“Immediate Cease-Fire Along Existing Lines” — Erdogan Gives Up His Failed Offensive
So ends the dream of throwing back the Syrian army, instead Turkey agrees to invite Russian troops into Idlib jihadistan
Throughout February Erdogan demanded the Syrian army stops its Idlib advances against al-Qaeda-held Idlib and falls back to its starting lines. Throughout February he threatened that if the Syrians did not do so his military would make them. Come the expiration of his February-end deadline he proved true to his threat to try and do so. Less than a week later he has admitted the battlefield defeat of his attempt. Far from forcing the Syrian army back, Erdogan in Moscow formally accepted that they’re not going anywhere and asked for a truce.
The cease-fire has been granted, but not entirely for free. Since the battlefield initiative remained (albeit only very slightly so) with the Syrian-Russian side, it was Erdogan who had to give up something for relief from further humiliation.
In addition to an immediate cease-fire, Erdogan and Putin agreed to a 6-kilometer “safe zone” to each side of the M4 highway that cuts across the territory still in rebel hands from the west to the east. The two also agree to joint Russian-Turkish patrols along its entire length.
This means Turkey will have to guarantee the safety of patroling Russians troops from jihadis, and if Turkey fails to deliver Moscow will once again feel itself justified in granting Damascus another green light for another offensive. (Not that Damascus will always feel it needs such a green light if it continues recovering strength.)
Also according to Putin’s statement, the need to eliminate UN-designated terror groups stipulated by the Sochi Agreement remains in place. So unless Turkey somehow dissolves the main rebel coalition Russia still reserves the right to have Syria do it at a later date.
Doubtlessly we’d be talking different terms right now if the Syrian army had not managed to stage a comeback and blunt the Turkish offensive. But with Erdogan failing to create gains for the jihadis on the ground there was certainly no need for Putin to grant him any in Moscow.
The outcome of all of this is that Erdogan has secured terms (a temporary freeze) he would have most likely been able to get without launching the invasion in the first place and losing 70 Turkish KIA, without creating considerable political problems for himself at home, and without once again torpedoing his image in the EU.
That — securing terms no better than what you could have had without a war — is the definition of military failure.
#Turkey makes major concessions to #Russia + #Syria despite admirable performance of its military in past weeks
1-Erdogan accepts retreat to current lines of control rather than pre-battle line
2-Assad secures strategic M4 highway under joint Turkish-Russian security corridor https://t.co/CLcNOyZo6C
— Firas Maksad (@FirasMaksad) March 5, 2020
How the 12-km “safe zone” (whatever that is supposed to be) looks on the map:
HOW OFTEN did Erdogan publicly promise to free the besieged Turkish army observation posts?
10 times? 20 times?!
More than 60 Turkish soldiers died for that promise.
No idea how Turks can still support him.— Julian Röpcke (@JulianRoepcke) March 5, 2020
So…
How is #OperationSpringShield going lads?
Asking for a friend…— — GEROMAN — (@GeromanAT) March 3, 2020
Fine, Erdogan negotiated a great buffer zone for us. We are now all sailors of the Free Syrian Navy pic.twitter.com/ihKvNsucjj
— TheEqualizer (@ColoniumKoeln) March 5, 2020
What a humiliating defeat for Turkey. Rather than just losing ground we intervened AND lost ground. And since they added "terrorist groups" clause SAA will again say they are fighting against terrorists and start another offensive once they build defenses, just like Sochi.
— Miraç Eren (@miraakeren) March 5, 2020
i hope thats an end to it…
but hard to tell, with that man…he’s bat shit crazy !!
Can anyone believe that Erdo will live up to its promises to secure the safe zone and neutralise al Qaeda any more this time than it did the last time it made promises, at Sochi?
-a lot depends on the increased political pressure at home.
(more physical fighting in parliament)
-the body bag count.
(Notice how the names and photos of dispatched turkish soldiers are finding their way to social media channels.)
-turkey’s coming debacle in Libya
(Haftar + Syria) with RU approval.
Putin didn’t either, Colin, but, has been playing a war of attrition all along, playing for time to allow Syria to get stronger.
