Turkey’s options limited as world awaits Idlib operation
The international community sounds ever more frantic begging the Syrian regime to stop its deadly advance on Idlib, the rebel-held province that will likely produce millions more refugees as it is retaken by the government's forces.
“Do you know that not only birds fly in the Syrian sky? There are a lot of huge metal bodies sending death presents to us from the sky every day.” The grim image painted by Housam Abdoulgani, an award-winning young Syrian documentary director, in an essay titled “112 Questions for Humanity about Syria” looms over Idlib, the rebel-held province that Syrian government forces are gearing up to attack.
The United Nations, the pope, even US President Donald Trump have weighed in with appeals against a bloodbath. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is begging Moscow and Tehran for more time to get as many members of al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to give up their fight and effectively surrender.
A critical meeting between Erdogan, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani in Tehran on Sept. 7 will likely reveal how much time, if any, Turkey has left to rein in the jihadis who once freely moved men and weapons across the Syrian-Turkish border.
So far, the calls are falling on deaf ears. HTS leaders have vowed to fight to the death. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Syrian Arab Army was preparing to “clear a cradle of terrorism” in Idlib. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, reported today that after a three-week lull, Russian jets had carried out 30 raids on about 16 rebel-held areas in western Idlib, the mountains of Latakia province and the Sahl al-Ghab plain.
