Skip to main content

Turkey and Russia on Idlib |Is both countries are going towards war | NATO will Support Turkey?

The latest clashes b/w Turkish forces and Russian backed Syrian militias along the province of Idlib raises many eye-brows due to the possibility of a war between Russia and Turkey. In the midst of this boiling cauldron, a big question is about the extent to which US is prepared to support Turkey militarily. Is turkey in a position to invoke article 5 of NATO charter which states that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on all its members?



A military confrontation between Turkey and Syria has erupted in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib. Latest reports say that at least 34 Turkish soldiers were killed on Thursday in a Syrian air attack. A Turkish retaliation commenced last night itself.
The Syrian airstrike in Idlib took place in an area between the towns Baluon and Al-Bara and was in response to Syrian rebels backed by the Turkish military recapturing the strategic town of Saraqeb earlier on Thursday.
Earlier in the week, through the past 3-day period, Syrian forces had seized about 60 towns and villages in the southern Idlib area and the adjoining province of Hama.
The backdrop is the warning by Turkey that by end-February, Syria should vacate the territories in Idlib captured from the terrorist groups in the recent months and retreat to the ceasefire line agreed between Turkey and Russia as per the Sochi agreements of 2018, failing which it will be pushed back by force.
The denial by the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Pskov on Thursday that any meeting between President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish President was being scheduled over Idlib was a definitive signal that Moscow anticipated that a showdown with the Turkish military was imminent. Erdogan had claimed that a meeting with Putin was on cards on March 4.
Evidently, Moscow has taken note of Erdogan’s increasingly belligerent statements, especially his assertion that Turkish intervention in Idlib is in accordance with the Adana Agreement of 1998 between Ankara and Damascus on the mutual commitments regarding border security, which is, of course, an ingenious interpretation of the 21-year old accord that neither Russia nor Syria will accept.
The Russian line has perceptibly hardened, based on assessment that the ongoing Syrian military operations in Idlib must be taken to their logical conclusion, namely, the defeat of the al-Qaeda affiliates ensconced in the province, which is also what Damascus demands.
Turkey senses that the ongoing consultations with Russia are only providing time for Moscow and Damascus to advance their operations in Idlib.
The eruption on Thursday adds a new dimension to the military balance. Russia will back Syria. The air space over Idlib is under Russian control. On the other hand, Turkey lately deployed anti-aircraft guns in Idlib that threaten Russian and Syrian jets supporting the ground operations.
Turkey feels emboldened by the assessment that the killing of General Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January has thrown the Iran-backed militia groups into disarray while Syrian government forces are overstretched.
Turkey also assumes that Russian forces will not get involved in the fighting on the ground. These Turkish assumptions are going to be put to severe test in the coming days and weeks.
The Turkish ruling party’s spokesman has said, “We call on NATO to [start] consultations. This is not [an attack] on Turkey only, it is an attack on the international community
 However, the big question is about the extent to which the US is prepared to support Turkey militarily. Washington did not accede to a recent Turkish request for deploying the Patriot missile system in Turkey as deterrent against Russia.
Will there be a rethink on this? Ankara and Washington are in constant touch with each other.
The US state department is yet to react on the clashes in Idlib on Thursday. But unnamed US officials told the Turkish news agency Anadolu, “We stand by our NATO Ally Turkey and continue to call for an immediate end to this despicable offensive by the Assad regime, Russia and Iranian-backed forces. As the President and the Secretary have said, we are looking at options on how we can best support Turkey in this crisis.”
Following the latest developments on Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu spoke to the NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg over the phone. Possibly, Turkey proposes to seek NATO support/intervention.
Will Turkey invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which states that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on all its members?
The Turkish ruling party’s spokesman has said, “We call on NATO to [start] consultations. This is not [an attack] on Turkey only, it is an attack on the international community. A common reaction is needed. The attack was also against NATO.”
However, as things stand, the probability is low, since a NATO and / or US intervention, would mean military confrontation with Russia, which neither the Trump administration nor the western alliance would want.
The Russian assessment also seems to be that the West will huff and puff for a while but will eventually calm down and desist from getting entangled with Erdogan’s Syrian project.
The point is, the western world also has its grievances against Erdogan and is wary of his mercurial nature. The Trump administration has far from forgiven Erdogan’s strategic defiance to buy the S-400 AMB system from Russia.
The complex alignments recall the Crimean War (1853-1856) which was also a geopolitical struggle like the Syrian conflict
Having said that, Turkey can always leverage the Syrian refugee flow to compel an EU intervention, especially by Germany.
The crunch time comes if a direct Turkish-Russian military conflict ensues. Of course, in such an eventuality, the NATO will be hard-pressed to ignore that an important member country of the alliance being at war.
Erdogan believes that he’s holding a strong hand. Russia, on the other hand, cannot afford a retreat in Idlib, as that could well lead to a quagmire in Syria with assorted foreign powers using the al-Qaeda groups as proxies to challenge the Russian bases.
The complex alignments recall the Crimean War (1853-1856) which was also a geopolitical struggle like the Syrian conflict.
The Crimean War had its genesis in Russia pressuring the Ottomans with a view to winning control of the Black Sea so that it could gain access to the Mediterranean Sea, which in turn threatened British commercial and strategic interests in the Middle East and India and prompted France to cement an alliance with Britain and to reassert its military power.
The Crimean War was a classic example of an unnecessary conflict bearing out A.J.P. Taylor’s thesis of wars caused by blundering politicians and diplomats — where the causes are trivial, but the consequences aren’t.


Comments

Popular Posts

Hybrid war and Challenges for Pakistan|| India and China at LAC || Will Pakistan tackle all financial and other regional challenges or migrate these thereat,Let time will dwcide

Pakistan is on yh edge of several disasters ,would you like to analyse which disasters I am telling or what kind hybrid war are going on let's read and analyse condition . The world has changed. Wars are fought no more on battlegrounds but with touches of buttons and turnings of knobs. Hybrid warfar e has revolutionized the arena where every country exhausts all possible means without even moving. “The categories of warfare are blurring and no longer fit into neat, tidy boxes. One can expect to see more tools and tactics of destruction – from the sophisticated to the simple – being employed simultaneously in hybrid and more complex forms of warfare”, Robert M. Gates, Former U.S. Secretary of Defence. Conflict is inherent to the structure of the international paradigm, a construct of state system and composition of human society. The nature of wars resulting from this conflict has remained constant as a political and social phenomenon, however, the character of war continues to tran...

Pakistan is on the erge of massive population influx.|| Will Pakistan can use his youth?|| If government failed to give technical and modern education what will happen to society? ? WHO and World Bank's ranks Pakistan as 15th largest economy in 2040.

1⃣ *INTRODUCTION:* *Rapidly increasing population is the most gigantic, formidable and intractable problem, which the world faces today. Malthus stated that in the race between increasing population and increasing production, population must eventually win. Those of us who decline to accept this pessimistic view recognize the difficulty of the practical problem of meeting the needs of an ever-expanding population. Achieving a world population in balance with its environmental resources is crucial to the future of our planet and the welfare of its people. Population growth is a complex issue that directly or indirectly impacts all aspects of our lives and the conditions under which we live – from the environment and global stability to women's health and empowerment. Population control — or population welfare, if you want to be genteel — is the buzzword today. The focus has been on the economic impact of a rapidly growing population and its implications for employment. 2⃣ *G...