Turkey, which has made Aleppo the key to toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, is gearing up for the worst-case scenario now that the armed opposition groups it has been supporting have suffered a series of setbacks.
The scenario that is emerging is that the defeated groups, which are supported by the West, Turkey and the Gulf states, are being pushed north to the Turkish border. Initially, part of Turkey's design to create a buffer zone in northern Syria was to open up space for victorious armed groups north of Aleppo. Now, everyone is trying to make some sense of Turkey's moves.
