordanian monarchy are off the table. Jawlani and other Syrian oppositions play into such sentiments as they ensure calm and prevent reprisals against minority communities, especially in Aleppo.
Self-deception, however, can be deadly but it is also common.
The reassurance of pundits and policymakers about Jawlani, despite his past extremism, mirrors that with which U.S. officials greeted Recep Tayyip Erdoğan when his Justice and Development Party (AKP) swept to power in Turkey in 2002.
Initially, many American officials worried about Erdoğan’s religious agenda. While mayor of Istanbul, Erdoğan had regularly disparaged secularism. “Thank God Almighty, I am a servant of the Shari’a,” he declared in 1994. The following year, he described himself as “the imam of Istanbul.” In 1998, a Turkish court imprisoned him for religious incitement after he declared that the mosques were his bayonets.
“Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off.”
With his party holding a super-majority in Ankara, however, Erdoğan bent over backwards to put Western concerns to rest. “We are the guarantors of this [Turkish] secularism,” he assured, “and our management will clearly prove that.” It worked. The State Department accepted Erdoğan’s pledge to embrace Europe. As concern grew about the Islamization of Turkey’s education system, Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European Affairs, dismissed worries and described the AKP as “a kind of Muslim version of a Christian Democratic Party.” Secretary of State Colin Powell put his imprimatur on Turkey, praising Erdoğan’s Turkey as “a Muslim democracy.” On June 27, 2004, President George W. Bush stood before a crowd of journalists in Ankara and declared, “I appreciate so very much the example your country has set on how to be a Muslim country and at the same time a country which embraces democracy and rule of law and freedom.” Even as Erdoğan began to marginalize and imprison secularists and liberals, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Ross Wilson ran interference for the Turkish leader, dismissing concerns about eroding secularism.
The irony is that Erdoğan anticipated such wishful thinking and sought full advantage from it, cynically explaining while mayor, “Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off.”
With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear how naïve the George W. Bush administration and the State Department were in their acceptance and embrace of Erdoğan. By 2006, he was already reaching out to Hamas, legitimizing the terror group and allowing it a base in Turkey. Eight years later, he was providing logistical support for the Islamic State’s rise in Syria and Iraq, while his family profited directly from Islamic State oil sales. Today, Jews flee Turkey and Erdoğan coordinates the ethnic cleansing of Syrian Christians, Kurds, and Yezidis. Turkish Special Forces and mercenaries coordinate with terrorists in Libya and Somalia and facilitated in the ethnic cleansing of the Armenian community from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Rather than a bridge between Europe and the Middle East and a force for stability as its supporters in Washington once claimed, as Erdoğan consolidated power, ideology trumped pragmatism. Today, Turkey is a terror sponsor in all but name.
The question with Jawlani, then, is whether his newfound moderation is sincere or a pragmatic feint to buy time as he consolidates power. Ideologues seldom change their tune; they just change their tactics and timeline. His choice of allies in Turkey gives reason for concern. Reformed Islamists tend not to choose unrepentant ones as their sponsors.
