TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Analysis Turkey and Russia Clash Over Syria, and Idlib’s Residents Are Paying the Price: Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, Feb. 19, 2020
Syrian Attacks Draw Turkey Deeper Into Syrian War: Carlotta Gall, NYTimes, Feb. 12, 2020
Do Syria-Turkey Clashes Presage a wider Confrontation in the Middle East?: Jonathan Spyer, Jerusalem Post, Feb. 7, 2020
A Doctor in Idlib: ‘It Cannot Get More Evil Than This’: Zakaria Zakaria, Al Jazeera, Feb. 13, 2020
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Explained Why Is Turkey Threatening a Full-blown Conflict With Syria and to Shatter Its Alliance With Russia
Haaretz, Feb. 16, 2020
Direct clashes between Turkish and Syrian troops amid a Syrian government offensive in the last rebel stronghold of Idlib province are threatening to escalate into a full-blown conflict between the two neighbors and also shatter an alliance forged between Turkey and Russia.
Intent on halting the advance, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to take military action “everywhere in Syria” if another Turkish soldier is killed or wounded. Earlier, he warned Syrian government forces that they have until the end of February to retreat to the limits of a previously agreed cease-fire line in Idlib.
Turkey and Russia are simultaneously rivals and allies in different parts of the Middle East, including in Syria and Libya. Their interests align when it comes to gas supplies and weapons trade, even if they find themselves on opposite sides of proxy wars. And they both have a shared interest in defying U.S. influence in Syria.
Turkey and Russia had been working together to keep the calm in Idlib, negotiating cease-fires between the Moscow-supported Syrian government and the rebels, who are backed by Ankara. So far, talks between the two have failed to lift the impasse in Idlib.
As Syrian government forces advance with Russia’s support, Turkey has refused to abandon its military posts in Idlib and has threatened to pressure Syrian forces to retreat. That has boxed Turkey into a corner and leaving it with few options but the possibility of a confrontation with both Syria and Russia.
The Idlib crisis comes as Turkey finds itself in the middle of an economic downturn and increasingly isolated internationally. In the eastern Mediterranean region, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece and Israel have reached agreements on hydrocarbon exploration that exclude Turkey. That has forced Turkey to reach widely criticized maritime and security deals with Libya’s U.N.-recognized government.
Emre Ersen, an expert on Turkish-Russian relations at Istanbul’s Marmara University, says Turkey and Russia were engaged in posturing, trying to “strengthen their hands” before they reach a new accord on Idlib, which he called “inevitable.”
“Turkey would be loath to trigger a new crisis with Russia like in 2015,” Ersen said, referring to punishing Russian sanctions after Ankara shot down a Russian warplane over Syria.
The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War noted last week that “Russia has alternated between military and diplomatic phases in the campaign, slowing its progress, but facilitating Russian and pro-regime gains, both territorially and diplomatically.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Syrian Attacks Draw Turkey Deeper Into Syrian War
Carlotta Gall
NYTimes, Feb. 12, 2020
Syrian government attacks on Turkish positions in northwest Syria are driving Turkey deeper into the country’s civil war, prompting it to send reinforcements to the region and press for a Turkish-controlled military zone there. Syrian troops killed eight Turkish soldiers and a civilian contractor last week and five more soldiers on Monday. Backed by Russian bombers, Syrian forces have encircled several Turkish observation posts in the northwestern province of Idlib — posts established by agreements aimed at reducing violence.
Turkey, which supports Syria’s opposition forces, has pushed back, pummeling the advancing Syrian units with artillery and killing dozens of Syrian troops and allied fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based war monitor. A Syrian helicopter was shot down on Tuesday, reportedly by rebel forces.
The surge in fighting, as the Syrian government tries to retake the country’s last rebel-held province, has created the largest displacement of people in the war’s nine-year history. About 700,000 people have fled their homes in Idlib since December, the United Nations said Tuesday. Many are living in tents near the Turkish border, and there have been recent reports of children freezing to death.
