By @tendar
While the situation in Syria is still developing and in many cases unclear, one big elephant needs to be addressed:
Turkey
While we see many Turkish-backed units (SNA), especially east of Aleppo operating and taking position, it is clear that even the events by rebels (HTS and others) in this sector west of Aleppo have been tacitly accepted by Ankara.
In order to understand this, we have to look back when Turkey made a deal with Russia and Iran in the so-called Astana deal, which basically was a division of Syria into sphere of influences and keeping Assad on the throne, which in itself was already a hard pill for Turkey to swallow.
But faced with limited choices Turkey agreed, and its Syrian allies were promised a piece of land. This, however, was shortly later violated by Russia. Iranian and Assad forces with the help of the Russian air force took vast areas around Aleppo and even Idlib. President Erdogan was betrayed by Putin.
While we all shouldn’t be surprised that Putin does not give much on agreements, it was a new experience for President Erdogan, who shortly earlier accepted to buy the Russian S-400 air defense system, hoping to meet some of Putin’s interests. Well, that didn’t work out well.
On top of this, Russia tried to strong-arm Turkey in accepting the “new reality that Assad is going to stay”. You see that Russia loves talking about “new realities”, because this is what Russia does. It is about the “fait accompli”, not about rules or treaties. Putin saw this on top of the events.
Then came Putin’s disastrous decision to launch the full-scale war in Ukraine. Of course, he started it believing to be a short affair of 3 days, but almost 3 years later, it is clear for everyone to understand the magnitude of Putin’s miscalculation. It was monumental.
Russia’s adventure into Ukraine proved to be so costly that Moscow was forced to scramble all resources it can get and redeploy them to Ukraine and the Russian border areas. Furthermore, in order to keep supplies from the West afloat, Turkey became the main conduit, both political and economical.
Basically overnight, Turkey moved up and became the serious player in the Middle East and Black Sea region, which hasn’t been seen since the Ottoman times. Russia’s dependency on Turkey increased, considerably. If Russian tourist wanted to escape their homeland, then Turkey was number one.
This has been a vast change compared to 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian plane which violated Turkish airspace. Russian media and officials back then were calling Turkey names and compared it with the IS. Russia completely reversed the tone, because it has become the beggar in this picture.
Moving forward to the year 2024. The triple-humiliation by Putin against President Erdogan back in 2020 was not forgotten, not by Tayyip. The events in Ukraine, the Iranian adventures against Israel as well as Hezbollah’s degradation clearly shifted the power balance in the region.
In contrast to some Arab governments, Turkey resisted all attempts by Russia to recognize Assad’s rule over Syria, knowing well the weakness of the Russia-Iran-Hezbollah alliance which has been steadily weakening. All what Ankara had to do is to wait for the right moment.
And this moment most likely was reached a few days ago. The collective build-up and attack by several rebel groups was so big in size that Turkish intelligence officials most certainly have picked that up. In case of the SNA, it is safe to assume that they even played an active role.
The decisive conquest of Aleppo can be directly attributed to this Turkish patience. Surely, other components have played a decisive role in this game, too. Syrian rebels, as being directly at the frontline, saw Hezbollah’s degradation in Lebanon and its results in Syria, firsthand.
The resulting blitz offensive has completely shaken the power structures in the region. We will see frantic efforts by Iran and Russia to salvage what is possible. The question now is what Turkey is going to accept. Assad for what’s worth, will play now even less a role than before, if at all.
Turkey moved from being the weakest of the power brokers in this region to the strongest player. It is still unclear what this means in tangible means and the way might be still very long, but is clear that the trajectory will be a different one. Russia and Iran along Assad are the biggest losers.
In short:
Decisive Turkish Victory
