Erdogan’s Syrian predicament
Three Turkish troopers had been killed Sept. 11 in a bomb assault in Idlib, the final stronghold of Turkish-backed and Islamist opposition in northwest Syria — and Turkey responded by hitting US-backed Kurdish teams in northeast Syria.
This newest episode underscores Ankara’s rising predicament in Idlib, the place jihadi forces goal Turkish troops at the same time as Turkey’s navy presence shields them towards the Syrian military, as Fehim Tastekin explains.
Consider it as a battle inside a battle: Whereas the decade-long battle began as an effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, it has devolved into Turkey’s infinite battle with no seeming exit technique, besides one supplied by Russia (see beneath).
Background of a quagmire
Turkey’s function in Syria has descended right into a ten-year quagmire. Assad stays in energy, supported by Russia and Iran. Turkey and the US proceed to help forces that need to overthrow Assad, or at the least maintain their floor. However the Biden administration is unlikely to get into the regime change enterprise. Turkey more and more finds itself at odds with each Washington and Moscow over nearly every thing.
The factions get odder: Turkey, Russia and Iran compose the so-called “Astana Group” (named after the situation of their first assembly) on Syria diplomacy. The group has miraculously hung collectively regardless of Russian and Iranian help for the Syrian authorities and Turkey’s opposition.
Russia, given the best timing, will probably help the Syrian navy finally retaking the town of Idlib and crushing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has Turkey’s implicit help, and different jihadist opposition teams there.
Syrian navy forces have already got intensified assaults on Idlib just lately, and there are fears within the area of huge displacement that might end result from an assault, as Khaled Al-Khateb reviews from Aleppo.
In the meantime, Turkish President Recep Erdogan has been making an attempt to stave off an all-out assault. Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, a large pressure on its financial system.
Then again, he needs the USA and the West to finish help for the Individuals’s Safety Items (the YPG), the Kurdish group that makes up the core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is opposing the Syrian authorities. The SDF has been the on-the-ground Syrian accomplice for the profitable US-led coalition operations towards the Islamic State in Syria.
Erdogan considers the YPG a terrorist group, indistinguishable from the Kurdistan Employees Social gathering (PKK), and on a stage with Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
So, whereas Turkish forces face rising danger of a possible Russian-backed Syrian assault on Idlib (extra beneath), in addition to from rogue actors on Sept. 11, Erdogan retains lashing out at Syrian Kurds in these areas occupied by the Turkish navy and pro-Turkish Syrian proxy forces.
Metin Gurcan wrote here final month about how Turkey is more and more using drones for focused killings of Syrian Kurdish leaders, and Amberin Zaman has covered the common Turkish assaults and bombings of Syrian Kurdish targets.
The failed HTS makeover in Idlib
As a part of its commitments to the Astana talks, and to protect what stays of the anti-Assad armed opposition, Turkey has tried to reasonable HTS and encourage it to rebuild its picture, together with by severing ties with extra radical fringe parts, whereas consolidating different pro-Turkish armed opposition forces beneath the brand new Syrian Liberation Entrance, as Sultan Al-Kanj reports from Idlib.
Turkey “assumed that HTS’ suppression of different jihadis would fulfill its commitments to Russia to remove terrorist teams,” explains Tastekin. “But HTS has strengthened its de facto emirate in Idlib, and dozens of radical teams corresponding to Ansar al-Islam, Ansar al-Tawhid, Ansar al-Din, Ajnad al-Kavkaz and the Turkistan Islamic Motion have maintained their presence within the province. Hurras al-Din, the umbrella group of al-Qaeda-inspired factions, has ostensibly disintegrated, however the factions haven’t left the area. Equally, HTS’ transfer to dissolve the Chechen-led Jund al-Sham doesn’t imply the group has been eradicated.”
HTS chief Abu Mohammed al-Golani has been on a Turkish-backed public relations blitz this yr, together with in February changing his robes for a designer blue suit and snappy haircut for an interview with a US reporter, when he mentioned there was no torture and HTS detained solely “regime brokers.” He additionally mentioned HTS’s reference to Al-Qaeda has ended.
Regardless of shedding its Al-Qaeda affiliation, HTS remains to be designated by the US, the UN Safety Council and Turkey as a terrorist group.
The realities on the bottom in Idlib additionally level to HTS and Golani maintaining their jihadi bona fides. Golani just lately praised the presence of international fighters in Idlib, saying that ‘these fighters at the moment are a part of us. They’re a part of the folks. They’re proud of the folks and the persons are proud of them, too,’ as Mohammed Hardan reports.
One other shortcoming of the so-called HTS turnaround is the substitute of a reviled HTS safety drive by a brand new unit known as “ethical police,” as Hardan reports here, and banning a pro-opposition information channel, as Al-Kanj reports here from Idlib.
Putin and the Street to Damascus
Turkey’s failure in Idlib to reopen the M4 freeway and develop the safety perimeter across the metropolis, as known as for in its settlement with Russia, has elevated Russian strain on Ankara, which is conscious of its dwindling choices for achievement in Syria.
“Idlib was definitely excessive on the agenda” when Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Assad in Moscow on Sept. 14, reviews Tastekin. “Putin mentioned on the assembly that the primary downside in Syria right now was the presence of foreign forces with out permission or a UN mandate – a reference to Turkey and the USA.”
Erdogan is feeling the warmth and could also be keen to discover a tentative opening with Damascus, one thing Putin has been pushing for years.
“Ankara’s willingness to open a communication channel with Damascus with out ending its help for opposition teams displays its want for restricted collaboration — towards the Kurdish drive for autonomy,” writes Tastekin. “Such a contradictory coverage is unlikely to impress Damascus.”
As we wrote back in January 2020: “Putin performs the diplomatic recreation in Syria as if he had been playing with different folks’s cash. One can in all probability envision a purpose for a three-way negotiation amongst Russia, Syria and Turkey to hammer out some understanding on the Kurds. He nonetheless envisions a diplomatic breakthrough alongside the outlines of a cease-fire primarily based on an up to date model of a 1998 treaty between Syria and Turkey, by which Damascus ended its help and expelled the PKK.”
Assad might really feel that the benefit is his, and that Turkey may very well be boxed in because of a latest US-Russian diplomatic flurry on Syria.
“US-Russian dialogue may assist spur critical negotiations between Damascus and the Kurds, which in flip may diminish the Turkish navy presence east of the Euphrates River,” concludes Tastekin. “The Biden administration has successfully relaxed the Caesar Act sanctions on Syria by overlooking Iranian oil tankers coming into the Syrian port of Tartus and the stream of Egyptian gasoline and Jordanian electrical energy to Lebanon by way of Syria. These indicators of improved US-Russian dialogue would depart little room for Ankara.”
