A quarter century since "Adana Agreement"

On October 20th, 1998 the agreement had been signed between the two sides in Adana, just days after Leader Abdullah Ocalan left Syria on the 9th of the same month.

Egypt, led by Hosni Mubarak and the United States under Bill Clinton, as well as Iran, contributed to the signing of the Adana Agreement. The Turkish authorities stated at the time that "without the mediation of Mubarak and Kharrazi (Kamal Kharrazi, then Iranian Foreign Minister), Turkey would have fought a war with Syria", and leader Abdullah Ocalan called that stage an international conspiracy.

The developments following the Adana Agreement confirmed leader Abdullah Ocalan's assessment.

This agreement, which contains 4 annexes established for a new stage of conspiracy between the occupied State of Kurdistan and the forces of global hegemony against Kurds and the peoples of the Middle East, has created a devastating reality for the Syrian people in particular.

In the Adana Agreement, the Syrian state relented to Turkey's threats, supported by NATO, and allowed Turkey to penetrate into its territory to pursue so-called terrorists, but essentially it was directed against the struggle of the Kurdish people.

One of the provisions of the agreement also provides for Syria's abandonment of the Alexandretta , which was forcibly occupied by in 1939. It appears that the Syrian authorities were not reluctant to abandon parts of Syria to avoid engaging in conflict with the fascist Turkish State.

When Turkey threatened to invade Syrian territory if Damascus did not exit Commander Abdullah Ocalan, the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sent an oral letter to the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, confirming Iraq's willingness to place all Republican Guard units in its action to fight Turkish forces if it invaded Syria. Mohammed Mansoura, a Syrian intelligence official, carried a reply: "President Hafiz al-Assad thanks the Iraqi leadership for its position, but Syria is unwilling to fight a war with Turkey even if it occupies parts of our territory. If that happens, Syria will file a complaint with the United Nations," Salim al-Jameel, director of the former American Division of Intelligence of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, told the Middle East newspaper in a dialogue published on May 11.

Syria's cultural and economic invasion

After the signing of the Adana Agreement, Turkish President Ahmed Najdat Sezer visited Syria in 2000, and in 2004 Bashar al-Assad visited Turkey. In 2009, dozens of agreements and protocols were signed between the Syrian and Turkish states through which the latter managed to invade Syria economically.

Syrian markets were filled with Turkish goods at the expense of local products, creating internal discomfort, not to mention the great dissatisfaction of Iran, which has also sought to consolidate its incursion into Syria through the sectarian, economic and cultural door.

Not only did the economic invasion of Syria extend to the cultural sphere, where Turkish language was included in the university curricula at the universities of Aleppo and Damascus.

Apart from Turkish, Turkish drama occupied Arab and Syrian screens in particular and promoted alien concepts of Syrian society, especially before the Syrian crisis.

After the spring of peoples in the countries of the Middle East and as the Syrian crisis passed, the Turkish state began to change the character of its dubbed series to Arabic (Syrian dialect) and became a promoter of the Ottoman era. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is the series "Resurrection of Artogrul", which began in 2014.

After the Syrian Crisis

Shortly after the Syrian crisis in mid-March 2011, the Turkish State demonstrated its colonial intentions and supported mercenary groups that had swept into Syrian territory.

When mercenary groups failed to implement Turkish plans, the Turkish occupation state began its direct occupation of Syrian territory through the Jarablous Gate on 24 August 2016, days after the defeat of ISIS/ Daesh in Manbij. Turkey continued its occupation of Syrian territory and, in 2018, of Afrin, and Serêkaniyê/ Ras al-Ain and Girê Spi/Tal Abyad, in 2019, along with the occupation of Azaz, Bab and parts of northern Idlib governorate.

Adana Modified

In 2019, Russia began talking about the Adana Agreement as a gateway to normalization between the Government of Damascus and the occupied Turkish state. An amendment to the Adana Agreement authorizes the Turkish occupation state to invade Syrian border areas 30 km deep.

Russian pressure on the Government of Damascus has not led to a complete normalization with the Turkish occupation state, but the Turkish occupation state has begun targeting areas 70 km deep in North and East Syria without any vote from the Government of Damascus, which is still ongoing.

Important events after the Adana Agreement

In the Middle East, the Adana Agreement was a precursor to many transformations. In 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan and in 2003 Iraq.

In 2004, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed, and a year later the Security Council passed a resolution committing Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, which withdrew in April the same year.

In 2011, NATO intervened in Libya and brought down Muammar Qadhafi's regime on an exciting date, 20 October of the same year, the same date as the Adana Agreement of 1998.

On 11 February 2011, Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt dropped Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis in the same year.