{"id":155484,"date":"2020-03-02T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=155484"},"modified":"2024-09-23T14:39:27","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T13:39:27","slug":"turkey-now-claims-syrias-idlib-province-as-turkish-territory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/03\/turkey-now-claims-syrias-idlib-province-as-turkish-territory\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Now Claims Syria\u2019s Idlib Province as Turkish Territory"},"content":{"rendered":"

28 Feb 2020 – <\/em>On February 26th, Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey\u2019s President, told his Islamist political party that Idlib, which is the most heavily jihadist of all of Syria\u2019s provinces and the province where Syria had been sending jihadists who had been defeated but not killed by the Syrian army elsewhere in the Syrian war, is now permanently under Turkey\u2019s protection, and belongs to Turkey \u2014 Turkish territory. Russia\u2019s RT news headlined on the 26th, \u201c\u2018We\u2019re the hosts there\u2019: Erdogan says Turkey won\u2019t pull back from Syria\u2019s sovereign territory, gives Assad ultimatum to retreat\u201d<\/a>, and reported that,<\/p>\n

The Turkish leader has ruled out withdrawal from Idlib, where his forces are backing militants fighting the Syrian Army. He also gave Damascus an ultimatum to retreat beyond Turkey\u2019s observation posts placed on Syrian soil.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not step back in Idlib. We are not the guests in this realm, we are the hosts,\u201d Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting of his AK party on Wednesday. Vowing to bring \u201cthe regime\u2019s attacks\u201d to an end, Erdogan said Ankara is giving Damascus time to pull forces back from Turkish observation posts.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The very next day, on the 27th, the Turkish English-language newspaper Yeni Safak<\/em> bannered \u201cSituation in Syria\u2019s Idlib \u2018in favor of Turkey\u2019:<\/a> Turkish president says Turkey has also reversed situation in Libya, which was previously in favor of Libyan warlord Haftar\u201d and they reported that Erdogan saw signs that Turkey was introducing new international realities in both Syria and Libya.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A group of men with Al-Qaeda flags in Idlib province. \u00a9 REUTERS\/Khalil Ashawi<\/p><\/div>\n

This extraordinarily assertive position by Erdogan results from the sequence of events that will be described here:<\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. allies made unequivocally clear in late August and early September of 2018 that if Syria and Russia would try to restore Syrian Government control over Syria\u2019s Idlib Province, then the U.S. and its allies would greatly escalate their war against Syria\u2019s Government. For example, on 3 September 2018, Trump tweeted<\/a>, \u201cPresident Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed.\u201d South Front reported, the following day<\/a>, that,<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s tweet comes as Iran\u2019s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the start of his visit to Damascus said that \u201cterrorists must be purged\u201d from the province and Idlib in its entirety must be returned under government control.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSyria\u2019s territorial integrity should be safeguarded and all tribes and groups, as one society, should start the reconstruction process, and the refugees should return to their homes,\u201d Mr Zarif said.<\/em><\/p>\n

Zarif met with President Assad and the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem. They mostly discussed the expected September 7th summit, which will happen in Tehran. Russian, Turkish, Syrian and Iranian leaders are supposed to meet and discuss the situation in Idlib.<\/em><\/p>\n

