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How Assad Stayed In Power - And How He'll Try to Keep It
(Foreign Affairs) Tony Badran - If "Lebanon and Iran are our economic lungs," as one Syrian official recently put it, then "Russia is our political shield." For Russia, with long-established military ties to Damascus, Western pressure on Syria is an encroachment on its traditional sphere of influence. Syria also affords Russia a foothold in the Mediterranean through a shared naval maintenance facility at the Syrian port city of Tartus. While Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has adopted a strong declaratory anti-Assad policy, Assad is reestablishing relations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), allowing the group to set up bases on Syrian territory, something he had prohibited as part of a 1998 peace agreement with Turkey. The writer is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.