The crush at the border has unnerved Turkey, which has already taken in 3.5 million Syrian refugees. The Syrian offensive could push another three million civilians into Turkey, Turkish officials fear, with 10,000 armed militants among them, some linked to Al Qaeda. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the country can take no more and has threatened military action to stop the Syrian advance. “No one has the right to put that burden on our shoulders,” he said in a speech in Ankara last week. “If the regime does not withdraw, Turkey will have to do it on its own.”
Since then, Turkey has massed 30,000 troops and armor at the Syrian border, and sent 5,000 reinforcements to bolster troops deployed in Idlib Province. Turkey established new positions on the approaches to Idlib City, home to some 700,000 people, setting up posts at an airfield at Taftanaz, east of the city, and in Al Mastumah, to the south.
The Turkish deployments have yet to stop the Syrian government advance — Syrian troops seized control of the strategic Damascus-Aleppo highway on Tuesday — but they appear to be an attempt to carve out a zone of control in Idlib before the Syrian government advances too close to its border, analysts said. “This marks a transition from holding observation posts to holding territory,” he wrote, in a column in the Daily Sabah newspaper. “Turkey intends to show Assad that he cannot seize control of Idlib and send millions of Syrian refugees across the border.”
Turkey has already established a so-called safe zone along its border in northeastern Syria, which it seized in October after the United States removed its forces there. But Turkey’s options in the northwest are limited. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Do Syria-Turkey Clashes Presage a Wider Confrontation in the Middle East?
Jonathan Spyer
Jerusalem Post, Feb. 7, 2020
This week saw the first direct clashes between Turkish government and Syrian regime forces since the commencement of the Syrian civil war in mid-2011. According to a statement issued by the Turkish defense ministry, seven Turkish soldiers and one civilian were killed on Monday, February 3, in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, when their position was shelled by advancing regime forces.
Turkish forces responded to the fire, claiming to have killed 76 regime soldiers. The Assad regime itself denies that its forces suffered any fatalities. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is opposition-associated but regarded by many news outlets as generally reliable, reported that at least 13 regime soldiers were killed by Turkish fire.
Syrian regime soldiers have been killed in Israeli air raids on a variety of occasions, when they sought to activate air defenses against Israeli aircraft targeting Iranian sites in Syria. Russian military contractors fought US troops along the Euphrates River in February 2018, suffering heavy losses. This is the first time, however, that a direct conventional confrontation has taken place on the ground between members of two state armed forces since the beginning of the war.
So does this event presage a wider confrontation between Assad and Erdogan? And what are the implications for Russian attempts to maintain a diplomatic process intended to finally bring the war in Syria to a close? Will the Turkish-Russian rapprochement which has formed a notable presence in regional diplomacy over the last year suffer serious damage as a result of the week’s events?
Firstly, it is undoubtedly the case that the Syrian regime’s attack on Turkish personnel is a blow to Russian diplomacy. Since emerging as the key diplomatic arbiter in Syria following its entrance into the conflict in September 2015, Russia has sought to maintain cordial relations with a variety of warring sides. Israel and Iran, Turkey and the PKK, Turkey and the Syrian government. This is the first time that members of the latter pair have directly targeted one another.
Evidence from the other two files, however, would suggest that kinetic action need not mean the general collapse of Russian mediation and diplomacy. Israel has killed Iranian personnel on numerous occasions during its air raids over the last three years. All this has taken place at a time when Russian air defenses were present on Syrian soil, in the west of the country. At no time have the Russians made any attempt to offer assistance to their supposed strategic ally.
Similarly, the Syrian Kurds have been severely let down by Moscow on a number of occasions, as a result of the Russian strategic goal of inducing Turkey away from its alliance with the United States. Russian personnel were removed from the Afrin area, enabling the Turkish invasion of that area and the displacing of 300,000 Syrian Kurds in Operation Olive Branch in early 2018. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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A Doctor in Idlib: ‘It Cannot Get More Evil than This’
Zakaria Zakaria
Al Jazeera, Feb. 13, 2020
The Syrian town of Maaret al-Numan lies on a key highway connecting the capital, Damascus, to Aleppo. A former anti-government protest hotspot, it has suffered months of bombardment by Syrian government forces who eventually captured the strategic location late last month. In 2011, Maaret al-Numan was one of the first towns in Idlib province – the opposition’s last standing stronghold – to rise up against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule. It was captured by rebels fighting against al-Assad’s forces in 2012.
