Recent escalations in Idlib present Russia with tall order

The situation in the Idlib de-escalation zone became seriously complicated Feb. 3. Turkey’s Defense Ministry reported the deaths of several Turkish troops and civilians in the Syrian province of Idlib as a result of shelling by the Syrian government forces. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who at the time was on a visit to Kiev, claimed that among the killed were three civilians and five soldiers. In retaliation, the Turkish artillery struck at the positions of the Syrian army in the area. The Russian Defense Ministry, in turn, said Ankara did not warn Moscow of the military activity in Idlib.

This incident has become a climax of yet another Russian-Turkish crisis over the Idlib issue that Al-Monitor reported earlier. Ankara claims that the Bashar al-Assad regime does not comply with a cease-fire in the de-escalation zone and Moscow is unable to restrain the Syrian president. Some Turkish politicians say that the new surge of violence has already led to 400,000 Syrian refugees fleeing toward Turkey. This makes the authorities react increasingly harsh to events taking place at the border where hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDP) have already accumulated.

Moscow, in turn, points out the need to continue the fight against terrorist groups that have settled in Idlib, emphasizing that this does not violate the principles of the Astana and Sochi agreements, and that such operations will proceed since Ankara was unable to fulfill its own part of the 2018 Sochi memorandum under which it commited to separate the jihadis from moderate opposition groups.

Despite the widening differences in approaches on Idlib, it is too early to say that the Russian-Turkish partnership has collapsed. The present situation is rather more about testing its strength.