The players of 'the biggest game in town': Trump, Sharaa, Erdogan, Netanyahu, and the Kurds
At the White House, Sharaa’s meeting with Trump redrew the lines of advantage. Some emerged stronger, while others were left unsettled in their own arenas. Let us see who they are, and why.
Syria remains the key that fits too many locks. After decades of brutal dynastic rule and years of pulverising civil war, the question of what kind of state and society will eventually rise from its ruins, who will hold sway over its reconstruction, and how it will face its neighbours belongs to a timeline much longer than the present moment. Yet it is within this temporality, and under the auspices of the current players, that its first shape will be struck. And goodness me, these players know it.
We are watching a game of chess played like musical chairs. An exercise in strategy and survival where the music never quite stops. That is why Ahmad al-Sharaa’s visit to Washington should be seen, as one former American diplomat put it, as the biggest game in town.
At this stage, some hold better cards than others. Trump is the unseen hand that moves the pieces, the architect of this temporary order. Even though some pointed to al-Sharaa and his Turkish-speaking foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani entering the White House from a side door as a gesture of humiliation, I believe Sharaa and his team left Washington as victors. For a man only a year ago deemed a global terrorist, this was the ultimate legitimisation.
Another winner is undoubtedly Erdoğan and his foreign minister Hakan Fidan, who joined the meeting between Sharaa and Trump. When was the last time we witnessed the endorsement of a third country as part of a decision-making process of this scale? The same cannot be said for Netanyahu and the Kurdish entities in northeast Syria (the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/ PYD) who came away relatively weakened.
During this Washington visit, the agenda included the lifting of sanctions, cooperation on the dismantling of ISIS, rebuilding and managing oil reserves, negotiations on integrating the SDF into the Syrian army, the prospect of security arrangements with Israel, and, in the long term, Syria’s potential accession to the Abraham Accords.
The Kurdish issue for the Turks
A brief update is due. In the past several months, the negotiations between Mazlum Abdi’s SDF and Sharaa’s government have stiffened into an impasse. The March 10 agreement that was supposed to fold the SDF into the new Syrian army remains a point in wish list. The mistrust that coloured their earliest encounters has not been resolved.
In October there were clashes in Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority districts, Ashrafiyyeh and Sheikh Maqsoud, which were a reminder of how brittle that relationship has become. The SDF accused pro-government militias of laying siege to the neighbourhoods; Damascus accused the SDF of attacking checkpoints and digging tunnels. Both declared a truce within twenty-four hours, and both claimed the other broke it.
In an emergency move, Mazlum Kobani was flown by US helicopter to Damascus for talks with Sharaa and the defence minister. The outcome was predictably hollow: a promise of calm and another rote affirmation of “unity.” Soon after, Tom Barrack orchestrated the now-publicised meeting in Damascus, bringing Mazlum Abdi and CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper by helicopter. The optics were dramatic, but the problem remains and it is, I’m afraid, structural. Sharaa and Turkey have been insisting on full absorption of SDF fighters as individuals under national command. The SDF refuses without constitutional guarantees for minorities and for its semi-autonomous region, Rojava.
As I have written before, the SDF’s integration is inseparable from the conflict-resolution process in Turkey with the PKK, the organisation that is, in every practical sense, its parent. The nationalist leader who unexpectedly initiated that process last year, Devlet Bahçeli, now wants the imprisoned leader of the PKK Abdullah Öcalan to issue another letter; this time urging the SDF to follow the PKK into disbandment and disarmament. That process, too, is stalled.
Bahçeli and the security bureaucracy around him seemed to be convinced that Öcalan’s initial call for PKK’s disarmament would extend naturally to the SDF, whose commander Mazlum Abdi is often described as his protégé. The expectation was that Mazlum, following the PKK’s lead, would swiftly integrate into the new army structure in Damascus. That did not happen, leaving all three, Erdoğan, Bahçeli and Sharaa, frustrated.
After the recent trilateral meetings among Abdi, Sharaa, and the Americans at the end of October, all sides hinted at progress on two issues. First, the oil fields in Deir ez-Zor will be operated by the SDF, though Damascus will appoint administrators and share the revenue. Second, the integration of SDF forces is now being framed as partial.
According to Syria TV, which is close to the government, the SDF will be divided into three zones of responsibility—Deir ez-Zor, Hasakah, and Raqqa—where local forces will continue to operate much as they do today but will report to the central command. The fate of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), twelve thousand of the SDF’s seventy thousand fighters, remains unresolved. Abdi brought the YPJ commander to the meeting with Barrack and Cooper and reiterated Rojava’s position: the women’s forces would not be dismantled. That insistence will be a problem later, though not yet. There are bigger ones waiting.
Despite the appearance of movement, these formulas have been on the table for months and Sharaa and Abdi broadly agree on many points yet cannot finalise a written accord. One reason is that the negotiation table is too crowded, both literally and figuratively. Turkey has been pulling from one side, Israel another, Saudi Arabia and the United States from theirs. What happens now, after Sharaa’s meeting with Trump, is anyone’s guess.
Before meeting Trump, Sharaa sat with the IMF director and then addressed members of the Syrian community in Washington, joined by al-Shaibani and US envoy Thomas Barrack. He said that some factions within the SDF were ready to be integrated into the state apparatus and that Washington no longer wished to “support the SDF indefinitely.” Incorporation into Syrian institutions, he argued, was the only sustainable path. This line had been used echoed by Barack in the last couple of months.