They’ll try again. Israel and the United States will demand it.
Erdogan isn’t the “sharpest spoon in the drawer”.
ROFL. Thanks, John. Great stuff!
obviously amerikan/turk influence is eroding
http://www.sott.net/article/430222
US fascists r largely ignored and their turk/US proxies—al Qaeda, HTS, etc r excluded from the ceasefire…if turk soldiers wish to avoid casualties they will separate themselves from their terrorist proxies
All sounds good until the next violation and violation of any agreement. Turkey should be leaving Syria not embedding itself. If you look at the video one can see that Shoygu and Lavrov are not too happy; that body language says it all.
Here’s how Scott Ritter at RT views it:
“New Putin-Erdogan deal is sugar-coating the Turks’ surrender”
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/482477-erdogan-putin-turkey-idlib/
Did the legitimate question of why Turkey is in Syria ever arise? We know Erdogan has made bank re the migrants and Syrian oil.
This agreement strikes me as very much like the last one: made to be breached.
It would seem only a question of time before it’s breached, Thomas, just like the US/Taliban agreement. Syria and Russia will continue to liberate Idlib (decimate the terrorists) and Turkey will help its terrorists again, and full frontal attacks again. Plus ca change…
Erdogan claims that ‘the Syrian people’ invited him in, and that Turkey will not leave until those who invited Turkey in say that they want the Turks to leave. Conveniently, who those people are has not been identified, nor what proportion of the Syrian electorate they represent or who gave them leave to speak for the Syrian government, which certainly would not be fighting to dislodge and throw them out if it wanted them there. I imagine Erdogan spoke with some of the activists who have been trying to get a formulaic western military intervention going since the conflict began. It’s certainly not legitimate, and I imagine if you went looking for people in the UK who wanted the USA to intervene militarily to throw out the British government, you could find some.
“We did not go [to Syria] because we were invited by [Assad],” he said.
“We went there because we were invited by the people of Syria. We don’t
intend to leave before the people of Syria [say] OK, this is done.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/erdogan-says-border-will-stay-open-as-greece-tries-to-repel-influx
I find it difficult to believe President Putin actually spent six hours with Turkey President Erdogan.
If so, this has a “Delay them as much as possible” theme attached by Erdogan via US strategists.
One would have thought that if Turkey wanted a safe zone they would have established it on there own territory.
The best reaction to this news is………”Sssssuck it Erdogan!!!”
Then it will be time to remove the US terrorists from Syria.
The Russian goal of reducing the territorial footprint of Turkish backed rebels in Idlib through military or diplomatic means is working incrementally until the whole province is sanitized of terrorists.
this must be gradual in order to avoid the wholesale murder of civilians that resulted from the amerikan ethnic cleansing in Mosul
https://www.unz.com/ishamir/syria-corona-aipac/
That’s all very well, but I can’t help noticing the USA’s Ambassador to the UN was just in Syria (briefly) the other day, mugging for the camera with the White Helmets (all sporting brand-new helmets without a scratch on them, must be part of their dress uniform, for ceremonial occasions). At that time, Ms. Craft said that obviously, the first thing that was needed was an immediate cease-fire. I must observe that the USA has gotten its wish, and considering its own plan for Syria – which has endured setbacks but never really been abandoned – that cannot be good over the medium to long term.
Consider the example of Aleppo. While the jihadis were advancing or consolidating territory recently captured, the west made not a peep of objection. As soon as the Syrian government forces backed by Russian air power began to incrementally take it back, the western media exploded with acrimony over the heart-wrenching humanitarian situation, the atrocities, the war crimes, and the Last Hospital In Aleppo was destroyed on pretty much a daily basis for weeks, as if readers couldn’t count. What was needed, by God, was a cease-fire, and right now. Every time the west got a cease-fire in place, its operatives and proxies were busy as bees, calling up jihadi reinforcements, reallocating forces to likely breach positions and bringing up loads more ammunition and light weaponry. When the jihadi side – excuse me; ‘moderate rebels’ – felt their situation had stabilized, they would once more begin to advance to seize more territory, and the whole process would start again. It’s difficult to imagine how many SAA soldiers died needlessly due to injected strategic pauses demanded by the west so that the jihadis could regroup and freshen up.
