© AFP / Bakr AlkasemA convoy of Turkish military vehicles drives east of Idlib city in northwestern Syria on February 20, 2020.
Tensions in Syria's Idlib province show no signs of abating, with the Syrian Army pressing the offensive against militants while Turkey still seems to be hell-bent on stopping it. Will the situation boil over into open war?
Recent days have seen another spiral of tensions between Ankara and Damascus over the troubled northwestern Syrian province of Idlib - the last major stronghold of extremists and militants. At least 22 Turkish soldiers deployed to Idlib were killed in an airstrike launched by the Syrian Air Force on Thursday, according to Ankara.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had earlier issued an ultimatum to the Syrian Army, demanding it retreats from Turkish observation posts in Idlib by Sunday.
A spokesman for his AK Party said that the Turkish Army is ready to step in as soon as the deadline set by Ankara expires.But the Syrian Armed Forces, which are still engaged in fierce clashes with militants that include an Al-Qaeda affiliate, clearly have no intention of pulling back. The troops loyal to Damascus continue to liberate cities and towns in the south of the province in their quest to take back a strategic highway linking the nation's second most populous city of Aleppo to the major port and the capital of the western coastal province of Latakia.
The tensions put Russia, a Syrian ally and Turkey's close partner, in a precarious position, and pose a potentially increasing challenge to Ankara's NATO allies. So could the looming Turkish operation be a harbinger of a greater disaster?
Risky gamesAnkara has apparently decided to escalate almost to the point of no return.
Yet analysts believe this does not necessarily mean that Turkey wants an all-out war. Idlib is of "utmost importance" to Erdogan, said Ruslan Mamedov, a Middle East analyst from the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), a Moscow-based think-tank.
On the ground, however,
the cards appear to be stacked against pro-Turkish militants that are being driven away by the Syrian Army.
"We can talk about the tactics but strategically it is clear: the Syrian government is restoring its sovereignty and regaining control over the nation's territories," Mamedov told RT.
That puts Turkey in a difficult situation, since Erdogan cannot just back off and make concessions for internal political reasons, 'Russia in Global Affairs' Editor-in-Chief Fyodor Lukyanov explained. "Turkey believes that status-quo in Idlib should simply be preserved in the foreseeable future while Damascus, supported by Moscow, thinks that Ankara demonstrates its inability to achieve de-escalation through agreements [with the militants] and opted for a military solution."
The situation is thus balancing on a knife edge since Turkey has gone "all-in," Lukyanov warns. However, Mamedov believes that the goal is not to start a war but to "provoke Moscow into some sort of reaction" and potentially to get a stronger position in negotiations.
The risks of such a policy are high. As Turkey has beefed up its presence in Idlib, Moscow has accused it of supporting the militants with heavy artillery. The clashes have already led to casualties both on the Turkish and the Syrian side. Although none of the incidents have resulted in any drastic measures so far, further escalation could put Ankara on the brink of a conflict with Moscow, Mamedov believes.
"There is a risk... that could make Russia actively join the conflict and
that is the risk of a Russian plane being shot down. The Turks already deployed air defense systems to the war zone."
A Russian Su-24 bomber shot down by a Turkish F-16 jet during an anti-terrorist sortie in 2015 led to a major crisis in relations between Moscow and Ankara, although the two nations managed to avoid a further military escalation and then worked to mend their ties.
Sticking to the rulesThe situation appears tense, but it is also clear that both Ankara and Damascus are trying to keep it from spiraling out of control and turning into a bloodbath.
While the Syrian military say they are routinely being targeted by the Turkish tanks and artillery backing up the militants, they have not moved to destroy them."They try not to take any radical steps. Turkey's observation points are still intact, although many of them have already been surrounded by the Syrian Army. The sides are seeking to avoid a 'free-for-all' game," Mamedov explained.
The risk of conflict between NATO's second largest army and a nuclear armed UN Security Council permanent member is also apparently acting as a deterrent in this situation.
"It is easier for Ankara to strike a deal with Moscow rather than to push for further escalation," the RIAC analyst told RT.
Lukyanov also believes that the sides would attempt to mitigate the risks of a potential standoff.
"When it comes to Syria, Russia and Turkey turn out to be mutually dependent to a point, where Turkey could not achieve its goals without Russia... but Moscow would also find itself in a difficult situation facing an opposition from Ankara," he said.
A "sort of an agreement" between Russia and Turkey is almost inevitable, Lukyanov argued.
"The conflict would most likely be frozen, there would be new lines [of contact]." He added that Moscow could agree to a sort of a buffer zone along the Turkish border - a similar one that was created in the part of northeastern Syria previously held by Kurdish militias.
What is happening now is a war of nerves, not a pathway to a direct confrontation.
NATO unlikely to interveneErdogan recently said that he asked the US for help in Idlib, but so far he has received none. This fact apparently did not discourage Ankara from trying to involve its NATO allies in the Syrian mess, as the Turkish president said there could be more meetings on the issue.
The analysts believe that Turkey will most likely have to go it alone.
The US military have already branded Idlib a terrorist safe haven, Mamedov said, referring to a comment of Operation Inherent Resolve spokesperson Col. Myles Caggins made to Sky News. That makes their interference on behalf of Turkey unlikely, he believes.
"Even in case of an open confrontation between Turkey and Russia, the Americans would not have serious reasons to intervene, as well as NATO. After all, it is not an attack on the Turkish territory."
Lukyanov believes the alliance would mostly limit itself to demonstrations of solidarity with Ankara, but would hardly go any further.
"They would wait until the situation resolves. They just need to show they are on the side of their ally without engaging in a conflict that could lead to serious consequences for the entire alliance," he told RT.
