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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 6-Mar-2020
6-Mar-20 World View -- Turkey's Erdogan travels to Moscow to beg Russia's Putin for Idlib ceasefire deal

Web Log - March, 2020

6-Mar-20 World View -- Turkey's Erdogan travels to Moscow to beg Russia's Putin for Idlib ceasefire deal

European Union reaction to Idlib crisis

by John J. Xenakis

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Turkey's Erdogan travels to Moscow to beg Russia's Putin for Idlib ceasefire deal
Putin's objectives in Syria
Erdogan's objectives in Syria
European Union reaction to Idlib crisis

Turkey's Erdogan travels to Moscow to beg Russia's Putin for Idlib ceasefire deal

Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday. Erdogan is the lamb being led to slaughter.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday. Erdogan is the lamb being led to slaughter.

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Moscow today to meet with Russia's president Vladimir Putin. At the end of their meeting, they announced a ceasefire agreement for Syria's Idlib province.

Before going into the terms of the agreement, let's take a look at what each of the protagonists wants.

I heard a video clip from Syria's president Bashar al-Assad on tv. I don't have the exact words, but it was something like the following:

"Why does Turkey have troops in Idlib? Syria has never done anything to Turkey. Turkey should withdraw its troops from Idlib. They have no business being in Syria." (paraphrase)

This statement made me laugh because it's so completely honest and so completely typical of al-Assad's sociopathic, murderous, bloody personality. Al-Assad has repeatedly made it clear that he wants to take full control of Idlib province and get rid of the 4 million Sunni Arabs living there, most of whom are children, and most of the rest of whom are women. Al-Assad would like to push all four million of them into Turkey, which would require Turkey to open its border to them, which would be an economic disaster for Turkey -- and for Europe as well, because they would continue traveling to the EU.

Or else, al-Assad would simply like to kill all four million Sunni Arabs. When al-Assad says that Turkey should not interfere, he means that he wants a free hand to slaughter all four million of them, by any means possible, leaving their dead bodies strewn across Idlib, to have their bodies and belongings to be picked over by those lucky Syrian troops. And he's telling Turkey to just sit there and watch all this go on.

None of this is really surprising. Al-Assad has said for years that he wants control of Idlib and the removal of all the Syrian Arabs, all of whom he considers to be cockroaches to be extinguished.

Putin's objectives in Syria

Vladimir Putin is the most dishonest of the participants in that everything he says is a lie. So we can only infer his objectives:

In exchange for supporting al-Assad, Russia now has two military bases in Syria, the Tartus naval base and the Hmeimim airbase. When al-Assad begged Putin for military help in 2015, Putin agreed to help, and received control of the two military bases in return.

Putin would like to split Turkey away from Nato. This is the only reason that Putin is even talking to Erdogan.

This is more speculative, but I believe that Putin would take great pleasure in seeing those four million civilians in Idlib cross over into Turkey, and then cross over into Europe.

Erdogan's objectives in Syria

Turkey is facing an existential crisis, with four million Syrian civilians crowded along its border. If al-Assad is allowed to kill four million civilians, it will be a social and political disaster for Turkey for not stopping it. If al-Assad is allowed to drive four million civilians into Turkey, that would be an economic disaster for Turkey.

So that's Erdogan's major objective in meeting with Putin: Please, please, please stop al-Assad's attack on the four million civilians in Idlib.

Last week, Russian and Syrian warplanes killed 30-50 Turkish soldiers in Idlib who were there as observers. This left Erdogan with no choice. Turkey has now sent thousands of troops into Idlib to repel the Syrian regime army.

On Tuesday, there was a fistfight in Turkey's parliament between Erdogan supporters and opponents. According to one report, the disagreement was whether Erdogan should be sending troops into Syria. According to another report, the disagreement was whether Erdogan should be meeting with Putin, since it was Putin's warplanes that killed the Turkish soldiers in Idlib.

So on Thursday Erdogan and Putin did agree to a temporary ceasefire.

But anyone can see that this ceasefire agreement is a joke. Al-Assad is bloodthirsty, and won't stop killing civilians in Idlib. Russia sees support for Syria as being the way to be recognized as a powerful player in the Mideast.

There are powerful generational forces at play here. Nothing is going to deter al-Assad for long. Nothing will stop Putin from fully supporting al-Assad.

In my personal opinion, Erdogan will be forced to full-scale war with the Syrian regime army. That would lead to war between Turkey and Russia.

Turkey and Russia have both made it clear that neither wants war with the other, and yet they've fought major many generational crisis wars with each other. ( "25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars")

There are various "compromise" agreements being discussed. These compromises have to do with setting up buffer zones or ceasefire zones, where Idlib civilians can hide out from Syrian and Russian warplanes. We've had "de-escalation" zones before, but they're always a hoax, since Putin uses them to cover up Russian atrocities, and al-Assad simply ignores them.

European Union reaction to Idlib crisis

Erdogan has been begging European Union officials to provide help with the potential humanitarian crisis in Idlib. In order to pressure the EU, Turkey has encouraged tens of thousands of Syrian refugees to cross the border into Europe. These are not refugees from Idlib. These are from the 3.5 million Syrian refugees that are already in Turkey.

Thousands of these migrants and refugees are trapped on Turkey's side of the border with Greece and Bulgaria. Along the Edirne river, which serves as a border between Greece and Turkey, there have been clashes between the migrants and Greek police. Turkey has accused Greece of using live ammunition against the migrants, a charge that Greece has denied.

On Thursday, Turkey deployed 1,000 police officers on its border with Greece. Formerly, these police were used to prevent migrants from trying to cross into Greece. But now they have a different purpose: Their job is to stop the Greek police from pushing the migrants back into Turkey.

All this is on top of millennia of wars between Greece and Turkey, dating back at least to the days of the Trojan Horse, culminating most recently in the conflict over Cyprus.

So Turkey is facing a new conflict with the EU, is close to war with the Syrian regime in Idlib, and that may expand to war with Russia. In this generational Crisis era, there are powerful generational forces pushing these conflicts and potential conflicts forward. It's hard to see what might stop them, if anything can.

Sources:

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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (6-Mar-2020) Permanent Link
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