ANALYSIS: Iran worked with Ankara and Assad during Turkish incursion

[Arminkh]

ANALYSIS: Iran worked with Ankara and Assad during Turkish incursion
#SyriaWar
Sources tell MEE closer ties between Ankara and Tehran helped pave the way for the Turkish incursion into Syria

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) shakes hands with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani 16 April, 2016 (AFP)

Jonathan Steele
Thursday 25 August 2016 12:59 UTC
Last update:
Friday 26 August 2016 8:44 UTC

TEHRAN - As Turkey increases its tank force inside northern Syria, the Iranian government is preserving a conspicuous but significant silence. News of the incursion is being widely covered in Iranian media but there has been no reaction from officials.

Iran’s relations with Turkey have been warming up dramatically in recent weeks and analysts suggest there is some embarrassment in Tehran over how to handle the incursion publicly.

The Iranian media have reported the Syrian government’s condemnation of the incursion as aggression but have not yet quoted any statements from their own government.

Iranian relations with Turkey are at a delicate stage. Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, was in Ankara on Tuesday a few hours before Turkey sent the first tanks into Syria and it is not known whether he was warned in advance.

His visit followed a surprise stop-over in Tehran by Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, last week on his way to India. This, in turn, followed a meeting by Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on 12 August.

The unprecedented flurry of visits since the abortive Turkish coup is not just confined to bilateral issues. Ansari’s visit was officially billed as centering on the future of Syria and Middle East Eye has learned that Iran has become the main conduit for contacts between Erdogan and Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. A source close to the Iranian leadership told MEE: “The Turks and Syrians are co-ordinating through the Iranians”.

Turkey has insisted on Assad’s resignation for more than four years of the country’s civil war but it started to change its stance on Syria before the abortive coup on 15 July. Since the coup, these moves have accelerated with several statements from the Turkish Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, saying that Assad could remain during a transition period.

The future of Syria’s Kurds is clearly part of the emerging new equation. The attacks by the Syrian army and air force on the Syrian Kurdish people’s defence militias (YPG) in the town of Hasakah in recent days look like a signal from Assad to Erdogan that he understands Erdogan’s concerns about the growing strength of the Syrian Kurds along a long section of Turkey’s southern border. Until recently, the Syrian army ignored the YPG and even saw them as potential allies in the war against the Islamic State (IS) group.

Assad’s ultimate aim is to persuade Erdogan to stop allowing arms supplies to cross from Turkey to non-IS opposition groups fighting him in Idlib and Aleppo.

“Turkey won’t immediately halt its arm supplies to the rebels but gradually there’ll be a quid pro quo for Assad’s strikes on the YPG in Hasakah,” the leadership source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told MEE.

He also revealed details of Iran’s quick reaction to the Turkish coup while it was still evolving. It has been widely reported that Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif tweeted solidarity with Erdogan and condemnation of the coup before it collapsed, a move which impressed the Turkish leader and differed markedly from the US and European reaction, which Turkey has said has been muted and only came after the outcome of the coup attempt was clear.

According to the source, Zarif’s midnight tweets were prompted by the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Zarif and Rouhani were cautious and initially hesitated how to react to news of the coup attempt. They had to be pressed by the supreme leader’s office more than once before the tweet went out,” he said.

Iran’s quick condemnation of the coup attempt was based on one of Iran’s basic foreign policy principles, according to Foad Izadi, a professor in Tehran University’s Faculty of World Studies.

“Military coups are unacceptable,” he told MEE. “A second principle is that you don’t send forces across international borders without the agreement of a country’s government.”

However, Iran has stayed silent on Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria, with only its allies in Damascus issuing a statement denouncing the incursion into their sovereign territory.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/analysis-iran-coordination-between-turkey-and-assad-911530443

 

[Arminkh]

And even more interesting analysis:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/357205-turkey-erdogan-russia-iran-isis/

Hit the ATM: The Ankara-Tehran-Moscow coalition

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of "Globalistan" (2007), "Red Zone Blues" (2007), "Obama does Globalistan" (2009) and "Empire of Chaos" (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is "2030", also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.

