Islam Times - Erdogan Made Strategic Mistake Green Lighting Offensive on Aleppo

Islam Times - Since the beginning of offensive on Aleppo by terrorists, the attention has been directly and indirectly focused on Turkey for its role and stance on the attacks. Having in mind that the terrorist fighters have seized a majority of villages and towns around Aleppo, questions present themselves about options Turkish is considering to deal with the major changes having taken place in the Syrian map.

Despite the fact that Turkish officials have said they have no role in Aleppo developments, pieces of evidence show that the offensive would not have taken place without foreign support and Turkish green light.

Turkey has had troops in northern Syria for years, supporting Syrian opposition groups that are part of a coalition called the Syrian National Army. While the group did not spearhead the offensive on Aleppo, it launched a parallel offensive on Saturday, taking control of several military sites, villages and towns on the city’s eastern and northern outskirts.

The group is a coalition of Turkish-backed opposition factions fighting forces loyal to the Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which are backed by the US. The militia was established in December 2017 and has participated in several Turkish military operations in northern Syria. It acts as an army for the Turkey-based Syrian opposition interim government to bring the Free Syrian Army (FSA) under a united command.

Meanwhile, the media have also published reports of military equipment entering Idlib from Turkish territory. Some sources also announced that some terrorist groups participating in the Aleppo campaign had entered Idlib from the Turkish border in recent months, and a number of Turkish-made drones have been provided to these terrorists.

Therefore, it is clear that if Turkey withdraws its support from these groups, they will not last long, because the only way to feed the terrorists is through the border of the Turkish province of Hatay, and if the weapons and financial assistance from this route are blocked, the Syrian army can easily crush the takfiri terrorists and permanently dry up the roots of terrorism in the country.

Turkish aims behind arming terrorists

Erdogan has been seeking to normalize relations with Syria for three years in order to overcome some of Turkey’s economic challenges in recent years.

Discontentment with Erdogan’s economic management led to a decline in public support for his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in recent municipal elections, resulting in the party’s biggest defeat in 20 years. He is trying to solve part of this economic challenge by returning more than 3 million Syrian refugees to their country.

However, the Syrian government has so far rejected Erdogan’s request for a direct meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and has primarily demanded that the presence of Turkish military forces on its soil be determined.

Therefore, it seems that part of Ankara’s motivation is to push terrorists towards Aleppo in order to implement the plan to return Syrian refugees or at least put pressure on the Syrian government to the negotiating table.

Turkish officials also claim that the country's military presence in northern Syria is aimed at countering threats from terrorist groups affiliated with Turkeys archenemy PKK, but Erdogan's record of neo-Ottoman dreams and territorial expansionism has led analysts to attribute the Turks' insistence on continuing a military presence in Syria to Turkey's aspirations for annexation of Syrian territory.

In this regard, Turkey has started its real plans since 2018, when relative calm prevailed in Syria, and has shown that it is pursuing plans beyond border security in Syria by teaching Turkish language in terrorist-held regions and launching communication services by its main operator Türk Telekom.

A few years ago, AFP reported on this issue, saying that on a wall in the town of Azaz, located in the heart of the region under the Turkish mandate in northern Syria, this sentence is carefully written in Arabic and Turkish: ‘Brotherhood and sisterhood have no boundaries.’”

Turkey has also tried in recent years to change the demographic composition of northern Syria and thus eliminate the threat posed by the continuity of Kurdish areas on both sides of the border.

New York-based Just Security Institute, citing dozens of reports from human rights organizations, had earlier reported on the changing demographic composition of Kurdish areas under Turkish occupation, such as Afrin. According to the institute, Turkey expelled more than 100,000 Kurdish residents of Afrin in 2018 to settle Arabs in this area.

If Turkey succeeds in expanding and stabilizing the geographical area occupied by terrorist groups close to it under the rejuvenated crisis in Syria, it will certainly take an important step towards achieving the aforementioned goals.

This is a gamble that Erdogan seems to be very optimistic about at this point, given Russia's involvement in the war in Ukraine, the US and the Israeli regime's efforts to expel Iran from Syria, and the migration of Hezbollah forces to Lebanon in recent months.

Erdogan’s gamble has no return

Erdogan’s optimism about success of the recent Aleppo offensive will not last long, and the signs of change of equations have already showed themselves. Firstly, despite the initial surprise of the Syrian army and its tactical retreat to reduce casualties and concentrate defensive fortifications in Hama province, in recent days the advances of terrorists have completely stopped and Syria army and its allies have managed to liberate a majority of seized areas in Hama. It pushed the takfiris more than 20 kilometers back.

The Syrian army has now re-established itself outside Aleppo and has launched a counteroffensive. The Russian army has also carried out heavy airstrikes on terrorist positions, headquarters, and supply lines in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, and has so far managed to destroy many of them and kill nearly 2,000 terrorists. If this campaign continues, we will see more military victories on the ground in the coming hours and days against terrorists.

Secondly, it should be noted that the current conditions in Syria and even of the terrorists are very different from the conditions during the crisis years of past decade, and the liberation of the siezed areas, especially the city of Aleppo, will not be as difficult as 2016.

The army and allied resistance forces have been present in Aleppo for years and are fully familiar with the geography of the region. The people of Aleppo, who have seen the record of the crimes of the terrorists, attach no legitimacy to terrorists and do not cooperate with them like before.

From international point of view, these terrorist groups have no serious supporter except for Turkey and even many of them are blacklisted as terrorist groups. So, this time, the ground is prepared for their destruction more than any other time. In his recent speech, al-Assad asserted that the Syrian army is resolved to eliminate these terrorists and it will do this soon.

The terrorist attack on Aleppo proved that Turkey is not trustworthy and the positions of the Damascus leaders in disowning Erdogan's intentions to abandon anti-Syrian hostilities were completely realistic. Now the correctness of this view of the Syrians is proven to everyone, and Russia is likely to be more supportive of the resolve of Syria and its allies to completely retake Syrian territory from the terrorists.

It is clear that the generating crisis at this specific time is directly and indirectly meant to hit regional and international interests of Iran and Russia. Tehran will not allow the most important link in the Axis of Resistance to fall, and Moscow will not approve of losing its most important sphere of influence outside its borders, especially in the Mediterranean Sea. As for Iraq, the leaders of Baghdad have recognized the danger of the offensive on Aleppo to Iraq's national security and have emphasized their full support for Damascus and their standing by the Syrian military.

Erdogan’s fresh bet on the already losing horse not only will not secure his aims, but also with uprooting terrorists by Syrian army and resistance forces, Ankara will lose its only trump card against Damascus.