A statement from Assad\u2019s office said that Iran and Syria \u201chad similar views on the different issues\u201d that are to be discussed.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On 10 September 2018, I wrote<\/a> that \u201cUnless Syria will simply hand its most heavily pro-jihadist province, Idlib, to adjoining Turkey, which claims to have 30,000 troops there and is planning to add 20,000 more<\/a>,\u201d there would be a war between NATO member Turkey, which has invaded there, versus Russia<\/em>, which \u2014 at Syria\u2019s request \u2014 has been assisting Syria\u2019s Government to conquer all of Syria\u2019s jihadists. Syria\u2019s Army has gradually liberated and retaken most of Syria\u2019s territory from jihadists, but had been using Idlib Province as a collection-area for the ones who were holding Syrian civilians as human shields. Syria was bussing into Idlib the tens of thousands of jihadists that surrendered<\/a>. This was being done so as to minimize the numbers of civilians who would be killed when Syria\u2019s army would retake an area, under Russian air-cover. This would allow the civilians there to escape to Syrian-Government-held territory, and the armed forces of Syria and Russia then to move in and slaughter the jihadists who remained there, so that Syria would retake that area from the U.S.-backed jihadists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then, seven days later, I headlined \u201cPutin and Erdogan Plan Syria-Idlib DMZ as I Recommended\u201d<\/a>, and reported that,<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin and Turkey\u2019s President Tayyip Erdogan jointly announced on September 17th in Tehran, <\/em>\u201cWe\u2019ve agreed to create a demilitarized zone between the government troops and militants before October 15. The zone will be 15-20km wide,\u201d<\/em><\/a> which compares to <\/em>the Korean DMZ\u2019s 4-km width<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though the understanding that Erdogan had reached with Iran\u2019s President Rouhani and with Russia\u2019s President Putin was that this would be only a temporary measure in order to get the U.S. and its allies to cease threatening World War III if Syria and Russia promptly let loose and slaughtered the \u2018rebels\u2019 in Idlib (Americas\u2019s previous main fighters to defeat and replace Syria\u2019s Government), Erdogan soon presented clear indications that he actually wanted to seize Syrian territory and to get as much of it as he could \u2014 that his goal in Syria included expanding Turkey into Syria. His temporary policing function, as agreed-to by Russia, to isolate and not allow to escape the defeated jihadists who had become trapped there, turned out to be far more than that: it turned out to be Erdogan\u2019s protection<\/em> of those jihadists.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Middle East Eye<\/p><\/div>\n

On September 25th of 2018, I bannered \u201cTurkey Now Controls Syria\u2019s Jihadists\u201d<\/a>, and presented the historical background behind this. Then, on 14 July 2019, I headlined \u201cTurkey Will Get a Chunk of Syria: An Advantage of Being in NATO\u201d<\/a>, and explained that because of NATO\u2019s backing of Turkey\u2019s seizure of Syrian territory, Turkey was already committed to the construction of Syrian branches of Turkey\u2019s Gaziantep University and of Turkey\u2019s Harran University, as well as of building supportive infrastructure for those facilities \u2014 absorbing portions of northern Syria into Turkey.<\/p>\n

So, this has been a gradual process, and now Erdogan, backed by U.S.President Trump and by NATO, will be saving the lives of the tens of thousands of jihadists (plus their families) who had been defeated elsewhere in Syria, and who thus will avoid what the U.S. and its allies had warned would be a \u2018humanitarian crisis\u2019 of mass-slaughtering those defeated jihadists (which the U.S. and its allies still call \u2018Syrian rebels\u2019 \u2014 even though most of them aren\u2019t even Syrian).<\/p>\n

As I noted in the 14 July 2019 article:<\/p>\n

At that time, just prior to the Tehran conference \u2014 and this was actually the reason why the conference was held \u2014 <\/em>the U.S. and its allies, and the U.N., were demanding that an all-out invasion of Idlib, which had been planned by the Governments of Syria and of Russia, must not take place, for \u2018humanitarian\u2019 reasons.<\/em><\/a> There was all that \u2018humanitarian\u2019 concern (led by the United States) for the world\u2019s biggest concentration of Nusra and Nusra-led jihadists \u2014 and for Syria\u2019s most jihadist-supporting civilian population. So much \u2018kindness\u2019, such \u2018admirable\u2019 \u2018humanitarianism\u2019. <\/em><\/p>\n

Furthermore the U.S. Government was threatening to greatly increase its forces against Syria if that invasion by Syria and by Russia into Idlib (which is, after all, part of Syria \u2014 so, what business is it, even of the U.N., at all?) were to be carried out. The Tehran conference was meeting in order to resolve that emergency situation (mainly America\u2019s threats of a possible war against Russia), so as to forestall this attack.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now Erdogan again is threatening Russia with WW III if Russia continues to defend Syria\u2019s sovereignty over Idlib \u2014 Syria\u2019s most-jihadist province<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On February 26th, Yeni Safak<\/em> bannered \u201cTurkey will never compromise on Sochi deal for Syria, says Erdo\u011fan\u201d<\/a>; so, Erdogan is openly threatening WW III if Russia and Syria resist Turkey\u2019s seizure of Idlib and protection of its many thousands of jihadists.<\/p>\n

