[rad-green] Moscow’s Difficult Decision on Idli b: Erdogan nurses dreams of neo–Ottoman restoration a cross ME. He's on a reckless tear.

*https://consortiumnews.com/2020/03/03/patrick-lawrence-moscows-difficult-decision-on-idlib/
<https://consortiumnews.com/2020/03/03/patrick-lawrence-moscows-difficult-decision-on-idlib/>*

*Consortium News          March 3, 2020 *

Moscow’s Difficult Decision on Idlib
*Turkey’s leader, who nurses dreams of some kind of neo–Ottoman restoration
across the Middle East, is now on a reckless tear.*

*Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan at a press conference in Turkey, Dec. 1, 2014. (Russian government)*

*By Patrick Lawrence* <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/patrick-lawrence/>
*Special to Consortium News*

*A*s Recip Tayyip Erdogan prosecutes his latest military intrusion
<https://www.ft.com/content/9afd5cf2-5bc6-11ea-b0ab-339c2307bcd4> southward
into Syria, all the old mythologies about the Turkish president and the
9-year-old Syrian conflict are rehearsed once again, hopelessly threadbare
as they are. The problem now is not the fog of war. The problem is the war
of fog.

Let us be clear from the start, then, as to what has unfolded since last
week and what will be the desired outcome. The Syrian Arab Army, a force
for good, must not stop short of decisive victory in Idlib, the governorate
in northwest Syria sheltering the last jihadist militias operating on
Syrian soil. Russia, which is correctly (and legally) supporting the
S.A.A.’s campaign, should try to avoid a direct conflict with a NATO member
but should engage Turkish forces if there is no alternative.

NATO, breaking its own Article 5 covenant, will not come to the aid of a
member nation engaged in so despicable an assault on another sovereign
nation. I am not alone in holding this opinion
<https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/03/httpssouthfrontorgmap-update-advances-of-turkish-led-forces-in-southern-idlib.html>.
Don’t forget: Most NATO members are squeamish, mealy-mouthed Europeans who
have given up the ghost in Syria.

It will do the entire world much good if the egregious Erdogan sustains the
bloodiest nose of his six years as Turkey’s dictatorial president in
consequence of this drive into Syria. Let us say precisely the same of what
remains of the U.S. presence in Syria. Excellent it will be if Washington
must at last acknowledge that it has lost every chip it has put down in
Syria since it began arming, training and financing a variety of vicious
Islamist factions, including the Islamic State, in early 2012 at the very
latest. At this point it claims to be protecting Syrian oilfields from…
Syria.

This is not Turkey’s first foray into Syrian territory, let us remember. It
launched a similar campaign in 2016; it began another incursion last
autumn. Turkey has from the start of the Syrian conflict been a conduit for
arms supplies to the Islamic State and other jihadists, while transshipping
Syrian oil from ISIS–controlled refineries into international markets.

*A Turkish-backed FSA fighter loads an M2 Browning during the fighting in
northern Aleppo Governorate, November 2016. (Mada Media, Wikimedia Commons)*

But Operation Spring Shield, as Erdogan grandly names this latest invasion,
already proves Turkey’s costliest and most aggressive attack on its
southern neighbor. Last Thursday Syrian airstrikes, possibly with Russian
participation  <https://ejmagnier.com/2020/03/01/erdogan-idlib-is-mine/> killed
at least 30 Turkish soldiers and as many as 36. On Friday and through the
weekend, Turkey retaliated
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/01/turkey-destroys-syrian-army-targets-says-defence-minister>
with
drone and artillery attacks that killed more than 100 Syrian troops and
destroyed a significant number of S.A.A. tanks and radar systems. A Turkish
F–16 shot down two Syrian fighter jets on Sunday.

This brings the Syrian conflict to one of its most critical moments in its
9-year history. Turkey has for the moment impaired the S.A.A.’s advances
into Idlib. Should Russia retaliate to make sure this success is temporary?
This is Russia’s question in the coming week. It is Moscow’s most difficult
decision since it intervened in behalf of the Damascus government in
September 2015.

*Avoiding Direct Confrontation*

Russia and Turkey have to date assiduously avoided any kind of direct
military confrontation. Elijah Magnier, who has covered Middle Eastern
politics for several decades, reports
<https://ejmagnier.com/2020/03/01/erdogan-idlib-is-mine/> that Russia
suspended its air support of the S.A.A. amid Turkey’s weekend offensive. If
this proves so, it can be counted prudent, but Moscow’s announced priority
in Syria — a final defeat of the terrorist militias holed up in Idlib —
should not be compromised.

Erdogan has betrayed the Russians so often it is a wonder Moscow has any
patience left for him. A Turkish F–16 shot down a Russian jet two months
after Russian aircraft deployed in Syria five years ago. Ankara and Moscow
agreed two years ago to establish a ceasefire zone in northwest Syria, with
Turkey also committing to remove jihadists led by Hayat Tahrir al–Sham,
formerly al–Nusra, which was formerly al–Qaeda in Syria in the
name-changing shell game these cutthroats play. That accord went the way of
the West (so to say) long ago.

