on December 3, 2024, 7:51 pm
Posted on December 2, 2024 by Conor Gallagher
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan just had a phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Nov. 24 in which the former reportedly talked up plans to expand cooperation as the two countries have done in recent years. Part of that includes years of Moscow holding the hands of Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in an effort to mend ties due to Türkiye’s key role in the dirty war effort to topple the Assad government.
Beijing was also interested in seeing that reconciliation happen and were led by Erdogan to believe it was in the cards and that Türkiye’s days of launching jihadi operations were over.
The Turkish people are also overwhelmingly against the Israel-US rampage through the Middle East, and Erdogan has spent the past year-plus railing against their crimes and selling the people on stopping the flow of supplies to Tel Aviv vital for its genocidal operations (in reality he’s only been disguising it).
Erdogan stabbed them all in the back when it launched its paramilitary forces in northwestern Syria into action last week in the most intense fighting in northwestern Syria since 2020, when Russian-backed government forces seized areas previously controlled by opposition fighters.
US proxies — Ukrainian neo-Nazis, Islamic fundamentalists, and Zionist genocidaires [love that summary of US proxies] — are all converging on Syria in a renewed attempt to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or at least peel off more territory ahead of any potential settlement and weaken the influence of Tehran in the country.
Türkiye, as the biggest backer of the Islamist paramilitaries Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, is playing a central role. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is denying Ankara involvement, but while that’s implausible enough given that Türkiye has long provided all types of support, it’s even more so considering that the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army militia reportedly participated in the battle alongside HTS. Elsewhere, Turkish security sources are saying they attempted to prevent the offensive but were unsuccessful while adding that it’s only “a limited offensive.”
While many in various corners are celebrating the offensive thinking this will weaken Russia (reports are that Russia is having to send reinforcement to Syria) and finally topple the hated Assad, a few things to keep in mind:
@LindseySnell
-HTS aren't "rebels", they're the strongest iteration of AQ, ever
-Turkey's SNA/partnership with HTS don't make it a "threat" to Israel, as Turkey actively aids Israel (see: Aleppo)
-US/West is in favor of, if not behind this operation (see: scumbag thinktankers celebrating)
What Is Türkiye Doing in Syria?
Here is the state of the situation in Syria as of Sunday morning, according to Elijah J Magnier:
The Syrian opposition forces, primarily led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Ahrar al-Sham, with support from Islamist jihadist groups, have launched a significant ground offensive over the past 48 hours in rural Idlib, rural Aleppo, and parts of Aleppo city supported by drones and armoured battalions. In a rapid and well-coordinated advance, they have captured dozens of villages, including strategic areas along the M4 and M5 international highways connecting Damascus to Aleppo and Aleppo to Latakia, as well as the critical cities of Saraqeb and most of Aleppo. With the Syrian army’s defensive lines nearly nonexistent, it appears only a matter of time before opposition forces gain complete control of Aleppo city. Reclaiming these losses would require tens of thousands of troops, a resource the Syrian army does not currently possess.
Some reports now say that the opposition groups are already in control of Aleppo and Syrian government forces fell back to prepare for a counterattack.
The Turkish-backed offensive is conveniently timed to coincide with the Lebanon “ceasefire,” and according to Yedioth Ahronoth, Israeli officials view the advance on Aleppo as an opportunity to weaken Syria. That is unsurprising as it’s widely believed that Israel, thwarted in its ground invasion of Lebanon, has circled back to its previous backup plan following its 2006 failure in Lebanon, which is to eliminate Iran’s ability to resupply Hezbollah via Syria.
Türkiye is helping. As Syrian Foreign Minister Bassam Sabbagh said on 29 November, the Turkish-HTS offensive comes “within the framework of serving the goals of the Israeli occupation entity and its sponsors.”
Not only are Erdogan’s denunciations of Tel Aviv empty words, but it appears he is actively conspiring with Netanyahu and the US in Syria.
According to AFP and Russia’s Izvestia, Turkish intelligence gave the green light to and is helping to direct the offensive. It was coordinated between Turkish, Ukrainian, and French intelligence, with Israeli backing and US approval. HTS also receives considerable support from Ukrainian special forces with a focus on drone warfare to target Russian and Syrian positions — a connection facilitated by the Turks.