Although the U.S. has led this apparent victory for jihadists and for international aggression, Turkey\u2019s Erdogan has been its spearhead. Russia and Iran had not agreed to this. Certainly, Syria\u2019s leader, Bashar al-Assad, hadn\u2019t agreed to anything like this outcome. Turkey, in its 10 September 2018 agreement with Russia and with Iran, had committed itself to separating-out and killing the jihadists; but, instead, Turkey has been protecting them, and now will be absorbing them, and taking Idlib Province from adjoining Syria. As recently as 22 October 2019, Erdogan had promised Putin in Sochi<\/a> that \u201cThe two sides reiterate their commitment to the preservation of the political unity and territorial integrity of Syria,\u201d and that, \u201cThey emphasize their determination to combat terrorism in all forms and manifestations and to disrupt separatist agendas in the Syrian territory.\u201d Yeni Safak\u2019<\/em>s February 26th article opened \u201cTurkey will never compromise on the Sochi deal on embattled Idlib, Syria and it expects the deal to be implemented, said the country’s president on Wednesday.\u201d Turkey \u201cexpects the deal to be implemented\u201d while blatantly violating it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Brett McGurk<\/a>, a leading neoconservative in the Administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, admitted, on 27 July 2017, that \u201cIdlib Province is the largest Al Qaeda safe-haven since 9\/11, tied directly to Ayman al-Zawahiri,\u201d<\/a> and that \u201cto send in tens of thousands of tons of weapons and looking the other way as these foreign fighters come into Syria, may not have been the best approach,\u201d but yet the U.S. regime continues that approach, and backs Turkey\u2019s grab of Idlib and protection of those jihadists. Previously, McGurk had been U.S. President Barack Obama’s special envoy for the anti-Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) coalition. He had supported jihadists led by al-Nusra (Syrian branch of Al Qaeda) and supported separatist Kurds in Syria, to overthrow Syria\u2019s Government.<\/p>\n

Even the liberal (or Democratic Party, pro-Obama) neoconservative Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0 had not hidden the fact that<\/a> \u201cThe U.S. team, headed by senior White House adviser Robert Malley and State Department envoy Brett McGurk\u201d had informed the newspaper that \u201cRussia was said to have rejected a U.S. proposal to leave Jabhat al-Nusra off-limits to bombing as part of a cease-fire\u201d \u2014 the fact that Obama was actually protecting<\/em> those jihadists<\/strong> (though not<\/em> protecting ISIS or \u2018ISIL\u2019). Obama backed al-Qaeda there, and so does Trump. However, when Trump ran for the Presidency in 2016, he promised to reverse Obama\u2019s obsession to overthrow Syria\u2019s President Bashar al-Assad. That, and similar promises he made, were antithetical to the most-basic commitments of the U.S. Establishment. They became his implacable enemies.<\/p>\n

Finally, on 10 November 2016, right after Trump\u2019s election, that same newspaper, the WP<\/em>, bannered \u201cObama directs Pentagon to target\u00a0al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, one of\u00a0the most formidable forces\u00a0fighting Assad\u201d<\/a> and, without noting that Obama had supported<\/em> that \u201cal-Qaeda affiliate\u201d until then, but instead falsely reporting that \u201cthe administration had largely ignored until\u00a0now\u201d it, said: \u201cWhile Obama, White House national security adviser Susan E. Rice, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and special presidential envoy Brett McGurk agreed\u00a0with [the super-neoconservative Obama Secretary of Defense Ashton] Carter on the need to keep the focus on the Islamic State, they favored shifting resources to try to prevent al-Nusra from becoming a bigger threat down\u00a0the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was extreme euphemism, coming from this extremely neoconservative liberal newspaper. Actually, Obama had built his overthrow-Assad operation mainly upon al-Nusra, to train and lead the tens of thousands of foreign jihadists who had been pouring into Syria<\/a>. The Washington Post<\/em> was one of the most lying, deceptive, newspapers reporting anywhere in the world about international relations, very heavily slanted neoconservative \u2014 in favor of expanding the U.S. mega-corporate empire. Whereas the separatist Kurds were America\u2019s main proxy-army fighting in Syria\u2019s northeast, al-Nusra led America\u2019s proxy-armies everywhere else in Syria.<\/a> That 10 November 2016 WP<\/em> article also asserted \u201cBut aides say Obama grew frustrated that more wasn\u2019t being done by the Pentagon and the intelligence community to kill al-Nusra leaders given the\u00a0warnings he had received from top counter\u00adterrorism officials about the gathering threat they posed.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s another lie, because Secretary of State John Kerry had actually fought inside the Administration against Obama\u2019s policy on that, and the policy came from Obama himself \u2014 and NOT from his subordinates (such as Ashton Carter)<\/a>, as that lying newspaper alleged. The article referred to \u201cthe expanded push against al-Nusra\u201d \u2014 but here is the reality: by no later than December 2012 Obama had settled upon al-Nusra to lead America\u2019s overthrow-Assad campaign inside Syria<\/a>. And the reason for that has very deep historical roots \u2014 all hidden from the American public<\/a>. Instead of such realism, that propaganda-organ, in its article on 10 November 2016, wrote:<\/p>\n