After President Donald Trump announced a withdrawal of U.S. troops from
northeastern Syria last October, Erdogan summited with Vladimir Putin in
Sochi, where the Russian president fashioned an arrangement
<http://patricklawrence.us/patrick-lawrence-a-sudden-seeming-power-shift-in-the-middle-east/>
providing
for Russian and Turkish troops to police — this is side-by-side, mind you —
a buffer zone along the Turkish­–Syrian border, the intent being to
restrain Erdogan’s designs in Syria while assuaging his worries about
Syrian Kurds in the designated zone. Out the window in less than six months.

This guy could be counted a tinpot dictator out of Chaplin’s 1940 satire
<https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/films/7-the-great-dictator> were he not
so destructive of global order and human life. Erdogan, who nurses dreams
of some kind of neo–Ottoman restoration across the Middle East, is now on a
reckless tear. “We have fought Russia 16 times in the past, and we will
fight it again,” a top Erdogan adviser declared
<https://www.rt.com/news/481908-erdogan-adviser-war-russia/> as the new
offensive proceeded over the weekend.

*‘Get Out of Our Way’*

*Turkish military envoy arriving in northern Idlib province
mid-February. (VOA via YouTube)*

Not one day later, Erdogan claimed
<https://www.rt.com/news/482006-erdogan-russia-syria-fighting/> — true or
not, who knows? — that he told Putin in a telephone conversation to “get
out of our way and leave us face to face with the regime,” meaning the
Assad government in Damascus. Now we have it on paper: Never mind the
Kurdish question, Erdogan has all along been after “regime change,” as we
insist on calling coups.

The new Turkish assault does have the modest benefit of facing us
four-square with the question of just who the “rebels” in Idlib are, and
who comprises the “Turkish-backed fighters” invading Syria. Shame on the
government-supervised *New York Times *and other news outlets for their
incessant use of these disgracefully dishonest euphemisms. It is minorly
reassuring that Tulsi Gabbard, a sitting congresswoman, now insists
<https://www.rt.com/usa/482031-tulsi-msm-alqaeda-rebels-idlib/> that the
jihadists the U.S. and Turkey have backed for the last nine years be called
by their proper names. Gradually, one imagines, truth will win its long war
with bunkum.

*The US Fog Machine*

Where is the rest of Washington on these questions? Where it ought not be,
of course. The fog machine continues to fire on all eight, albeit forlornly
now.

When Erdogan ordered an incursion
<http://patricklawrence.us/patrick-lawrence-the-predictable-mess-on-syrias-border-with-turkey/>
into
Syrian territory soon after Trump announced the U.S. troop withdrawal last
autumn — this was before the Sochi summit temporarily calmed him — Capitol
Hill screamed horror and passed limp-wristed sanctions
<https://www.ft.com/content/72619f40-eebd-11e9-bfa4-b25f11f42901> against a
few Turkish officials.

Now we have Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator and a longtime Dummkopf in the
foreign policy space, tweeting just as Turkey ripped into Idlib last
Friday: “Our NATO ally is doing the right thing. Putin and Assad must honor
their commitments and stop the massacre.” Astonishing. Simply astonishing.

*Russia and the Assad regime are to blame for the humanitarian disaster
unfolding in northwest Syria. Our NATO ally Turkey is doing the right
thing. Putin and Assad must honor their commitments and stop the massacre.*

*— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 28, 2020
<https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1233423487760502786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>*

The prize for American presumption must go to James Jeffrey, the State
Department’s special representative for Syria. Jeffrey has been complaining
for many weeks about Syria’s campaign to restore its own sovereignty in
Idlib, as if it has no right to do so. Not quite a month ago, Jeffrey
briefed correspondents
<https://www.state.gov/ambassador-james-jeffrey-on-the-situation-in-syria/> to
the effect that Damascus should negotiate a ceasefire with Hayat Tahrir
al–Sham (HTS in State-speak) because it should “acknowledge that part of
the country will not be under the control of the government in — the regime
in Damascus.” The nerve.

Here is some of Jeffrey’s stunning apology for the murderous, beheading
terrorists known in our newspapers as “rebels” or “the opposition”:

“The HTS has not — we have not seen them planning or carrying out
international terrorism attacks. We’ve seen them focusing on basically
maintaining their position in Idlib…. The Russians claim that they
constantly launch attacks on the Russians…. We have seen only intermittent
and not very strong or significant military actions on their part against
the Russians. The Russians use this as an excuse. Basically, they’re on the
defensive, they’re just sitting there….”

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister and a diplomat many times the
caliber of Jeffrey, had a succinct and sound response to this drivel when
he addressed the point
<https://www.rt.com/news/481639-lavrov-idlib-terrorists-surrender/> during
a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council a couple of weeks later:

“Exhortations about the possibility of peace agreements being made with the
thugs as it takes place when the situation in Idlib is discussed are
absolutely unacceptable.”

The plainest English is sometimes spoken by non-native speakers.

*Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for
the* *International
Herald Tribune**, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most
recent book is “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century”
(Yale). Follow him on Twitter **@thefloutist*
<https://twitter.com/thefloutist>*. **His web site is **Patrick Lawrence*
<http://www.patricklawrence.us/>*. Support his work via **his Patreon site*
<http://www.patreon.com/thefloutist>*.*

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