ANKARA: The March 5 meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin pressed pause on the military campaign in northern Syria, but in truth, the agreement between the two is likely to be violated in the not so distant future. All it achieved was to buy both parties time.
For Aaron Stein, director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, this is an ideal, short-term outcome for the embattled province of Idlib.
“While I suspect there to be numerous violations, freezing the violence is in the interests of the most vulnerable, who can only flee to the border,” he told Arab News.
Although the Idlib cease-fire fell short of Ankara’s expectations, it prevented regime troops, for now, from taking the entire province, pushing up to 2 million civilians in the city of Idlib to flee toward Turkey, which already hosts 4 million Syrian refugees.
With rising economic and social tensions, along with the Turkish economy’s downward trend, Ankara would rather keep the refugees in Syria.
But, for Alexey Khlebnikov, an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council: “The most important thing is that Turkey and Russia agreed to deploy joint military patrols of the security corridor, as it will definitely help to enhance the cease-fire.”
As a model that was implemented by the US and Turkey in northeastern Syria until 2019, the joint Russian-Turkish patrols from the settlement of Trumba (2 km west of Saraqib) to Ain-Al-Havr are set to begin by March 15.
FASTFACT
Although the Idlib cease-fire fell short of Ankara’s expectations, it prevented regime troops, for now, from taking the entire province, pushing up to 2 million civilians in the city of Idlib to flee toward Turkey.
However, the willingness of Ankara to fight terrorism in Idlib is still the “soft underbelly” of the agreement. Just a day before the Putin-Erdogan summit, the Russian military accused its Turkish counterparts of inserting its troops among militant positions in Idlib, and of merging its observation posts with terrorist bases in the rebel-held province where Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) is still the dominant force.
“Turkey now is left alone in northern Idlib to deal with HTS militants, internally displaced people and refugees,” Khlebnikov told Arab News, adding that the outcome of the deal would depend on how Turkey and Russia managed HTS’s presence in Idlib.
In the next seven days following the deal, the Russian and Turkish militaries are expected to finalize the modalities of the 12-km long security zone spanning across the M4 highway — linking the Mediterranean port city of Latakia to Aleppo — that may be infiltrated by regime troops as well as rebels.
Emre Ersen, a Syria analyst from Marmara University in Istanbul, however, said it was interesting that the document announced at the end of the meeting did not really say much about the fate of the Turkish observation posts in Idlib, nor mention Syrian refugees.
