ISTANBUL — Dozens of people were killed in airstrikes in the Syrian province of Idlib this week in what the United Nations called a “worsening nightmare,” as a truce negotiated between Russia and Turkey for the last rebel stronghold threatens to shatter.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a reprieve from a Russian-backed Syrian government onslaught on the northwestern province in September 2018. Now his focus appears to have shifted to the other side of Syria amid a Turkish troop buildup that portends an incursion east of the Euphrates River against a Kurdish militia Ankara deems a terrorist group.