The west would also love to see a no-fly zone so as to take Russian air striking power out of the equation, but that’s not going to happen. However, a cease-fire is bad enough. I’m certainly not eager to see more people die in an assault which is pressed to its conclusion, but experience should teach us that the west – led by the United States, for some unaccountable reason which has nothing whatever to do with demonstrated leadership ability – demands cease-fires not so much because it wants the situation to stabilize as because it wants to resupply its jihadi warriors, give them a pep-talk, pump them up and then throw them back into the line against the SAA. The west desperately wants a nice little jihadi outpost in Syria from which to stir things up whenever it wants to meddle. It was originally going to be Aleppo, then Raqqa…and now it’s Idlib.
It’s going to be hard to resupply the jihadi’s under the current conditions, with the M4 and M5 highways under Syrian (oops Russian/Turkish) control. I expect more jihadis to be heading to Libya. They won’t do anything useful for Turkey there, except die, which is what Erdogan should want at this point, if he has any brain at all.
If they slowly dribble out, then Russia has more time to make the point to Erdogan (if it needs to be made again), that Syria is allied to Russia (and Iran and Hezbollah), and they have a joint goal to restore Syria to its recognized borders.
It won’t be hard at all; light arms and ammunition can be brought in in covered trucks, and the UN will characterize them as emergency aid and order that they not be obstructed, searched or delayed. The UN consistently argues for ‘humanitarian corridors’ for exactly this reason; so that fleeing inhabitants can get out, yes, but also so that reinforcements can be brought in.
“Mr. O’Brien noted that despite very difficult and dangerous conditions,humanitarian aid organizations remain committed to continuing their work and reaching all those in need. In that regard, he reiterated a call for speedy, unconditional, and unimpeded and sustained access to the millions of people in need, particularly those in besieged and hard-to-reach areas across Syria.”
https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/09/539492-un-officials-condemn-attacks-against-aid-convoy-and-warehouse-rural-aleppo
There’s just enough deniability that UN officials can argue they don’t actually know what is in the trucks, and that they trust those who load them to only put in food, medicine and other necessities to sustain life under a blockade. But there can’t be any western leaders left who don’t know the west is supplying the sinews of war to terrorist groups whose only plan for Syria is to wipe out Assad and the Alawites. That’s what makes them such perfect allies to the social engineers of the west – they are completely uninterested in leading or building a new nation, and will leave all the statecraft arrangements to the meddlers.
“It won’t be hard at all; light arms and ammunition can be brought in in
covered trucks, and the UN will characterize them as emergency aid and
order that they not be obstructed, searched or delayed”
Ridiculous! The UN is not doing the monitoring.
“At that time, Ms. Craft said that obviously, the first thing that was
needed was an immediate cease-fire. I must observe that the USA has
gotten its wish, and considering its own plan for Syria”
Ridiculous!
The M4 Highway 6 km wide rodent exclusion zone effectively yields the area south of the highway to Syria, so another good turn of events.
It is just another BS agreement, so Turkey can bring more troops and weapons into Syria.
Putin shall know, you do not talk to dog, you talk to his owner, US
Some Turks undoubtedly feel they have a claim to the region.
Back around WWI the French gave some of this region to Turkey trying to influence Turkey’s position in the war.
I don’t know the full history, but I would think that influences Erdogan.
Talk about a “safe zone” is just camouflage.
The Ottoman Empire controlled this entire area until its collapse following WWI. The French who controlled Syria after WWI, gave the Hatay Province of Syria to Turkey prior to WWII. If you “don’t know the full history”, then don’t comment.
it’s because he loves to burp and parrot bs……no own standing point……
So be a jerk in another forum, why don’t you?
http://www.sott.net/article/430281
this reflects that the US empire is near collapse. a nation of impotent, passive, stupefied people now sexually assaulting cell phones
Good one, cechas. ”
a nation of impotent, passive, stupefied people now sexually assaulting cell phones…”Beautifully said!