Russia will allow the Turkish president to leave Idlib, saving face.
Over the past two months since the beginning of 2020, the world has at least twice teetered on the brink of a large-scale military confrontation with the involvement of nuclear powers, which threatens to develop into something more serious and dangerous than an ordinary regional conflict. And this threat remains more than relevant.
The Middle East remains the key node of controversy. During the first two decades of the third millennium, this region became the forefront of global confrontation. After the world became unipolar with the destruction of the Soviet Union, the world hegemon began an open intervention in this hydrocarbon-rich part of the eastern hemisphere. Under an openly false and falsified pretext, the “activists of democracy” occupied Iraq, overthrew and executed the legitimate president Saddam Hussein, turning the country into a hotbed of terrorism, the hotbed of chaos and instability that it remains to this day. However, this was not enough for the Americans, and soon a wave of so-called “color revolutions” followed, which blew up the countries of the Middle East that were most toxic to Washington. Most affected by the “Arab spring” Libya and Syria. Both countries lost their territorial integrity and plunged into the destructive darkness of fierce civil wars, which nine years later are still far from over.
Turkish Gambit in Syria
Syria remains the most troubled bridgehead of both global and regional confrontation. With the direct support of the Russian Federation, President Bashar al-Assad managed to defend sovereignty, defeat the ISIL (banned in Russia), which was nurtured by Americans among the most radical followers of non-traditional Islam, and restore law and order in most of Syria. Today, the northwestern province of Idlib remains the only bastion of anti-government radical groups. The key obstacle to its complete liberation from militants remains the position of Turkey, which at all costs is trying to maintain its influence in the region, and for this purpose carried out a military invasion of Syria.
In September 2018, Moscow and Ankara reached an agreement to create a de-escalation zone in Idlib. Its key conditions were the withdrawal of troops, the unblocking of the strategic highway M-5 Damascus-Aleppo, and the separation of the lamb from the goats. The former refers to “moderate” pro-Turkish armed groups, and the latter primarily refers to the international terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) (banned in Russia), which controlled most of the province. However, these conditions have not been met by the Turkish side. Moreover, radical Islamists continue their attacks, attacking with drones and rocket attacks, including the Russian air base Khmeimim in neighboring Latakia. All this gave rise to a series of offensive operations by the Syrian army, during which the southern and southeastern parts of Idlib province were cleared of terrorists. The Turkish leadership, instead of contributing to the implementation of the Sochi Accords, completely sided with the terrorists and sent their troops into battle against the Syrian army.
On the 20th of February 2020, the Turkish military ousted the Syrians, forcing them to suspend the attack on Idlib and retreat from the recently liberated settlements of Neyrab and Serakib. At the same time, the M-5 strategic highway was cut again, which, under the terms of the Sochi deal, should be completely unlocked. After the fall of Serakib on February 27, Syrian (according to other sources, Russian) aircraft dealt a powerful blow to the Turkish military convoy illegally invading Syria.
According to the official, clearly underestimated, data of Ankara, 33 Turkish soldiers became victims of an air strike. The heavy losses of the Turkish military became the reason for the convening by the President of Turkey Erdogan of an emergency meeting of the Security Council, which discussed the possibility of full-scale military action against Syria, which automatically meant a war with Russia. However, in the end, everything was limited to a number of high-profile statements, as well as the Turks inflicting a number of attacks on Syrian military facilities, as a result of which Erdogan’s subordinates announced the destruction of more than 300 SAA troops and several dozen pieces of military equipment.
NATO Allies Drain Turkey
Meanwhile, the situation in the Syrian province of Idlib remains tense. Erdogan is expected to arrive in Moscow on March 5, where negotiations will be held to de-escalate the situation. Now the Turkish president is trying to strengthen his position and enlist the support of NATO partners. True, he does this very indiscriminately, and even by the method of open blackmail. Thus, in a telephone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron, Erdogan non-transparently hinted at opening borders with the EU countries for Syrian refugees, which is fraught with a new aggravation of the migration crisis in Europe and, as a result, intensification of disintegration processes within the EU. Considering that there are about 4 million Syrian refugees in Turkey itself, and another 1.5 million in the border Syrian territories controlled by Ankara and the Turkish Islamic groups; while many “refugees” are not at all harmless women with children and the elderly, but those who trained and took part in hostilities, adherents of ISIS, the KhTS and other radical Islamist terrorist groups, the threat to European security is more than impressive.
