But the truculent tone from Erdogan and his envoys are misplaced. Ankara is threatening to take more belligerent action if the Syrian army does not back off.
What Erdogan appears to be indulging in is a treacherous bluff. Ankara is flaunting support it has received from Washington. "Trump thanks ErdoÃ?Ã... ¸an for averting catastrophe in Idlib," reads a headline in the Turkish media this week. That is, of course, a preposterous distortion of what is going in Syria. Nevertheless, it shows how Washington is shaping up on the side of Ankara.
The American president also told Erdogan that he wants to see Russia ending its military backing for the "Syrian regime."
The Kremlin rejected that intervention from Washington and said it will remain steadfast in upholding Syria's inalienable right to fight terrorism on its territory.
As a member of the NATO military alliance, Turkey could potentially invoke a common defense provision and request that the US and other alliance members come to its aid in Syria. If that were to happen, then the Syrian war takes on an international dimension of immense stakes. It appears that Erdogan is dangling this threat of escalation in front of Syria and Russia.
At which point it should be recalled that at the root of the Syrian war is the problem of foreign interference. NATO members, including the US and Turkey, have been fueling the war from their covert sponsorship of terror groups (despite absurd official claims about fighting terrorism).
The war will finally end when these foreign powers which are illegally present in Syria begin to abide by international law and remove their forces from Syrian territory. Those forces include troops, warplanes, military bases and shadowy operators in the CIA and their Turk counterparts.
Turkey and its NATO accomplices no doubt realize the sordid game is up. Their nefarious plot to destroy Syria has failed. What they fear is the terror networks that they have cultivated like Frankenstein monsters will eventually move into Turkey and, like cancer, migrate en masse to other NATO member states. Blowback from hell.Erdogan, in his arrogance, seems to think that Syria should somehow tolerate these criminals on its land. And he is using a reckless threat of escalation to prevent the heroic Syria army from finishing the job of liberating its nation from a scourge that Turkey and NATO imposed on the Syrian people.
Syria and Russia should call Erdogan's bluff.
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