After Syria faceoff, Turkey and Russia try to de-escalate

ISTANBUL — Turkey and Russia tried on Friday to step back from the brink of a war that neither side wants, after 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in northwest Syria by forces backing the government in Damascus.

But tensions between the two nations remained high, not just because of the fight in Syria but more broadly as a contest over who will be the pre-eminent regional power as the United States scales back its global role.

Turkey wants to protect its border with Syria, while Russia wants to show that its military intervention has preserved Syria as a client state. Both sides have said they want to de-escalate, but neither side has been willing to back down, leading to fears of sliding into war. Emotions are running high and the source of their antagonism — the fate of Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in Syria — festers dangerously.

Ivan Konovalov, a Russian military analyst in Moscow, predicted that, with Washington out of the game in Syria, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, would, once again, pull back from open conflict and try to settle Syria’s future on their own.

Russia and Turkey, he said, “came to a critical point” but “we retain a relationship on the Syrian problem because we don’t have any other option, not for Russia, not for Syria.”

Putin and Erdogan support opposite sides in a Syrian war that has killed up to 400,000 people, and also in the conflict in Libya.

Turkey, desperate to keep Syrian President Bashar Assad’s last foes alive and slow the tide of Syrian refugees flooding across its border, is determined to prevent Idlib from falling. But Putin is just as determined to see it conquered by Assad so that Moscow can declare victory and end, or at least scale back, an expensive and increasingly risky military operation that is now in its fifth year.

As NATO ambassadors met Friday in Brussels in an emergency session and European leaders called for calm, Putin spoke by telephone with Erdogan in an effort to calm tensions. Trump also spoke by telephone with Erdogan, and the leaders promised “additional steps to prevent the great humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the Idlib region,” according to the Turkish government.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, insisted that Russia had honored a pledge to safeguard Turkish observation posts near Idlib. He said no Turkish servicemen had been hurt in these outposts, while suggesting that it was Turkey’s fault that some of its troops strayed beyond these designated areas into territory controlled by rebels.

“The tragic instances of deaths among Turkish personnel happened in the areas where terrorist gangs were conducting offensive operations,” Peskov said.

Turkish planes, artillery and drones retaliated after the attack, pounding Syrian government positions. “Our operations will continue until the bloody hands laid on our soldiers are broken,” said Hulusi Akar, Turkey’s defense minister.