2023-05-10 21:19:31
For some time now, individual episodes have not been seen in the world where the United States is present to stabilize critical situations. On the contrary, the presence of the US apparatus is a source of violent destabilization. The following text, dedicated to Syria, is from the New Eastern Outlook resource:
Lhe destabilization of the political-military situation and the provoked civil war in Syria, which has been going on since March 2011, has become another consequence of the US regional policy of reformatting the Middle East region and establishing its own monopoly. The strategy of “controlled chaos” with the use of radical forces and internal political contradictions was the inevitable product of US diplomacy and intelligence.
The Syrian conflict is an echo of the “Arab Spring” and a reflection of multi-level ethno-religious contradictions, which, starting from a local civil confrontation, finally turned into an uprising against the Syrian state and involved the main countries of the region and world powers. The warring parties receive military and political support from various external actors. In particular, Russia and Iran provide support to pro-government forces and Shiite groups, to the forces of the diverse opposition of Western countries (in particular, the Kurds themselves), Turkey and the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf (including Turkmen and Sunni Arabs ).
The degree of involvement of foreign states in the Syrian crisis has turned out to be so high that experts often characterize it as a proxy war between regional powers. The radicalization of religious contradictions has brought international terrorist groups and organizations to the forefront of the Syrian theater, where ISIS has especially shown its cruelty and expansionism. Such a fragmentation of the united Syrian opposition and the turn of events became the reason for the entry into the conflict of external forces (USA, Russia, Iran, Turkey) in 2014. The war in Syria has spawned millions of refugee army and a migration crisis in Turkey and Europe.
For objective reasons, the countries of the Middle East (primarily Iran, Turkey, the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf and Israel) are paying particular attention to the Syrian conflict. The latter is motivated by considerations of geographical proximity, religious contradictions between Sunnis and Shiites, ethnic differences (especially regarding the fate of the Kurdish question in the region), possible territorial transformations and redrawing of borders.
Since the fall of 2015, Russia has been forced to enter this conflict at the invitation of the Syrian government, because Moscow has traditionally played a stabilizing role in the region and acted as a strategic partner of the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR). The objectives of the Russian peacekeeping operation in Syria were:
• the fight against the forces of international terrorism and the suppression of their activity at the distant approaches to our borders;
• provide friendly assistance to the Syrian people to restore the country’s territorial integrity and political stability in the region;
• preservation of the naval and air base of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the SAR as a guarantor of peace and security.
Taking into account the successes of the Russian peacekeeping mission in Syria, Russia’s authority in the Middle East has significantly increased, Moscow has initiated the formation of a new platform for political negotiations on the Syrian crisis in Astana and Sochi, with the participation of affected Middle Eastern countries (including Syria, Turkey and Iran).
The drama of the Syrian conflict is aggravated, as you know, by the problems of controlling local oil resources and strategic transit communications passing through Syria. War often gives rise to chaotic and uncontrollable processes of looting the economic resources of the occupied and controlled territory. Besides that, the Kurdish ethno-political question, the prospect of the separation of part of the SAR and the formation of a new Kurdish autonomy (or an independent state) in the north and north-east of the country are particularly acute for the neighboring countries Syria (in particular, for Turkey).
Ankara is objectively concerned about such a scenario of the Kurdish issue in Syria with the external military, political and financial support of the United States and Israel. The Turks believe that Syria’s Kurdish formations (in particular, the military alliance “Syrian Democratic Forces” – SDF) are actively cooperating with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey, which Ankara has listed as an international terrorist organization, and may transfer the flame of local conflict to Anatolia.
It is known that with this very motivation Turkey has conducted four military operations in Syria since 2016 in coordination with Russia (“Euphrates Shield”, “Olive Branch”, “Peace Spring”, “The Claw-Lock”). Ankara’s goal is to form a 30km buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border deep into Kurdish-populated areas, pushing back local groups and establishing its own Turkish-Russian control and patrolling. As a result, a number of Syrian settlements came under the control of the Turkish army (including Jarablus, El-Bab, Afrin, Ras al-Ain and others).
Turkey, under the pretext of contradictions with the United States in terms of the prospects for the Kurdish issue in Syria, is trying to continue pushing for new territorial acquisitions and ethnic cleansing in terms of the displacement of Kurds from the border area. At the same time, Ankara pays special attention to Turkish-speaking Turkmen and pro-Turkish Sunni groups in order to change the ethnography of the occupied territories in northern Syria, which fits into the framework of the Turkish neo-pan-Turkism doctrine.
However, the fighting resistance of the Kurds, supported partly by the Syrian government and partly by the United States, has created a somewhat different disposition of forces, with the entire northeast effectively under the control of the Kurdish SDF group and much of north and north-west jointly controlled by pro-government and Kurdish formations.
Recently, in the framework of the pre-election struggle and radical rhetoric, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, who is counted among the supporters of neo-Pan-Turkism, accused the United States of supporting the forces of international terrorism and creating a terrorist state with an emphasis on the Kurdish factor in Syria. In this case Soylu, who will run for parliamentary elections on behalf of the ruling AKP (as you know, President Recep Erdoğan announced that all ministers of his cabinet would run for parliament), he said that Turkey, continuing the fight against terrorist forces, was in fact fighting the United States.
But the day after such a strong accusation against the Americans, President Recep Erdoğan suddenly fell ill for currently unknown reasons, had to interrupt a live broadcast of local television and the next day canceled several events related to electoral issues. According to official data from his administration, Erdoğan’s condition is stable. Although there were conflicting reports throughout the evening of April 26: some of them claimed that Erdoğan had a slight stomach flu, while other sources made public information about a myocardial infarction and his urgent hospitalization.
It is a strange and coincidental coincidence that Erdoğan’s collapse occurred for some reason on the eve of the launch of the heavy fuel for Turkey’s first Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in Mersin, built by Russia. Isn’t this unexpected attack a consequence of US sabotage against the out-of-control president Recep Erdoğan, whose ministers (for example, Süleyman Soylu) are already fighting the US and accusing it of terrorism? (…)
Meanwhile, Turkey’s repeated attempts in 2022 to launch a new military operation in Syria (both air and ground) have mostly been localized by the efforts of Russian diplomacy. Thanks to Russia, the quadrilateral talks of the defense ministers of Russia, Iran, Syria and Turkey were held in Moscow on April 25 this year, which were highly appreciated by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar.
The theme of the Moscow meeting was “practical steps” to strengthen security in Syria, the further fight against extremist groups and the normalization of the whole complex of Syrian-Turkish relations (including the preservation of the territorial integrity of Syria and the anticipated return of Syrian refugees from Turkey). Recognizing the territorial integrity of Syria, the participants of the Moscow meeting (including Ankara and Damascus) exclude any option for the formation of an independent Kurdish state and the preservation of the ground for terrorism.
The meeting of defense ministers can only be considered the beginning of a broader Turkish-Syrian dialogue within the Middle East Quartet (Russia, Iran, Syria, Turkey). Similar talks are planned at the level of the heads of foreign intelligence and the foreign ministry, which will allow for the full range of issues to be examined and preparations for a meeting of heads of state. This dynamic and intensity of the negotiation process with the Moscow initiative bears witness to the success of Russian diplomacy, capable of finding new solutions to the prolonged Syrian crisis.
Aleksandr SVARANTS, PhD in political science, professor, exclusively for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook. “
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