Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised Turkey will risk “all kinds of sacrifices” in its upcoming military conflict with Syria, promising to see Syria ousted from Idlib Province, and not accepting the smallest step back.
Erdogan in particular is focusing on wanting to reclaim military posts in Syrian territory, but it’s clear his war is going to go beyond that, as he’s repeatedly talked of retaking towns for the rebels.
Erdogan has said the offensive is still coming this week, with the goal of having all the posts reconquered by week’s end. That’s very ambitious, particularly with Russia backing Syria. Thousands of Turkish troops are in Idlib in anticipation of this fight.
A lot of this depends on how willing Turkey is to take this fight into a full-scale war, with the risk of Russian involvement looming large. Erdogan certainly suggests Turkey is willing to, but saying that and doing it aren’t necessarily the same thing, and Turkey could risk some diplomatic chips if it aggresses too heavily.
If Ankara can’t compromise, if Moscow can’t compromise, events will escalate to full-scale war in Syria. If others have no alternative but get involved the conflict will escalate beyond the region.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
“”Turkey Will Risk Everything to Expel Syria From Idlib””
that is the equivalent of your neighbor trying to expel your child’s friends from YOUR garage in order to seize control of your garage for themselves.
Every foreign action in Syria, including this, is nothing more than a land grab. Syria is being partitioned and Turkey wants a piece. If Russia lets them have it, it’s theirs. Russia decides.
Russia does not want Syria partitioned. Any partition would produce some form of a sanctuary about 500 miles overland from restive Russian Muslim regions.
The Russians are fighting jihadi forces, not to defend Assad but to defend themselves. It isn’t a Western-style forward base they seek, but prevention of a forward sanctuary for jihadis from which they’d attack Russia.
Already, Russian Muslim minority fighters are among the jihadis in Syria, confirming the worst fears of the Russians.
That is also something the US seeks, and so something the US media studiously ignores as it presents what others might do and the real issues in play.
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised Turkey will risk “all kinds of sacrifices” in its upcoming military conflict with Syria, promising to see Syria ousted from Idlib Province”
So … the Turkish leader is saying that Syria needs to be ousted from its own territory, right? How is this not a UNSC issue? I mean, it’s one thing to do things quietly and secretly; but how is a nation allowed to make bald-faced extraterritorial claims like this???
Behind all the bold talk, there are the national interests that Erdogan feels he must defend. Those are significant, but not the most expansive version of everything he talks about. The rest is bargaining points.
Erdogan is 40 years into a long terrorist war with Kurdish separatists. It has never ended. That is his real priority. He does not want a Kurdish separatist entity, and especially not hard along the Turkish border. That would be the ultimate terrorist war problem, a sanctuary from which war comes.
Russia can offer that.
It is the US that does not want to offer that. It is the US/Israel that has plans to use Kurds as their “lily pad base” against Iran, and Iraq, and Assad.
Russia of course is just fine with giving Turkey what the Americans don’t want to give Turkey. Don’t look to Russia to fight Turkey to protect the American promises to Kurds.
True – but Idlib isn’t about the Kurds.
Supposedly Erdogan said he wants to block Kurdish access to the Med which he thinks will boost their independence effort. I’m not buying it. Turkey has been directly arming and supporting Al Qaeda in Idlib. If he were seriously interested in preventing the Kurds from using Idlib, he could just as easily make a deal with Assad and Putin to achieve that aim. But then he couldn’t as easily justify a land grab in Syria or continue messing with resolving the Syria crisis.
I don’t see either Putin or Assad buying this justification and allowing it to happen. Either this will be resolved by negotiations or Erdogan is going to get a bloody nose. The risk for everyone is Erdogan getting himself so deep that it becomes a Russia vs NATO situation. Then it will become an issue between NATO and Turkey as to whether the European powers want to support a Turkish land grab in Syria with a risk of WWIII.
We know where the US neocons will come down on that.
Defeat of Trump and Democratic establishment in November, and Sanders foreign policy is our only realistic hope.
Agree, though Sanders’ foreign policy is not ideal, it’s still spectacularly better than mainstream Dems and of course Trump or the mainstream Reps.
what exactly would be different about bernie’s policy towards syria than trumps?
he condemned “unilateral withdrawal” and said there most be a “plan by congress to remove troops” which sound like a recipe for staying
Syria is not the only thing about US foreign policy.
There’s Iran, Israel/Palestine, India, Afghanistan…
And “plan by congress to remove troops” is not a recipe for staying. Just the opposite.
we aren’t discussing those things at the moment, we are discussing the escalating situation between turkey and Russia/Syria in idlib
and the quote about unilateral withdrawal was also specifically about syria
Where is the UN? What principle allows Turkey (or the US) for that matter to invade Syria
in the 15th the Ottoman Empire invaded Syria and occupied it for 400 years. The Turkish occupation was brutal and gruesome. Finally in 1919 the Syrians regained their freedom ( occupied later by France, GB ).
Erdogan still behaves like an invader and occupier, today, Erdogan said about Syria “we are the masters in that region”.
until 2015, Erdogan made business with ISIL/ISIS/Daesh ( weapons for oil )
Tens of thousands of terrorists came to Syria through Turkey.
Turkey openly supports the terrorists in any way, by all means.
Turkish military fights alongside the terrorists in Idlib.