Turkey-Russia discord over Idlib defers regime offensive, for now

ISTANBUL: Disagreement between Turkey and Russia over how to tackle the Syrian rebel stronghold of Idlib seems to have deferred a looming regime offensive on the province, analysts say.

Russia and Turkey are on op-

key global allies.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Russian and Iranian leaders Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani in Tehran on September 7 to discuss Syria, just as a major assault by Russia-backed regime forces on Idlib appeared imminent.

But discord at the summit between Erdogan and Putin, in a rare scene captured on camera, may have prompted Russia to postpone the Idlib strike so as not to provoke

to a military option.

“I believe an offensive, if there will be one, will not come before several weeks,” a senior Turkish official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Turkey, which backs rebels

al- Assad’s regime, co- sponsors — with regime allies Russia and Iran — the so-called Astana talks launched in January 2017 in the

To date, the dialogue has resulted in the creation of four pre-

Syria, including in Idlib.

Idlib is the last major opposition stronghold in the war-torn country. Sixty percent of the area is controlled by the Hayat Tahrir alSham (HTS) jihadist group, an alQaeda branch operating in Syria.

Intense negotiations have taken place between Turkey and Russia since the failure of the Tehran summit, to hammer out a compromise in a bid to avert an assault which Erdogan has cautioned would ignite a “bloodbath”. Such a compromise could include neutralising the HTS — of-

by Ankara. Erdogan and Putin are expected to discuss the issue when they meet in the Russian resort city of Sochi on Monday.

Compromise formula

For Turkey, the stakes are high.

Ankara fears a large-scale assault on Idlib, which lies on its southern

refugees onto its soil. Turkey is already home to more than three million Syr-

Abdul Wahab Assi, an analyst at the Syria-based Jusoor Studies Centre, said disagreements at the Tehran summit “rule out a possible offensive in the short run, at least until the end of the year.”

He said a possible compromise from the ongoing talks could take the form of a “limited military operation or surgical strikes” targeting the HTS, or modifying the borders of the de-escalation zones to keep armed rebels from certain sectors.

Russia may be open to such a plan, Assi said, as long as it would secure the Idlib section of the AleppoDamascus highway and put an end to drone attacks launched from Idlib against Moscow’s main military base of Hmeimim in the neighbouring province of Latakia.

Some three million people live in Idlib province and adjacent areas, the United Nations says, around

homes in other parts of Syria.

Regime forces and Russian warplanes resumed airstrikes on Idlib in September but the strikes fell in intensity this week.

Turkish ‘defensive’ reinforcements

Turkish media reported Ankara has sent reinforcements, including tanks, to beef up its border with Syria and its observation posts in Idlib.

Turkish military analyst Metin Gurcan, judges these measures to be of a “defensive” nature, aimed at protecting Turkish observation posts against any possible threat.

Gurcan said the lack of an agreement with Ankara could push Moscow, and thus the Syrian regime, to stage an “incremental operation that will last months” rather than a fullfledged attack.

“Russia is trying to keep Ankara in the game,” he told AFP, saying any confrontation between the two countries was “highly unlikely.”

“Moscow needs Turkey as a Sunni power to balance Shiite militias’ presence in northern Syria,” he said.