Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrives for the NATO summit, at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, 2018. Photo: AFP
Araz Barwari | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
Turkey is facing a tough battle with Syrian military forces in Idlib province.It seems hard for Turkey to win this battle with Syrian military easily, without a big cost, and in a short time.As a matter of fact, Turkey has already lost many soldiers since the clashes started in Idlib between the military forces of the two countries.
However, Turkey has just began realizing that winning the battle with Assad forces is not as easy as winning it with Kurds, because Assad has enough support from Russian and Iran, and also enough advanced weapons that can hit Turkey’s military from air, land and sea.After Turkey lost many of its soldiers, she started backing up and down a little bit and asking for help from NATO as it can not win the battle alone against Syria.
It’s also begging Russia to stop helping Syrian military forces in hitting Turkish soldiers in Syria. But NATO and Russian are not listening to Turkey because they don’t want to sacrifice their interests for the interests of Turkey in Syria.
It seems unlikely that NATO will help Turkey militarily to win this battle because If NATO provide Turkey with advanced weapons such as patriot system, it will be a danger to Russian warplanes and Russia will immediately retaliate and provide Assad with more advanced weapons and will even help Assad’s military to shoot down Turkish and Israeli warplanes in the sky of Syria.
However, if NATO betray or neglect Turkey in Syria, the loyalty of NATO towards Turkey goes under question and it’s trust will be broken probably not only by Turkey but by more members of NATO. In fact, it seems NATO likes to watch Turkey having a war with Syria by itself because after all NATO wants Assad regime toppled and at the same time wants to see members of the Jihadi groups within the Syrian rebels to be killed too in the war. Russia also likes to see both the Jihadi Syrian rebels and Turkish soldiers bleed too so that to teach a lesson to Turkey and show her who is the boss here and make Turkey think twice before shooting down Russian jet fighters. again.
Business and personal interests are behind this Syrian long time conflict. As we see NATOs help for Turkey is conditional because it wants Turkey to listen more to NATO and stop buying or making advanced weapons unilaterally. NATO also wants Turkish government to changes its policies to strengthen and better democracy, human rights and rule of law within Turkey and improve good relations outside towards its own neighbours particularly Greece, Cyprus and Israel.
NATO basically wants Turkey to stop pursuing and implementing the dreams and imperialistic policies of Islamic Othmanism combined with ultra nationalistic mentally of Kemalism in Turkey through militarism, force, and aggression towards its neighbours. What Turkey is basically doing is securing it’s interests at the expense of hurting the interests and values of other nations.
Clearly, Since Erdogan came to power, Turkey has been acting irresponsibly, unilaterally, and recklessly towards its neighbours Syria and Iraq and also towards Israel, Cyprus and Greece in the region.
The war in Syria is over ideological differences but is mainly over business and personal interests of several players. Turkey wants Syrian Sunni Muslim rebels reach power and rule over Syria. However, A friendly secular democratic and pro Israel and west regime is what NATO wants to take over in Syria.While Russia and Iran prefer Assad and his political party as pro Russian and Hezbollah of Lebanon men to remain in charge in Syria.
Araz Barwari is a law student at the University of Nawroz in Kurdistan of Iraq.
The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Ekurd.net or its editors.
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