Today, a meeting of the National Security Council is planned in Turkey, where a decision may be made to carry out a new military operation with the aim of creating a safe zone 30 kilometers deep inside Syria along its northeastern border — in the territory under the control of the «Syrian Democratic Forces» («Kurds»), which are hostile to Ankara.
This is not the first National Security Council where such a decision could be made. Fortunately, the announcement of this operation has been made for several years, during which Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly promised to gain control over Manbij. It has been repeatedly stated that this will be done with or against the Americans. They were given time to «think». But the situation remains the same…
Meanwhile, if Erdogan is serious about his plans to create this zone or «corridor of peace» as it is called in Turkey, it is high time to hurry. Recently, the foreign minister of the Assad regime, Walid Muallem, not only declared that Syria would not agree to the creation of a Turkish safe zone — which is the condition set by Moscow for its agreement with it — but also demanded that all foreign troops leave the country. This, of course, means the American and especially the Turkish troops, because the Iranian and Russian troops are in Syria at the invitation of the so-called «legitimate authority».
The situation is putting pressure on Erdogan, even within Turkey itself. Not only is the flow of Syrian refugees increasing due to the offensive and bombings in Idlib, while Turks are increasingly demanding their return and the government claims it will provide it. It also poses a challenge to the opposition, particularly the main Republican People’s Party (CHP), which has been highly critical of Erdogan’s Syria policy and offers a completely opposite approach.
To this end, the CHP organized an international conference, «Syria: the path to peace,» to which it invited numerous partners and experts from different countries. However, the turnout was not very successful — the representatives of the Assad regime they wanted to see could not attend because Ankara did not grant them visas, and some of the experts who did arrive discredited the event in Turkey. This is especially the case of Dr. Amy Austin Holmes from Harvard, who openly supports the terrorist organization of the Kurdish communists YPG and is photographed with its members in their characteristic clothes against the background of their party symbols and demonstrating their party gestures.
Of course, all this does not make the main message of the CHP conference more popular, but in the context of Erdogan’s strategic failures, it becomes more convincing. And the message is that Turkey must give up its «adventure» in Syria, which is a legacy of the policy of the former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who is now excluded from the ruling party, reconcile with the «legitimate authority» of this country, represented by the Assad regime, and transfer control of all its territory to it, along with millions of Syrian refugees who can be returned to it.
This was the meaning of the speech of the main speaker of the conference — the leader of the CHP, Kemal Kilicdaroglu (in the photo), who had previously visited Bashar al-Assad and expressed his support and condemned the intervention of Erdogan and Davutoglu in the internal affairs of Syria. But what can Erdogan do about it? Endless threats, promises and air turbulence, as they accumulate, begin to have the opposite effect — they are no longer taken seriously.
It’s time to make a choice — in deeds, not in words. Either Ankara decides to carry out the operation for which it has had more than enough time to prepare, or it will witness, accompanied by loud statements, the next, final stage of the regime’s conquest of Idlib, followed by the return of the «Kurds» under its flag, after which it will be «forced» to recognize and deal with the «legitimate authority of Syria». In essence, one of these options will be chosen today by the National Security Council.