Now, as the Syrian army advances in its battle on Idlib, civilians are the worst affected. Recounting the years of war, one doctor in Maaret al-Numan shares his story.
My name is Dr Tarraf. I was born in Al-Mash’had, one of the urban slums of Aleppo, on February 1, 1982 – the day the terrifying Hama Massacre began. Over 27 days, Syrian soldiers razed the city, killing 20,000 people, to put down a rebellion against the rule of President Hafez al-Assad, the father of current President Bashar al-Assad. My family is originally from a small village in Idlib province called Haas, about 10 kilometres (six miles) west of Maaret al-Numan. We moved back there in 1995 because our small apartment was not large enough for our growing family.
I was the second child in a large household of six boys and two girls. One of my brothers, Mustafa, has managed to move to Germany to start a new life. I call him the only survivor of the family. Of the remaining five boys, two have been lost to Syria’s war, two have had their lives and studies put on hold because of the fighting and detentions, and I no longer make plans for the future.
My work as a doctor has become unbearably exhausting – both physically and mentally – since the regime launched its Idlib operation last spring. At the time, I worked at two hospitals, Kafr Nabl surgery hospital and Maaret al-Numan central hospital. These facilities were the closest to the regime’s front line, and came under intense bombing for a long period of time. There was a constant stream of casualties coming to the hospital. The medics literally did not get a chance to rest.
The choice
I remember one of the worst days, August 28, 2019, when the main vegetable market in Maaret al-Numan was targeted by an air raid from a Syrian army jet. We had six operating rooms in the hospital, and only eight doctors. Soon after the air raid, injured people began streaming in, along with dead bodies. Within five minutes all the operating rooms were full. I was the last surgeon to get there.
I walked in to find two patients, both needing immediate help. As a doctor, I had to choose which one to treat and which to transfer to another hospital some 30 minutes away – something we do when there are limited resources and many cases to attend to. The first patient was a man in his thirties who was in hemorrhagic shock. The other was a three-year-old-boy who was bleeding from shrapnel in his chest; he was also in shock. It was a terrifying moment in which I had to make a choice; one which would help one patient but might lead to another dying on the way to the referral hospital. I had no other choice but to choose, so I chose the child. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Air Strikes Hit Hospitals, Camps in Northwest Syria, Turkey Demands Pull-Back: Eric Knecht, Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters, Feb. 18, 2020 — Government airstrikes have hit hospitals and refugee camps in northwest Syria and killed about 300 civilians as President Bashar al-Assad’s forces press an assault against the last rebel stronghold, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
Erdogan Threatens ‘Imminent’ Turkish Operation in Syria: AlJazeera, Feb. 19, 2020 — Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to launch an operation in Syria’s Idlib region by the end of the month if Damascus fails to withdraw behind Turkish military positions.
‘Is It Our Job To Protect Jihadi Terrorists?’ – Turkish Journalist Criticizes Turkish Presence In Syria: Mehmet Yilmaz, MEMRI, Feb. 7, 2020 — In a February 4, 2020 column titled “Is It Our Job To Protect Jihadi Terrorists?” following an exchange of fire on February 3 between Syrian and Turkish forces in Idlib that resulted in the deaths of at least eight Turkish citizens, Turkish writer Mehmet Yılmaz criticized Turkey’s policy of stationing soldiers in Idlib.
Trump, Turkey Call on Russia to Stop Backing Syrian ‘Atrocities’: AlJazeera, Feb. 17, 2020 — Russia must halt its support for the Syrian government’s “atrocities”, US President Donald Trump said, as fighting rages in the country’s dwindling rebel-held areas.
Analysis Turkey and Russia Clash Over Syria, and Idlib’s Residents Are Paying the Price: Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, Feb. 19, 2020 — “More than a million refugees and displaced people are making their way to the Turkish border,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Saturday, after a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump. “Unfortunately, we can’t absorb another million refugees, after we’ve already taken in between 3.5 million and four million.”
