Al-Jarida
The coming Syrian volcano
The Middle East is now over the mouth of a very active volcano that is about to erupt after the shooting down of the Russian fighter with Turkish missiles while it was striking terrorist groups in Syria. This incident will not pass peacefully in view the dangerous acceleration in the Russian attitude and the statements made by President Putin, who described the incident as a “stab in the back by Turkey”, then changed his words to a “declaration of war against Russia”. He also accused President Erdogan of being a “major regional supporter of IS”.
The Turkish attitude, itself, seemed weird and unjustified. It coincided with very rapid developments after the terrorist attacks in France. Some official and nonofficial European voices started calling for choking certain countries they pinpointed, including Turkey, accusing them of ideologically and politically supporting radical armed organizations through facilitating their operations and providing them with logistic and financial support. Western demands even went as far as holding those countries accountable even if they were allies. At the same time, Russia was beginning to achieve field victories in such a short period and managed to do what the US allied forces failed to do in two years.
Many strategic analysts justify Turkey’s, Western and even, some regional countries’ disturbance by the Russian interference in Syria by the destruction Moscow managed to afflict upon terrorist insurgents, their headquarters, lines of oil supply and infrastructure. The Russian strikes included IS and other insurgents who are deemed as ‘negotiation tools’ in the hands of some regional and international powers who intend to use them in the coming Vienna meeting. In other words, the Russians have been achieving both military and political achievements and victories and the ones who would be most affected with such victories are the Turks, who have fully supporting toppling the Syrian regime, which is becoming impossible.
Therefore, shooting down the Russian fighter by Turkish planes, ambushing it flying out of a NATO base and its falling in territories controlled by Syrian Turkmen, has very clear indications of forcing the entire NATO into the problem to back up Turkey. Therefore, the quick Russian reaction to shooting down one of its planes by deploying its S300 and S400 missiles along Turkish borders will surely be responded to by deploying NATO’s missiles along the other side of the Syrian borders, which is similar to what happened between the Soviet Union and US when they divided Europe into eastern and western sides during the Cold War with only one major difference this time - the war in Syria is no longer cold. In fact it is becoming extremely hot and might even get hotter within the next few days.
The prime beneficiary of shifting the confrontation into one between regional countries and major powers is IS and other terrorist organizations who are currently very capable of reaching central Europe as they did in Paris.