Published time: 25 Aug, 2016 16:44Edited time: 25 Aug, 2016 17:01
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Turkish soldiers on an armoured vehicle are seen in Karkamis on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern Gaziantep province, Turkey, August 25, 2016. © Umit Bektas / Reuters
Islamic State, Syria-Turkey
Anyone as much as hinting at such a massive geopolitical tectonic shift a few weeks ago would be branded a madman. So how did the impossible happen?

A major strategic game-changer – Russia using an airfield in Iran to send bombers against jihadis in Syria – had already taken place, with its aftermath spectacularly misreported by the usual, clueless US corporate media suspects.

Then, there’s what Turkey’s Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said last Saturday in Istanbul: “The most important priority for us is to stop the bloodshed [in Syria] as soon as possible.” The rest are irrelevant “details.”

Read more
Can Russia trust Turkey this time?
Yildirim added Ankara now agrees with Moscow that Bashar al-Assad “could” – and that’s the operative word – stay in power during a political transition (although that’s still highly debatable). Ankara’s drive to normalize relations with Moscow had an ‘important share’ in this ‘policy shift’.

The ‘policy shift’ is a direct consequence of the failed military coup in Turkey. Russian cyber-surveillance aces – in action 24/7 after the downing of the Su-24 last November – reportedly informed Turkish intelligence a few hours before the fact. NATO, as the record shows, was mum.

Even minimalist optics suggests ‘Sultan’ Erdogan was extremely upset that Washington was not exactly displeased with the coup. He knows how vast swathes of the Beltway despise him – blaming him for not being serious in the fight against ISIS and for bombing the YPG Kurds – Pentagon allies - in Syria. The record does show Erdogan has mostly ignored ISIS – allowing non-stop free border crossing for ISIS goons as well as letting Turkish business interests (if not his own family) profit from ISIS’ stolen Syrian oil.

Compared to Washington’s attitude Moscow, on the other hand, warning Erdogan about serious, concrete facts on the ground in the nick of time. And for Erdogan, that was highly personal; the putschists reportedly sent a commando to kill him when he was still in Marmaris.

Fast forward to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif’s surprise visit two weeks ago to Ankara. Zarif and his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu did discuss serious options by which the budding ATM coalition could come up with a viable exit strategy in Syria. One week later Cavusoglu went to Tehran and talked again to Zarif for five hours.

It’s an uphill battle – but doable. Tehran knows very well IRGC officers as well as Hezbollah, Iraqi and Afghan fighters were killed in the Syrian war theater, and that shall not be in vain. Ankara for its part knows it cannot afford to remain forever trapped in an ideological dead end.


RT International
Turkey has launched a ground incursion into Syria targeting Islamic State and Kurdish fighters near the town of Jarablus. Ankara says it wants to take the town to stop cross-border attacks, while the...

Rojava, where and for whom?
And then there’s the rub - the intractable Kurdish question. Iran, unlike Turkey, does not face active Kurdish separatism. A minimum understanding between Ankara and Tehran – central to the current flurry of meetings, face-to-face and ‘secret’, via mediators, necessarily points toward a united, centralized Syria.

That implies no Rojava – a possible independent Kurdish mini-state alongside the Turkish border, part of a not so hidden Washington/Tel Aviv balkanization agenda. Actually what is now in effect official Pentagon policy contains a mob element of Ash “Empire of Whining” Carter’s revenge on Sultan Erdogan; payback because Erdogan did not do enough to smash ISIS.

And that brings us to the current Turkish offensive – for all practical purposes invasion – of Jarabulus. That’s the last fort – as in the last town that allows ISIS back and forth from southern Turkey to Raqqa in terms of smuggling goons and weapons.

Ankara would never allow the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) take Jarabulus. After all, the SDF – fully supported by the Pentagon - is led by the Kurdish nationalist YPG, which Ankara sees as a mere extension of PKK separatists.

Imagine Ankara’s terror at the YPG seizing Jarabulus. They would have crossed the ultimate Turkish red line; closing the gap between two Kurdish cantons across the border and for all practical purposes giving birth to the Rojava Kurdish mini-state.


