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Will Turkey Close Or Erase Its Border With Syria?
There are some new and worrying development on the ground next to Syria.
The Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov yesterday said that Russia is ready to close the Turkish Syrian border:
Lavrov recalled that French President Francois Hollande earlier voiced the proposal to adopt specific measures to block the Turkish-Syrian border.
"We actively support that. We are open for coordination of practical steps, certainly, in interaction with the Syrian government," he said. "We are convinced that by blocking the border we will in many respects solve the tasks to eradicate terrorism on Syrian soil."
Russia is taking active steps to make that happen. Six or seven truck staging areas near the crossing points north of Aleppo have been bombed over the last several days. Truckers and truck owners will now think twice before taking on a cross border trip. In Latakia the Syrian army and its allies are pushing Turkey's "turkmen" mercenaries back over the border into Turkey. From the east Kurdish forces with Russian air support push along the border towards the Aleppo corridor.
A day after Lavrov's statement the U.S. suddenly claims it also urges Turkey to seal the border. But that claim may be false:
The Obama administration is pressing Turkey to deploy thousands of additional troops along its border with Syria to cordon off a 60-mile stretch of frontier that U.S. officials say is used by Islamic State to move foreign fighters in and out of the war zone.
The U.S. hasn’t officially requested a specific number of soldiers. Pentagon officials estimated that it could take as many as 30,000 to seal the border on the Turkish side for a broader humanitarian mission. Cordoning off just one section alone could take 10,000 or more, one official estimated.
It’s unclear how Turkey will respond.
We do not know how serious the U.S. is about this. We do know that the U.S. connives the Islamic State's oil trade with Turkey and handles weapon transfers to the "moderate" rebels through the Turkish-Syrian border. I doubt that these issues have changed.
But Turkey is moving troops to the border:
Turkey deployed additional tanks, armoured personnel vehicles and other weapons alongside its border with Syria on Saturday after the downing of a Russian military jet by Turkish Armed Forces heightened the tensions between the two countries.
A convoy of military trucks, coming from western Turkish provinces and towing armoured personnel vehicles and 20 tanks, entered into the 5th Armored Division Command in the border province of Gaziantep.
Previous day, another batch of tanks were deployed alongside Turkish border with Syria.
Tanks are not very useful to close down borders. That needs infantry, lots of it. But tanks are good to fight other state's forces. There were also a report that Turkey deployed an ASELSAN Koral electronic jammer system at the border. That could probably jam the Russian air defense in Syria or could blind Russian fighter jets. Such a system was used to electronically blind the Syrian army and to disable its radios when the "moderates" earlier this year stormed in from Turkey and conquered Idleb.
To me the Turkish deployments so far look offensive, not like preparations to shut off the border.
Syria alleges that Turkish weapon shipments to the rebels increased and that its soldiers were fired on from Turkish ground:
"We have certain information that the Turkish government has recently increased its support to the terrorists and the level of their supplies of weapons, ammunition and equipment necessary to continue their criminal acts," an army statement said.
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The statement by the Syrian army command alleged that weapons were being delivered in shipments which Turkey claimed to be humanitarian assistance. It also alleged the weapons were supplied in exchange for looted Syrian and Iraqi antiquities and oil sold at low prices.
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The Syrian statement also said Turkey had fired a number of mortar bombs toward Syrian army positions on Friday night from a location just over the border from Latakia province in northwestern Syria.
Turkey may pull back from its aggression against Syria and really close its border. The weapons supply to the "moderates" would then shrink significantly. If Turkey does just sits tight and does nothing Russia will do it the way it already started to do it. It will bomb any truck or other transport that crosses into Syria.
But maybe Turkey wants to prevent that and will try to scare the Russian away from the border and to push its troops into Syria to create a "safe zone" and attack Aleppo and other Syrian cities from there. It is a bad idea. It would not work but it would be bloody and potentially escalate further into a bigger war. One wonders if Obama will give a green light for that and promises the "moderate" Erdogan his support.
PS: This may well be a good book: The Dirty War on Syria
Thanks b for all your work.
In light of the latest developments, US/Erdogan nefarious plans behind the shooting of the Russian plane can now be seen in perspective. Erdogan called Putin a few hours after shooting the plane, and Putin didn’t answer, Erdogan has since called for a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the climate conference in Paris next week, which the Kremlin only acknowledged and didn’t respond.
The intention behind shooting the plane was to present Russia with a de facto aggression, then do all the “theater of the absurd” (Peskov), issuing regrets, calling for moderation, no escalation, and for face to face meetings with Putin, to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse: let us continue our plans on Syria (sacking, plundering, pillaging), or the Turkey-Syrian border will cause you trouble, and more.
