Earthquake Diplomacy and the Change of the Syria’s International Position

Syria is a state which has been affected by multiple series of disasters in the XXI century. Some of them has been natural caused, whereas there were some caused by human activity. Only for the first two decades of the current century, Syria has been the arena of the most complex military conflict, which significantly damaged the whole state and caused its partial international isolation. On the other hand, Syria has struggle with various types of natural disasters, such as drought from 2006 to 2010, numerous floods, the COVID-19 and Cholera outbreak and finally, the recent earthquake, occured in February 2023. The last phenomenon has lead numerous countries to express solidarity with Syria as well as to deliver the humanitarian aid to this country. Some of them are considered to be hostile towards Damascus and president Bashar el-Assad. In parallel to the humanitarian assistance, there was a diplomatic process, which led to full rehabilitation of Syrian president in the region and to full normalization diplomatic relations with other Arabic states as well as to start a dialogue with Turkey. In some analytical and media centers, the recent events have been described as an outcome of the earthquake diplomacy or disaster diplomacy, characterized as the international situation in which the natural disaster and the readiness to counterreaction against its effects, may create the opportunities to deescalate relations between the warrying states. Therefore, would it be accurate to consider the recent disaster in Syria able to create the new process as well as to transform the long-term strategies of a number of countries? This article will deal with analysing political process occured between Syria and the regional powers after the earthquake as well as it will try to answer the question how the international position of Syria has changed and crucially: does the recent earthquake have the impact on these issues?