City between worlds

It is hard to pinpoint the moment Aleppo ceased to be a besieged city. The change did not come through battle or agreements, but with the stubborn struggle to remain alive.

When the regime in Damascus finally fell in December last year, Aleppo was still in the infirmary. The scars of the 2012–2016 sieges had yet to heal. What followed was more than a mere transfer of power from one ruler to another; it was the unmooring of Aleppo from its political tether point, allowing the city for the first time to drift freely within its own geography.  

Today, Aleppo is a space to be managed by whoever is able. It is unlike any other in Syria: neither submissive nor rebellious, but something peculiar in between.

To wander through Aleppo’s streets and rural outskirts is to see a place that survives by breathing through two lungs, one Syrian, the other Turkish. The facades of public buildings in Aleppo and its hinterland restored by southern Turkish municipalities gleam above broken pavements. In the markets, prices are set in Turkish lira. In conversations, Damascus sounds distant.

Aleppo no longer “belongs” to anyone. Whoever provides bread, electricity, education, and security rules – even without declaring themselves ruler.

Into the vacuum left by the collapse of the Assadist state, Ankara expanded quietly. Power arrived in the form of infrastructure. Electricity now reaches Aleppo through lines stretching from the city of Kilis. Water flows from wells dug by Turkish NGOs.

No official statements, no border posts, no Turkish flag flutters over the citadel. But every detail of daily life testifies that the city is now in a Turkish time zone.

Ankara presents itself as a civilisational restorer seeking to mend a balance broken a century ago, when Sykes–Picot and Lausanne drew their lines, cutting Aleppo from Anatolia and its Ottoman context.

In the Turkish imagination, Aleppo was never foreign. It was an inland port linking Anatolia to the Arab world. For the Turks, reclaiming Aleppo represents a symbolic homecoming.

Power in Aleppo now speaks the language of economics. Through roads, schools, hospitals, and reconstruction, Turkey is quietly re-engineered public loyalty.

It began in early 2017 with joint municipal projects between Gaziantep and towns in Aleppo’s northern countryside, followed by electrical integration, and then the spread of the Turkish lira: a new daily emblem of belonging. The lira became a currency and a social contract. To trade in it is to accept the Turkish economic system; to reject it is to live outside the market.

Economics alone, however, cannot forge loyalty. So Turkey also turned to symbolism. It restored Ottoman-era souks and caravanserais, affixing small plaques: “Funded by the Municipality of Gaziantep.”

Aleppo is a fragment of Ottoman memory being revived. Even the architectural style evokes Istanbul. Reconstruction is aesthetic as well as as technical.

To some in Aleppo, Ankara does not seem to be an invader at all. Field commanders who once led quarrelling factions now wear the uniforms of Syria’s Ministry of Defence. Orders are drafted in Ankara and implemented in Aleppo. The faces in front of the camera are Syrian; the voices off-camera are Turkish.

It’s remarkable how few object. After years of hunger and ruin, “stability” has become a higher currency than sovereignty.

The blending of economics, culture, and governance has created a new class of local actors: the “intermediaries.” Once modest men, they rose through the chaos of war and now wear suits. They manage local councils, sign deals under the banner of the “new Syrian government.”

This emergent middle class of commanders, traders, and entrepreneurs is reshaping Aleppo’s governance. The city is now ruled by interlocking networks of commerce and patronage, all fed by Turkish funds.

These are the new bureaucrats of influence who replaced resistance with "projects", and obedience with “partnership.”

Turkey’s influence operates under a low ceiling. Russia, though partly withdrawn, treats Ankara's presence as a fact to be tolerated. Moscow knows Ankara will not leave northern Syria, but also takes steps to prevent any major expansion of Turkish influence, while using pressure and inducement to safeguard its own footholds along the coast.

The US maintains a quiet interest, focusing on the Kurdish northeast and treating the Turkish north as a temporary domain so long as it does not touch the American sphere. Europe, meanwhile, views Turkey’s role in Aleppo with pragmatic indifference: if Ankara manages northern Syria, so be it – provided Brussels, Berlin, and Paris can extract concessions elsewhere, whether over Ukraine or maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean.

Other regional players keep a watchful eye. The Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, see dangers in Turkey’s Aleppo experiment, and fund small rival projects aimed at diluting Turkish dominance. Israel, too, watches warily; a revived Aleppo is a key element in Turkey's trade corridors towards Iraq and the Gulf. As a counterweight, Tel Aviv is pushing to consolidate control in southern Syria and secure its own “David's Corridor.” 

Amidst all this, Aleppo continues calmly in its convalescence. It doesn't pledge full allegiance to anyone; it reflects interests. It has become a “multi-layered city,” where Turkish security networks coexist with semi-independent local councils, Russian agents mingle with American counterparts, and Gulf money does business with all.

Over time, this arrangement has hardened into a series of unspoken contracts: citizens keep calm in exchange for services; local forces maintain order in return for Turkish funding; and Ankara pays (or gets others to pay) on condition that Aleppo stays politically mute.

No one speaks of these deals, but they play out daily – in bakeries, schools, border posts, and municipal offices. It is a system of “stability for obedience.”

Aleppo has transformed from a ruin into a political laboratory, where post nation-state theories are being put to the test. Instead of the old Damascene centralism, a new "hybrid" model has emerged: conditional decentralisation, where every region aligns with its nearest regional power.

In the south, Israeli influence; in the east, American–Kurdish; on the coast, Russian; in the north, Turkish–Syrian. It is a regionally-networked system governed by interests, not flags.

Turkey itself is in no hurry to announce any formal annexation. It knows that entrenched influence needs no recognition. It is enough for people to grow accustomed to using the Turkish lira, to be educated under a Turkish curriculum, and to travel through border crossings run by Ankara.  

The deeper question, however, is not about Turkey alone but about what Aleppo represents. Is this the birth of a new model of locally-governed, regionally-integrated provincial administrations, or the latest chapter in the unravelling of Syria?

The truth may be both. As the old Assadist state dissolves, new, more flexible, and more autonomous power networks are emerging, linking individuals to powerful regional systems of finance and patronage.

Unanchored to a strong centre, Aleppo grasps at life any way it can.