But will Paris, Berlin and Brussels follow the example of the presumptuous Turkish “Sultan”? Or limited to traditional oral concerns and convictions against official Damascus and Moscow?
In Europe, of course, they are interested in the Idlib confrontation ending soon. And it ended so that the flow of refugees from the east did not wash away the fragile borders of the Western world. But at the same time, Europe has no illusions about the Turkish president, who has repeatedly violated all agreements and resorted to blackmail. And once again quarreling with Russia for the sake of Turkish ambitions is fraught for Europeans with too unpleasant consequences, both political and economic. In addition, a significant part of the political elites of the EU countries, to put it mildly, very ambiguously refers to Turkey and its policy in Kurdish, Armenian and some other issues. Accordingly, the likelihood of consolidated support for Erdogan from the European community tends to zero.
As for the United States, they are undoubtedly the main beneficiary of a possible conflict between Turkey and Russia. And we are ready to make every effort so that it flares up. Moreover, the Americans are hardly ready to forget and forgive Erdogan for the purchase of the S-400 instead of the Patriots, the launch of the Turkish Stream, attempts to expel the Americans from the Incirlik air base, and excessive independence in conducting military operations against the Kurds.
It is no accident that the director of the Eurasian Center under the Atlantic Council and former US ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst called Erdogan’s policy in Syria “fraudulent” and a problem for Western countries. He also openly stated that the United States and NATO would not help Ankara in the event of a conflict with Russia.
“The attacks on the Turkish military in Idlib emphasized Turkey’s isolation as a result of Erdogan’s mercantile policy. He should have understood that Moscow would oppose him in Syria if the Turkish troops would be an obstacle to the conquest of Assad. And he had to understand that NATO would not support him in Syria if his fraudulent policies led to confrontation. He should also know that buying an S-400 missile system would not allow Washington to support Turkey in this crisis”, – Herbst said.
Russia rescues Erdogan again
And Erdogan himself must perfectly understand what American support means in practice, and what kind of reckoning is for it. Three and a half years ago, he almost suffered the fate of Gaddafi, when the coup organized by the US-oriented military coup was a step away from success. Erdogan managed to crush him at the last moment, largely thanks to help from Moscow. This is despite the fact that relations between Russia and Turkey at the time of the July coup of 2016 were not in the best of times after a Turkish fighter shot down a Russian Su-24M front-line bomber over Latakia and the treacherous killing of Oleg Peshkov, a pilot who dried the pilot, by the Turkish fighters.
Involvement in the war with Syria (and, accordingly, with Russia), and even more so the military defeat of Turkey and economic losses due to possible sanctions by Russia (the holiday season is not far off, and a possible decrease in the flow of Russian tourists will obviously not contribute to growth the popularity of the Turkish president) can be a very tempting reason to eliminate the too obstinate Erdogan and put in his place an obedient American puppet. If this happens, then this time there will simply be no one to bail out the Turkish president.
Representatives of the Turkish patriotic party Vatan (“Homeland”) also announced the threat of such a scenario today. According to its representatives, the United States and Israel provoke Turkey into a war with Syria, thereby driving Erdogan into a trap, and pushing Ankara away from its strategic allies – Russia, Iran, Iraq, as well as China.
“Tensions between Turkey and Syria are worrying. We warn: Turkey is being pushed into a trap. Together with Turkey, our president is being pulled into the trap. This trap was created by the US and Israeli administrations. They provoke Turkey to war with Syria”, – Vatan representatives say.
The party sees the only acceptable way out of the situation in Turkey’s cooperation with Russia and Iran on a Syrian settlement on the basis of the Astana and Sochi agreements.
Will Erdogan manage to step over his pan-Turkic ambitions and compromise, the upcoming talks in Moscow will show. The very fact of Erdogan’s meeting with Putin will already indicate that Moscow once again leaves the opportunity for its Turkish “partner” to save face, albeit at the cost of a gradual restoration of Syrian control over Idlib. Moreover, the political initiative is now not on the side of Erdogan, and military luck, as you know, is a very volatile thing.
Dmitry Pavlenko, specially for News Front