After 13 years of fighting, the Syrian conflict was ended when Damascus fell to a rebel coalition led by Hayat Tahiri al-Sham (HTS). The Syrian civil war is over – at least for now.

The relatively unopposed sacking of the capital, along with the swift flight of the Assad regime, marks an abrupt and surprising end to a conflict that became emblematic of all the hopes and failures of the Arab Spring historical moment, with events like the Battle for Kobane, Fall of Raqqa, and Siege of Aleppo forever etched into the global collective memory.

Yet similar to how the outbreak Syrian civil war stood as an early illustration of the limits of US hegemonic power in the global system, with dreams of democratic regime change dashed by sustained Russian and Iranian support for the Assad administration, this final phase of the conflict also has something to teach us about contemporary geopolitics. But here the takeaway revolves around the shifting fortunes of two Eurasian powers – Türkiye and Russia – amid a gradual US retreat from the Middle East.

Türkiye Retakes Its Backyard

The sack of Damascus was the culmination of a military campaign led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and supported by Türkiye-aligned militias under the banner of the Syrian National Army. Similar to the battlefields of Nagorno-Karabakh, Ethiopia, and Ukraine, drone warfare was a game-changer that helped clear the way for the rebels’ rapid advance. The providence of these drones remains a mystery; the official narrative is that the rebels’ Shaheen drones were locally made, which is certainly possible, though the expertise and components could have come from Türkiye, Ukraine, or elsewhere.