In connection with the well-known events in Iraq, the state of Turkish-Syrian relations plays an important role in the alignment of political forces in the Middle East region. Relations between the two countries have not been stable for many decades of the twentieth century, and they have sometimes been tense. Among the reasons are the unresolved territorial dispute over the border province of Hatay*, which now belongs to Turkey; disputes over the distribution of water resources of the Euphrates River, which flows in Turkey and Syria; Syria's use of the Kurdish problem as a lever of pressure on Ankara in the hope of resolving a number of controversial issues in its favor. However, both countries have always been united in one thing-they sought to prevent the creation of an independent Kurdish state. Certain changes in relations between the Republic of Turkey and the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR) took place in the middle of 2000. Then, after the death of the long-term and permanent President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, the son of the "Syrian lion"** Bashar al-Assad ascended to the "throne", who made his pragmatic domestic and foreign policies. One of the indicators of rapprochement between the two countries, many experts called the presence of Turkish President Ahmed Necet Sezer at the funeral of Hafez al-Assad. They noted that " the Syrian leadership was very flattered by such a high presence of the Turkish leadership."1. This was the first official visit of A. Sezer abroad after his election as President of Turkey. THE ICE BROKE... The symptoms of the Turkish-Syrian rapprochement appeared back in May of the same year, when the deputy foreign ministers of the two countries tried to come to an agreement on the main problems-water and Kurdish. In the same year 2000, Vice-President A. Halim Haddam and Syrian Interior Minister Muhammad Harbayi paid an official visit to Turkey.2 In November 2000, the Presidents of Syria and Turkey met at the Doha Summit of Muslim Leaders.3 In ... Read more