With Damascus now formally joining the anti-ISIS coalition, the SDF’s main leverage, that it alone stood between ISIS and resurgence, has shrunk. Yet it matters that this cooperation so far involves Syria’s intelligence and Ministry of Interior rather than its regular army. Still, Damascus will receive intelligence and military equipment from the United States, and this arrangement opens the possibility of American bases on Syrian soil, something Turkey had long sought for itself but could never secure because of Israeli objections.
Meanwhile, a quiet race has begun between Damascus and the SDF for CENTCOM’s favour. After the SDF publicised its meeting with CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper, Foreign Minister al-Shaibani posted a video on Instagram showing Cooper playing basketball with Sharaa, a deliberate message to the Kurds and to everyone else watching closely.
The Oil Issue for the Americans
At least six American companies, including the UK-based Gulfsands, are looking to invest in Syria’s oil reserves, but their prospects remain constrained by sanctions. This issue was among the topics discussed at the White House meeting.
Gulfsands reiterated in September 2025 that oil and gas had been unlawfully extracted from Block 26 in northeast Syria under SDF and YPG control — an estimated fifty-five million barrels worth nearly four billion dollars since 2017. The company called for a national energy framework as the only path to reconstruction. The current disorder, it warned, enriches armed actors, robs citizens of their share, and poisons the land with unregulated drilling.
A day after Sharaa’s meeting with Trump, at the 7th Syrian International Exhibition for Petroleum and Mineral Resources, the head of the Syrian Petroleum Company announced a new package of strategic projects meant to redraw Syria’s energy map. Chief among them: closing the Homs refinery and replacing it with an advanced facility, and courting the return of major global investors. “Chevron visited us,” he said, “and we opened a new beginning, a new chapter with them. ConocoPhillips is coming to sign important contracts.” These words, coming so soon after Sharaa’s Washington trip, were not coincidence
The Turkish issue for the Israelis
Beyond the Syrian file, Fidan raised Gaza’s security and reconstruction when he joined Sharaa and Trump, reiterating Turkey’s readiness to play a central role. Even his presence in that meeting signals the extent of trust now placed in Erdoğan’s government which should trouble both the Israelis and the Kurds.
After his meetings with Sharaa and Trump, Fidan held further talks at the White House with JD Vance, Steve Wittkof, Marco Rubio, and Tom Barrack, then ended his visit at the St. Regis, where Sharaa was staying.
One Israeli outlet remarked that “Turkey attacks on all fronts,” arguing that Ankara is positioning itself as a regional power through mediation in Gaza and involvement in Syria, exploiting the Trump administration’s eagerness to reshape the Middle East. The phrase is apt, though not in the way they intended. What Turkey is demonstrating — above all to Trump — is that it can deliver on many fronts. That it is a doer, a fixer.
Consider the evidence. Turkish officials played a pivotal role in securing the return of Hadar Goldin’s body to Israel last week. They now lead talks to resolve the standoff involving the tunnel fighters in Rafah and are said to be working to ensure the safe passage of roughly two hundred Gazans still trapped underground.
This expanding Turkish role unsettles Netanyahu, who convened an emergency meeting on what he called “the Turkish issue.” He made clear that he does not want any Turkish military or security presence in Gaza in the foreseeable future. Yet Turkish sources insist that a two-thousand-strong contingent is already being readied to help secure the enclave. Israeli analyst Ori Goldberg observed that after Israel’s attack on Qatar, Trump seems to have made his choice — the Gulf over Israel — leaving Tel Aviv with less freedom of action than before, bound now to Trump’s temper and timing.
In the end, I believe that all the agreements and bargains involving these actors on this map remain provisional, with a half-life that no one can predict. Syria is once again the stage where others rehearse their versions of order, each convinced of his own indispensability, each borrowing time from a people who are already profoundly exhausted.
‘For men who lead with strength, confidence, and purpose’
This video has just surfaced.
Trump sprays the cologne first on Sharaa, then on the foreign minister Shaibani, and tells Sharaa that he is gifting one for his wife. He then asks, “Do you have only one wife?” All three men laugh. “You’ll never know,” Trump says.
At first, I thought this video was AI-generated. Because it happens often these days, no?
Mesela… My husband Mehmet had recently shown me an AI-generated video in which an Istanbul district was overrun by a herd of rhinos, and people responded in the most quintessentially Turkish way, just as they do in street interviews, calm, witty, and oddly unfazed by giant animals roaming the neighbourhood and kicking up dust.
When I saw this cologne clip, I felt the same sense of absurdity unfolding before my eyes. But this time, it was painfully real.
The cologne Trump gifted to Sharaa—after spraying him and asking whether he had only one wife—is called Victory 47 – For Men. It “celebrates President Trump’s historic victory and inauguration as the 47th President,” promising a “blend of rich, masculine notes with a refined, lasting finish.” The label adds, “For men who lead with strength, confidence, and purpose—this is more than a cologne; it’s a celebration of resilience and success.” By the way, the cologne sells for two hundred and forty-nine dollars. Wallahi, I prefer a world where rhinos wander the streets. Much safer.