The US, like Turkey, is denying any involvement in the HTS-led offensive, but claimed the reason for Syria’s problems are Assad’s “reliance on Russia and Iran.”
Elsewhere in Syria, Israel is working in tandem with ISIS. Here’s what Syrian researcher, former soldier and journalist Ibrahim Wahdi told Vanessa Beeley about one such IAF attack on Syrian forces in Palmyra:
Local sources said that the Zionist aggression on the SAA and auxiliary forces in Palmyra city came during their rest after returning from military missions in the central Syrian desert.
According to field sources these units had been engaged in fierce clashes with ISIS terrorist groups in the Al Shoula area of the Deir Ezzor desert after they had been spotted infiltrating from within the US-imposed 55km exclusion zone around the US unlawful military base of Al Tanf on the border with Jordan, taking advantage of heavy fog to try and advance towards Syrian allied positions.
The Syrian allied forces routed the ISIS terrorists and caused significant injures and deaths among their ranks. Israel attacked Palmyra from the Al Tanf “protected” airspace therefore we can conclude that Israel was supporting the ISIS terrorist operations with airstrikes against the forces that have been entirely responsible for the defeat of ISIS in Syria with the help of the Russian Airforce since September 2015.
Beeley’s conclusion:
Israel is trying to decimate the Syrian Air Defence capability, demoralise and deplete Syrian armed forces and to destroy the essential infrastructure that provides a road link to Lebanon and the Hezbollah resistance forces. At the same time the US and Israel are bombing the Al Bukamal border crossing with Iraq to try to close the land bridge between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Thus they are intending to isolate both Lebanon and Syria from their allies and to break the links in the Resistance chain of supply which includes humanitarian aid, energy resources to combat the US occupation of Syrian resources, and military equipment to support the Resistance.
…The plan is clear – to deplete Syrian military capability and to keep the Syrian Arab Army busy on multiple fronts – in the north-west (Idlib), in the north (Türkiye and former Free Syrian Army proxies), in the north-east (US and Kurdish Contras), in the east (US base at Al-Tanf incubator for terror gangs including ISIS) and in the south (possible land invasion by Israel and Druze separatists backed by Israel, remnants of illegal armed groups in Daraa and surrounding countryside).
HTS (at that time still known as Al Nusra) and other jihadist groups previously had control of the majority of Syrian territory in the mid-2010s, before a major intervention by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah swung the situation in the other direction. According to Military Watch, the only reason HTS can continue to operate northwestern Syria is because Turkey has the area under its protection with military bases. Past Syrian efforts to defeat HTS and retake Idlib were squashed by the Turks, including air and artillery support to target Syrian positions and protect jihadists.
Turkey by assisting HTS and others in the current offensive — if not directing it — is violating the 2019 agreement it sponsored along with Russia and Iran to freeze the line of the conflict.
Since that 2019 agreement the US has kept up sanctions in an effort to strangle Syria while Israel continued to bomb groups that it claimed were Iranian revolutionary guards or Hezbollah militants. It would appear Erdogan simply used the 2019 freeze not to work towards a permanent peace with Assad’s Syria, but to rearm and prepare.
Erdogan Calculations
Erdogan’s interests in this case overlap with the US-Ukraine-Israel group. The diehard neo-Ottoman ambitions of Erdogan and his clique, which wish to see Turkey strengthen its influence over much of the former empire, coincide with the US-Ukraine-Israel’s desire to curtail Russian and Iranian influence curtailed in the region.
At the bare minimum Türkiye is looking to get more territory under its and its proxies control in Syria ahead of any permanent settlement (potentially under Trump II) for refugee return and which would also allow Ankara better positioning to neutralize the Kurdish forces it sees as a threat. Türkiye hosts more than three million Syrians, which Erdogan is under pressure domestically to do something about, and has been accused of coercing thousands into signing declarations of “voluntary return.” As the security environment “strengthens” in Syria, Erdogan says more Syrians will be expelled from Türkiye.
Etc.
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