Comment: At least
33 Turkish soldiers were killed in Idlib in the Syrian airstrike. Despite the official narrative that it was the Syrian air force, there is some indication that it was a
joint Syrian-Russian operation:
What exactly transpired on Feb. 27? At around 5 p.m., a Turkish mechanized infantry battalion, comprised of about 400 soldiers, became the target of an airstrike on a road between al- Bara and Balyun, some 5 kilometers (3 miles) north of Kafr Nabl in southern Idlib. According to local sources contacted by Al-Monitor, two Russian Sukhoi Su-34 and two Syrian Su-22 fighter jets had launched intensive bombings of Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) targets in southern Idlib at around 11 a.m. that day. The same jets hit the Turkish convoy in coordinated action, the sources said. A first, a relatively lighter strike by the Su-22s forced the convoy to stop, after which the pounding intensified, forcing the soldiers to take shelter in several roadside buildings. What followed next was likely the dropping of KAB-1500L bombs โ a variation of advanced laser-guided bunker buster bombs capable of penetrating to depths of up to 20 meters (65 feet) โ by the Russian jets. Two of the buildings collapsed in the attack, leaving the Turkish soldiers under the rubble.
There was a
social media blackout in Turkey amid the escalation in fighting and rhetoric. Turkey reached out to NATO,
claiming that an attack on Turkey is an attack on NATO. Not really. Turkey is the country who invaded Syria, not the other way around. Article 5 only covers attacks on Europe and the U.S., not attacks on troops illegally intervening in foreign countries. Turkish consultations with NATO will apparently begin
tomorrow. Stoltenberg
confirmed an emergency meeting will be held, offering their "deepest condolences".
So far, though, the only thing to come out of NATO is the usual calls for de-escalation and an "
immediate ceasefire", despite chicken-hawks like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham calling for war, bemoaning the fate of Turkish-backed jihadists. As Rubio put it, "Erdogan is on the right side here." Since when was al-Qaeda the right side, Marco?
Turkish VP Oktay called for
revenge after the airstrike that killed 33 soldiers:
Oktay minced no words, referring to the Syrian leader as "the head of a terror state" who "would go down in history as a war criminal" in a written statement reported by Turkey's Anadolu News Agency, adding that Damascus would "pay [a] heavy price" for what he called a "treacherous attack on Turkish troops."
Earlier on Thursday, Erdogan's press secretary Fahrettin Altun said Turkey has been retaliating to the attack on its soldiers by launching air and artillery strikes against Syrian positions. The media chief went so far as to compare the situation in Idlib with a genocide, the likes of "what happened in Rwanda and Bosnia."
Clowns, liars, and idiots, all of them. Anadolu released a video claiming to show Turkish attacks on Syrian forces, including the destruction of 130 pieces of military hardware, and the killing of
1700 Syrian troops.
Putin will NOT
meet with Erdogan again on March 5, signalling Russia's position on the matter. The Russian Ministry of Defence stated that the Turkish soldiers killed were
embedded with terrorist groups:
The Defense Ministry said that the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria was in constant contact with Ankara, "regularly" requesting and receiving information on the whereabouts of Turkish troops. And, according to the data submitted by Turkey, there were no Turkish soldiers near Behun when the Syrian Army was fighting terrorists there.
...
It is not the first time that Russia has accused Ankara of failing to properly notify it and the Syrian government about the movement of Turkish military inside the Idlib "de-escalation zone." Earlier this month, six Turkish soldiers were killed when their convoy came under fire west of Saraqib after they moved there "without informing the Russian side," Moscow said at the time.
Plausible deniability will only get you so far, until your guys start dying back to back with terrorists. Turkey has miscalculated and overreached in Idlib. As Lavrov
states, Syria has every right to fight the terrorists Turkey was responsible for getting rid of in the first place:
The plan, which Russia and Turkey agreed upon, was "to separate the normal opposition forces from the terrorists, to demilitarize the inner belt in the zone to prevent attacks coming from it against the Syrian forces and the Russian [Air Base Khmeimim], to ensure free road travel through this zone."
The goals have not been achieved in more than a year, and with attacks from Idlib continuing "the Syria Army certainly has [the] full right to retaliate and suppress the terrorists," Lavrov said, adding that the requirement to defeat jihadist forces in Syria has been backed by the UN Security Council. "[Russia] cannot prohibit the Syrian Army from executing the demands written in the UNSC resolutions, which call for an uncompromising fight against terrorism in all its forms."
...
Lavrov reiterated that Russia has every intention to de-escalate the conflict and ensure that Turkish soldiers are not at risk in Idlib.
...
"As soon as we learned what had happened, we asked our Syrian colleagues to pause fighting and did everything we could to arrange a safe evacuation of the wounded and retrieval of the dead Turkish soldiers to the Turkish territory," the Russian minister said.
A Russian senator offered this
warning:
Hopefully, the tension would be defused because a big war in the region "will end badly for everyone, including Turkey," Vladimir Dzhabarov, the deputy chair of the foreign affairs committee of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, commented.
"Turkey is not acting on its soil, but on the soil of another nation. So its hope that NATO would come to its defense seems groundless," he said. "If the Turks bet on military force, that would be a really bad idea since winning such a war would be difficult," he added. "Syria is not alone; it has allies in the Arab world, which will support it."
Yet Erdogan's adviser is not backing down,
stating:
"We have fought Russia 16 times in the past, and we will fight it again."
The official pointed to Russia's sizeable Muslim population and claimed that the country "will be shattered from inside" should an armed conflict break out between Moscow and Ankara.
Sure.
Here's Turkey's response so far:
Turkey can't contain Europe-bound Syrian refugees: 'No longer in position to hold them'
To outrange and use distance/altitude against any Turkish armor and manpower should be easy work.