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Three Takes on Mideast Pandemic:
Turkey-Syria, Egypt, Gulf |
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1. Turkey: Erdogan presses Syria campaign despite rising coronavirus numbers
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pressing ahead with military deployments in Idlib and strengthening his country’s occupation of Syrian territory east of the Euphrates River despite a rising COVID-19 toll at home, with 69,392 cases and 1,518 deaths in Turkey as of April 15. In Syria, where the virus has just begun to be recorded, there have been 33 reported cases and two deaths.
Buildup in Idlib: Turkey continues to transfer military vehicles and munitions to Idlib province and now maintains 53 outposts there, Fehim Tastekin reports. A March 5 cease-fire between Syrian and Turkish forces, agreed by Ankara and Moscow, has so far held. The agreement, however, calls for Turkey to “eliminate” terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which it has so far been unable and perhaps unwilling to do. HTS and associated gangs rule large parts of Idlib. In 2018, the United States designated HTS a terrorist group and the UN Security Council included HTS as a sanctioned entity linked to the Islamic State and al Qaeda.
Kurdish campaign continues: Meanwhile, Turkish-backed Syrian opposition groups have attacked towns controlled by the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria and terrorized civilians hoping to return to their homes. Ankara considers the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, which makes up the bulk of the SDF, a terrorist group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party. Turkish control of its Syrian proxies may be slipping, however, writes Tastekin. “Discontent and disarray seem to be growing. … A quarrel over the houses and businesses that the militia sees as spoils of war escalated into an armed conflict in the town of Kharabat in Ras al-Ain. … Episodes of looting similar to what happened in the formerly Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin are now unfolding in the Peace Spring [Turkish-occupied] region.”
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Our take: With COVID-19 an emerging crisis at home, Erdogan’s military adventures in Syria risk becoming more of a quagmire, his own endless war. His goal of a Turkish-occupied “safe zone” in northeast Syria to relocate 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey was always fantastical. His confrontation with Syrian government forces in Idlib, which the United States has sought to exploit (see below), has only dug a deeper hole. The pandemic’s economic hit increases the costs of the Syria campaign and strengthens Erdogan’s reliance on Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to hammer out a back channel de-escalation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. | | | | |
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