In other words, the “planned provocation” (Lavrov), was a blackmail operation.
It was planned to happen a week or so before the climate change conference, enough time to make Putin understand that it is better to talk and solve this issue before it escalates, which has been Turkey’s mantra ever since. At the same time, they are moving military hardware toward the border, intending to show their blackmail operation is serious, and the Russians better take notice. Either you sit and talk to us, or else…
Move aside, Don Barzini, here is mafia boss Erdogan, pretending to blackmail Russia and scare Putin, with the backup of cowardly NATO and the criminal USA.
When Russia offered to coordinate closing the Turkey-Syria border, Lavrov was piggybacking on spineless Hollande’s statement, which like so many from him, didn’t have any substance. But Lavrov is an astute diplomat, he knows diplomacy is war by other means, and since closing the border is in Russia’s interest, offering to coordinate with the West in such an endeavor had a logic on its own. In a way, Lavrov was also calling the West’s bluff to check how far they were willing to go with their intentions.
As b points out in his closing argument, we don’t know how far mafia boss Obama and his pimp Erdogan will go, but something is very clear, the US and Turkey are not going to scare Russia out of their vital, existential strategy in Syria, much less scare/blackmail Putin with threats and mafia style “talks.”
Posted by: Lone Wolf | Nov 28 2015 21:10 utc | 13
In the fourth century a Roman Emperor named Constantine moved the capitol of his empire Eastward, to a fine natural harbor that faced the Black Sea. Byzantium, a trading village by the harbor, had already been there a millenium, as a waypoint along the Silk Route between China and Europe. It now became Constantinople.
Western Christianity split away and collapsed into the Dark Ages. But the Eastern Byzantine twin, focused on Constantinople, grew and flourished for 1100 years, until Islamic Turks invaded and renamed it Istanbul. Just as the treasures of Christianity were spirited away to Byzantium as Rome fell, they were once again moved to a new center of Eastern Christianity, called Moscow.
The Turks proved to be fierce in battle but poor at administration. Their empire, called Ottoman, was a strict Islamic Caliphate, run by hereditary dictators who typically thought of themselves as deities. By the end of WW I, a war fought in part over oil still underground within the Caliphate, the empire could not hold. It shattered into many pieces, none stable. This was a perfect chance for Russia to retake the Orthodox spiritual center, still hidden within the shadows of Istanbul. But as if by an act of God, Russia collapsed at the same time!
The oil wealth was gradually peeled away from Turkish control, stolen for the most part by foreigners and infidels. The new secular state of Turkey was created, blessed with strategic position between the Black Sea and Mediterranean, but cursed by a lack of natural resources.
Behind the creation of the Turkish state was a secret society, called the Donmeh, that has also been called the deep state. In fact a part of the donmeh has Jewish roots, which include ties to the state religion of Saudia Arabia, Wahabbism, founded by a Jewish “convert”.
You might say that the modern deep state Donmeh coordinates interests of Turkey, Israel, the Saudis, and perhaps others. In some ways these seemingly hostile states could all benefit from a return of the Caliphate and creation of a new ‘Donmeh Empire’ where the Ottomans once ruled. Leaders in each of these countries might see an angle by which they could end up controlling this restored empire.
On the eve of the Syria campaign, Russia’s Putin spoke to his commanders with great passion about commencing a holy war to save Christianity, Operation Salvation. Putin spends part of each year in an Orthodox monastery, and has worked tirelessly to rebuild the Church within Russia. He is keenly aware of the suffering that has taken place among Eastern Christian communities in Ukraine, Syria, Turkey, and Armenia, to name a few. He is rebuilding traditional ties to other Eastern Christian groups in Serbia, Greece, Egypt, Armenia, Bulgaria, and beyond.
We could imagine that ISIS is a handy tool for restoration of a neo-Ottoman Empire, to be administered by some balance of power within the Donmeh. That is a dream, perhaps of many. But an alternate dream is that the Byzantine Empire is raised from the dead, newly centered around Russia and the restored spiritual center of Christian Costantinople.
Russia v Turkey could become the final clash between Christianity and Islam forecast by Albert Pike over a hundred years ago. On the grand chessboard, Russia and Turkey are noble opponents. But their mutual destruction may serve other actors, behind the scenes. There can only be one form of victory on such a battlefield – revealed truth.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2011/10/25/the-doenmeh-the-middle-easts-most-whispered-secret-part-i.html
Posted by: Seamus | Nov 29 2015 5:07 utc | 46
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