Yet even if for Ankara an independent Rojava remains the supreme red line, there are declinations. A Rojava might come as quite handy if it became a dumping ground for Turkish PKK fighters. Arguably the PKK would not complain; after all they would have “their” state.

No one seems to be considering what Damascus thinks about all this.

And no one, for the moment, has a clue about the precise geography of a putative Rojava. If it includes, for instance, the recently liberated city of Manbij, that’s a major problem; Manbij is Arab, not Kurd. Kurds once again seem to be thrown into disarray - forced to choose whether they are allied with Washington or with Moscow.

Moscow, for its part, is crystal clear on ISIS. It is dead set on smashing for good, by all means necessary, any militants who consider Russia their enemy.

Erdogan certainly calculated that a rapprochement with Russia had to include being serious against ISIS. Extra incentive was added by the fact the bombing this past Sunday in Gaziantep was most certainly an ISIS job.

So Erdogan’s Syria master plan now boils down to - what else – another wilderness of mirrors. By crossing to Jarabulus, Ankara wants to establish a sort of remnants of the Free Syria Army (FSA)-controlled enclave. The Americans can't blame him because this will be against ISIS – even though it’s mostly against Rojava. And the Russians won’t make a fuss because Moscow is in favor of Syria’s unity.

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Got ATM, will travel
Former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, previously of “zero problems with our neighbors” then converted into “nothing but problems with our neighbors” is now history. Yildirim is a pragmatist. So the opening to Russia had to be inevitable.

And that leads us back to the – alleged - end of Team Obama’s obsession, “Assad must go”. He may stay, for a while. Yildirim has confirmed this is now Turkish official policy. Although that does not mean Ankara – and Washington for that matter – have given up on regime change. They will keep up the pressure – but tactics will change.

As it stands, the major fact on the ground is that ‘Sultan’ Erdogan seems to have had enough of the Americans (NATO of course included) and has pivoted to Russia.

Thus the sending of certified Keystone Cop Joe Biden to Ankara to plead “not guilty” on the military coup (forget it; most Turks don’t believe Washington) and to implore Erdogan not to pursue his massive purge (pure wishful thinking).

Considering Erdogan’s notoriously erratic record, his embrace of ATM may be just a gigantic illusion, or may open yet another unforeseen can of worms. But there are signs this may be for real.

Cavusoglu has already intimated that Ankara is aiming for a military/technological upgrade that is impossible under NATO’s watch. In his own words; “Unfortunately, we see countries in NATO are a bit hesitant when it comes to exchange of technology and joint investments.”

Moscow has every reason to be quite cautious regarding myriad aspects of Erdogan’s pivoting. After all the Turkish military has been part of NATO for decades. As it stands, there’s no evidence Moscow and Ankara are looking at the same post-war Syria. But if we’re talking about the future of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), then it starts to get really interesting.

Read more
'US apoplectic as Turkey pivots eastward'
Turkey is already a “dialog partner” of the SCO, while Iran may become a full member as early as next year. Moscow is certainly envisioning Ankara as a valuable ally in the wider Sunni world, way beyond a role in repelling Salafi-jihadis in Syria. With Ankara and Tehran also talking serious business, this could eventually spill out into a serious debunking of the alleged apocalyptic Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian divide, which is the only Divide-and-Rule strategy spun and deployed non-stop by the US, Israel and the House of Saud.

It’s this enticing SCO-enhancing possibility that’s freaking Washington out big time. Russia pivoting East, Turkey pivoting East, Iran already there, and China now also actually involved in a stake in post-war Syria, that’s a geopolitical reconfiguration in Southwest Asia that once again spells out the inevitable; Eurasia integration.

And that brings us to the current Turkish offensive – for all practical purposes invasion – of Jarabulus. That’s the last fort – as in the last town that allows ISIS back and forth from southern Turkey to Raqqa in terms of smuggling goons and weapons.

@scythian500 what did I tell you about Turkey? You see they are taking part in the big operation coming their own way.

 

[That Guy]

More like Turkey worked with Russia and Iran, because Turkey didn't want to accidentally start a war with either of them. If Assad's soldiers die, I doubt Turkey would care much, because there would be very little Syria could do.