A bitterly divided Obama administration had tried over the summer to cut a deal with Moscow on a joint U.S.-Russian air campaign against al-Nusra, in exchange for a Russian commitment to ground Syrian government warplanes and to allow more humanitarian\u00a0supplies into besieged areas. But the negotiations broke down in acrimony, with Moscow accusing the United States of failing to separate al-Nusra from\u00a0more moderate rebel groups and Washington accusing the Russians of war crimes in Aleppo.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Humanitarian\u2019. How stupid does the owner of the Washington Post<\/em> think that the American public is in order for it still to believe that its Government really cares about being \u201chumanitarian\u201d around the world \u2014 especially<\/em> in countries it\u2019s trying to conquer, such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia \u2026? Really? He thinks it\u2019s that<\/em> stupid? Or, does he think his newspaper can help to make them so misinformed<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

That rabidly anti-Russian newspaper continued there:<\/p>\n

Russia had accused the United States of sheltering al-Nusra, a charge repeated Thursday in Moscow by Russian Foreign\u00a0Minister Sergei Lavrov.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe president doesn\u2019t want this group to be what inherits the country if Assad ever does fall,\u201d a senior U.S. official said. \u201cThis cannot be the viable Syrian\u00a0opposition. It\u2019s al-Qaeda.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Officials said the administration\u2019s hope is that more-moderate rebel factions will be able to gain ground as both the Islamic State and al-Nusra come under\u00a0increased military pressure.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article also featured a headline and link to their 9 November 2016 news-story, \u201cIntelligence community is already feeling a sense of dread about Trump\u201d<\/a>. Even back then, the Democratic Party\u2019s billionaires were pumping their agents\u2019 allegations which would lead to Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and ultimately to Ukrainegate and Trump\u2019s impeachment for being insufficiently supportive of President Obama\u2019s 2014 coup and conquest of Ukraine, which Obama had started planning by no later than 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All of that was a warning to any current or future U.S. President, that to buck the collective will of America\u2019s billionaires is to commit political suicide. It doesn\u2019t make any difference what the President\u2019s Party is \u2014 the dictate, from the billionaires, applies to any<\/em> U.S. President. This \u2018restored Cold War\u2019 is nothing of the sort \u2014 on the U.S. side, the war secretly continued uninterrupted, even after the Soviet Union ended its communism, and its Warsaw-Pact mirror of America\u2019s NATO military alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 <\/em>They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/a>,<\/em> of\u00a0<\/em>Christ\u2019s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>, and\u00a0of<\/em>\u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 26th, Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey\u2019s President, told his Islamist political party that Idlib, which is the most heavily jihadist of all of Syria\u2019s provinces and the province where Syria had been sending jihadists who had been defeated but not killed by the Syrian army elsewhere in the Syrian war, is now permanently under Turkey\u2019s protection, and belongs to Turkey \u2014 Turkish territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":112456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[703,1749,1748,260,1050,950,583,234,767,291,86,109,287,1190,923,413,265,124,70,126,118],"class_list":["post-155484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-syria-in-context","tag-al-qaeda","tag-chemical-weapons-attack","tag-fake-report","tag-history","tag-imperialism","tag-invasion","tag-isis","tag-media","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-occupation","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-regime-change","tag-sanctions","tag-syria","tag-terrorism","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275051,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155484\/revisions\/275051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}