The last fighters and civilians who were holding out in Aleppo are finally trickling towards the Turkish border, where a central plank of Ankara’s policy throughout the nearly six-year war is about to be put to the test.

Those collected from the ruins are being taken to a point north of the city, in a deal brokered by Turkey and Russia, which will supposedly provide them refuge away from the ongoing fighting.

The development is meant to lead to the type of safe haven sanctuary Turkey has regularly pushed for as a means of protecting civilians. But Ankara’s idea of what would eventually emerge from the war has changed dramatically over the past eight months. Enthusiastic backing for the anti-Assad rebels has given way to direct moves to help end the war, rather than keep it rumbling on.

With their backers hedging, the vanquished of Aleppo find themselves pawns in a power play, which may mean their new refuge is little safer than their last. Their fate will now be determined by regional dynamics that have shifted constantly and have now led to one of Assad’s staunchest backers – Russia – trumping their own key supporter as arbiter of their fate.

The deal to evacuate those cornered in east Aleppo was brokered in Ankara with Russian and Turkish officials, and desperate rebel leaders who knew their fight was lost. At face value, it was about the terms two of the three – the rebels and their protectors – wanted to see. Russia was less enthusiastic about an area out of reach of its bombers, insisting on fighters going one way and civilians the other.

Buoyed by an overwhelming blitz of rebel-held east Aleppo, which had forced the rebels to the negotiating table, Moscow’s demands won the day. If the plan is carried out – not a given with the ongoing belligerence of Shia militias and Syrian forces who were not involved in the talks – the last civilians and fighters will be led on a precarious journey.

Turkish officials say the deal is to send all evacuees west towards Idlib, the last Syrian city outside the control of the regime – except for Isis-held Raqqa. There, Syria’s newest refugees will be herded towards the jihadi group, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, and other salafi jihadi organisations that have been dominant in the surrounding province for much of the past four years. The regime prophecy that jihadis hold primacy over mainstream rebels is true in that part of Syria, and will be used by Syrian and Russian officials to portray the opposition more generally.

Only after a vetting process, the terms of which are yet to be defined, will some evacuees be allowed to leave for an area of north-eastern Syria, controlled by the Turkish military since mid-August. This is where a Turkish backed safe zone will finally start to take shape, in a far less ambitious manner than leaders in Ankara had first envisaged.

Rebel groups that had been armed by Turkey will now have to prove themselves worthy of entry into the safe zone – a startling fall from grace, underscored by the silence of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in recent months, as the end drew near for Aleppo.

As the city withered, the Turkish army was focusing its energies on securing a 60-mile safe haven between the border towns of Irfin and Jarablus – not for refugees, but to stop Kurds moving in and taking a presence along the entirety of its 500-mile border with Syria.

Such a zone of influence could still end up working in the favour of some of those from Aleppo, but with projected numbers of up to 80,000 refugees soon to be on the move, where or how to house them are secondary concerns.

The change in Turkish policy came after a rapprochement with Moscow, which followed a six-month standoff stemming from the downing of a Russian fighter jet. Since Erdoğan’s “expression of regret” to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, both sides have seen the war through a similar lens, particularly over Russia’s view that the Kurds of north-eastern Syria should not use the war to advance territorial ambitions.



The effect has been devastating to the Syrian opposition, which gradually lost its support base. US backing, which was lukewarm at best, was among the first to fade. The Saudis, whose supply of anti-tank missiles to the mainstream opposition led to the Russian intervention, lost interest late last year. Turkey’s withdrawal, however, has been the most decisive.

The way it now deals with the refugees of east Aleppo will do much to shape its legacy in Syria.