https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/middleeast/russia-turkey-syria-war-strikes.html?referringSource=articleShare
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-turkey-migrants/turkey-will-no-longer-stop-syrian-migrant-flow-to-europe-turkish-official-idUSKCN20L33V

A major escalation in the conflict in Idlib.
First Syria/Russia launched an operation to crush the final pocket of rebels in Idlib
Then Turkey said they would cross the border to stop it, to avert a flood of refugees and defend the Sunnis.
They had earlier set up deconfliction posts with Russia throughout Idlib, and started manning them to support the rebels.
Turkey just yesterday was threatening war if Syria didn't halt its advance into Idlib by the weekend, setting a Feb. 29th "deadline"
With Turkish backing, rebels turned the tide and recaptured Saraqeb in a counter-offensive, seizing the critical M5 highway between Damascus and Aleppo.
Now airstrikes have broken out the first direct attacks between Russia and Turkey, with somewhere betweet 9 and 34 Turks killed at a post in Idlib
Russian media claims the Turkish post targeted aircraft with MANPADS, Turkey hasn't made an official statement.
No US/NATO backing or air support for Turks in Syria
Turkey now announcing it will no longer stop Syrian refugees from traveling into Europe, not only the Idlib flood but all those already in Turkey

was it a counter-offensive operation?
the NYT thread makes it seem that the capture of Saraqib came before the Idlib attack.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/middleeast/russia-turkey-syria-war-strikes.html?referringSource=articleShare

-opening paragraph-


edit: unless they just mean counter-offensive to that city

This post was edited by tagged4nothing on Feb 27 2020 05:01pm

Syria has been sieging Idlib for years.

ya, i thought it was an upcoming 2-month siege Erdogan was threatening against. i misread and am noticing the siege has been going on for 2 months.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-putin-erdogan-hope-idUSKCN1LX1BU


seems like they were a bit late with that de-escalation agreement. seems like Turkey shouldn't be trying to intervene.
you have any more info on the subject?

edit: i'll add this section too

not sure what the recent target specifically is, but it seemed this was the target at the time.

This post was edited by tagged4nothing on Feb 27 2020 05:18pm

They had a deescalation agreement and Idlib was kept in a mostly untouched standstill of a siege as the war raged across the rest of the country, and the combined US/Russian/Syrian/Kurdish forces defeated ISIS in the rest of the country and Syria quelled the rebels elsewhere. Leaving Idlib as the last major pocket of resistance. And with the rest of the war won and the US withdrawing and Kurds going back to their mountains, Syria & Russia are now making a major operation to clear the rebels out of Idlib. Turkey only had a small number of observation posts during the deconfliction, but they moved 15,000 troops across the border and are directly supporting the rebels fighting against Syria and Russia now. Besides their factional ethnic/religious alliance with the rebels, Erdogan faces extreme domestic pressure to send the syrian refugees home and keep the million in Idlib out of Turkey. That has led to this brinksmanship where Turkey is trying risk its good relationship with Russia by opposing them in Syria in hopes that Putin would back down rather than jeopardize the wedge he's driven into NATO. Putin is not backing down, and NATO sure as hell isn't going to support Turkey in Syria, and Turkey's relief valve is to send millions of Syrians into the EU which is the weaponized flood of refugees that Putin used to destabilize the EU in the first place and the proximate cause of Brexit.

So unless Erdogan backs down, shit is hitting the fan. They can't possibly win a war in Syria. Turkey might have superior forces to Syria, but not to Russia, and Russia has total control over the skies of Idlib. Erdogan is between a rock and a hard place, he can't commit, he can't back down, and Putin is happy to take a win no matter what Erdogan does. And nobody seems to have an answer what is supposed to happen to the million Sunni rebels left in Idlib. Either they all get massacred in the biggest humanitarian disaster in recent history, or they flood into the EU and break it. The odds of striking a diplomatic solution to keep them in place and end the war with Assad in power is an equally impossible task, with the jihadis being irrational actors.

are all of these "rebels" from outside of Syria? i know there's been a lot of forced migration in the area in recent years.
are all these Sunni rebels actually rebels? or is there a large number of refugees, with rebel factions hiding among them?

Haven’t been following this lately, but mind explaining to me why is Turkey so committed to helping these rebels at this point? Assad, Russia and the Shiites won this so why does Erdogan believe it’s in his interest to have influence in Idlib? To me it’s not worth it or is this some part of his neo ottoman imperial dream or something?

Let Assad control everything in his country, and you can ship the refugees back when the dust settles instead of propping up the losing side and continue to get slammed with refugees.

They haven't been able to ship back the millions of refugees already. Idlib is on the border, Turkey's domestic politics are roiling under the strain of hosting millions of Syrians, they won't take another 900,000. When Idlib falls, the war is over. Where will the refugees go? Getting them back into Syria, to live under the guy they were fighting jihad against and who barrel bombed them to oblivion- thats not an easy diplomatic task. Neither Turkey nor the EU proper want to host millions of Syrians indefinitely, but thats how factional conflicts end. Look at the "temporary" protected status refugees in America who have been here for decades.

Turkey is opening the floodgates to Europe and Russia is about to send a tidal wave through. We can see the impending disaster, but what can be done?

I feel like even many that ran weren't actually jihadis mostly civilians. Assad took Aleppo and there wasn't this massive cleansing/genocide against everyone there so i don't really see why'd he would do that now.

Ultimately Assad wants control back, once he gets that i do think that many refugees would be able to come back. Problem is after sucking the tit of European social safety nets, many of them have no interest in going back.