As the Turkish military continues to send reinforcements across the border with Syria and towards the town of Hama, local, regional and international stakeholders in the Syrian crisis have been meeting to discuss various scenarios. Given the intricacy of the situation in the northwest Syrian province of Idlib, the target of attempts to reconquer the province on the part of the Syrian regime and its allies, few observers expect swift outcomes from these meetings. Last Friday, Istanbul hosted a meeting of senior officials from Turkey, Russia, Germany and France to discuss the situation in Syria preparatory to a summit to be held soon between the heads of state of these four countries. The summit had originally been scheduled for 7 September, but it was postponed at French request since France did not consider it likely that it would succeed. It was replaced by a three-power summit held in Tehran between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Though still meagre in its results, the Tehran meeting was nevertheless revealing in the dynamics between its participants, as epitomised by how Erdogan's appeal for efforts to sustain the ceasefire in Idlib, which is controlled by the Syrian opposition, fell on the deaf ears of his summit partners in Tehran. Turkish Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, who represented his government in last week's meeting in Istanbul, urged all the parties to adopt positions that would contribute to eliminating the obstacles to a solution to the crisis in Idlib. “An attack on Idlib would not only have catastrophic humanitarian consequences, but it would also precipitate dangerous political and diplomatic consequences. Turkish efforts alone are insufficient to halt an attack on Idlib. Global public opinion must bear its share of responsibility too,” Kalin said. He cautioned that a new wave of refugees flowing into Turkey from Syria would have repercussions in Europe and beyond. The warnings by Western countries that they would intervene if Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad resorted to chemical weapons were insufficient, he said, as “the Syrian conflict has already claimed hundreds of thousands of dead, 99 per cent of whom were killed by conventional weapons.” Washington has been supporting the Syrian Kurdish forces in the north of the country, branded as terrorists by Ankara, and last week Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a letter to the New York Times that “Al-Assad's allies in the attack are backed by the United States. New reports suggest that the YPG, a terrorist group operating from Syria that has received arms and aid paid for by American taxpayers, has forged an alliance with Al-Assad and is sending troops as part of a deal brokered in July to help him recapture Idlib from the rebels… It's time for Washington to assess who its real allies in the region are,” Cavusoglu said. Averting another wave of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria when Turkey is already straining under the responsibility for some three million refugees is not the only reason Ankara is desperate to forestall an operation to recapture Idlib from Syrian rebel forces. It has hundreds of troops stationed in the 12 observation posts it operates in Idlib in accordance with its commitment as a guarantor of the “de-escalation agreements” in the region. To protect these in the event of a Syrian attack, Turkey has already brought dozens of armoured vehicles into the northern Syrian province. However, Ankara will find it difficult to prevent an attack by Syrian regime forces on Idlib. Not the least of the obstacles is the Kremlin, which has stressed that “it is unacceptable to use civilians as a pretext to shield terrorists.” As former Turkish foreign minister Yasar Yakis put it in an article entitled “Turkey cornering itself in Idlib” in a recent edition of the Turkish newspaper Ahval, “Putin's words are so unequivocal that nobody could draw any conclusion other than Turkey was being accused of protecting terrorists,” he said. It thus came as no surprise when the Russian Hmeimin Air Base announced on its social media account that Moscow would not yield to outside demands to prevent Syrian government forces from carrying out a ground offensive against Idlib. It said that putting off the “fight to eliminate terrorism” would not make it go away and stressed that Syrian government forces had the right to carry out operations in any part of Syrian territory. Turkish opposition media sources cited a Syrian army commander as saying that Damascus was ready to carry out a military operation in Idlib and Hama and that heavy guns were being brought in to the region. The fact that the Syrian defence minister had travelled north to inspect forces in Al-Khwein and parts of Idlib meant that it was only a matter of time before the ground offensive began, he said. The clock is also ticking for Erdogan who is a leader who likes to take risks, venturing demands that run up against UN Resolutions as well as the advice of his advisors. When he then runs up against a wall, he blames others as he makes one concession after another. In this case, Erdogan will have no alternative but to accept a deal in which a massive Syrian regime offensive will be reduced to a “limited military operation” or “strikes against limited targets” (most notably the militia Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham) and the borders of the de-escalation zone will be altered in a manner that separates the militant opposition factions from certain areas. In exchange, Turkey will be allowed to control areas on the outskirts of Idlib, especially near the highway to Damascus, on condition that it prevents missiles from being fired from Idlib in the direction of the Hmeimin Airbase in Latakia. Beyond such concessions there is the larger truth that Erdogan's vision of expanding his influence into neighbouring Syria has evaporated seven years after he dragged his country into the Syrian war. Even if he can portray a deal over Idlib as a victory, Idlib is the last stop on the road for that dream.
