A Russia-backed government offensive in Syria's Idlib has brought Turkish forces into direct confrontation with President Bashar Assad's troops. That threatens to unravel a fragile agreement between Turkey and Russia.
Turkish-backed Syrian fighters gather for an offensive against rebel bastions near Idlib.Image: Getty Images/AFP/A. Watad
Advertisement
De-escalation talks between representatives of Russia and Turkey have failed to yield any agreement after 13 soldiers were killed over the course of the past week as Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces continued their efforts to take the strategic M5 highway to Aleppo from rebels for the first time since 2012. By late Tuesday, it remained unclear as to whether the Syrian government's efforts were successful.
Turkey has sent hundreds of military vehicles and troops to its Idlib outposts in the past week in one of the most serious confrontations between the country and Syria's government in the nine-year war. Though Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan has threatened that Assad's government will pay "a very heavy price" for the Turkish soldiers killed, he may not want to risk a direct clash with the Russian aircraft and personnel backing the Syrian forces, which could lead to an even more dangerous escalation.
Neither Russia nor Turkey is "prepared to cede either the principal or the ground" in Idlib, Tobias Schneider, a research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, told DW. "We might see a minor conflagration as we saw in 2015, when the Turks shot down a Russian jet, and then we would see who would back down first," Schneider said. "That's the big question now."
Sochi 2.0
After Russia entered the war with air support for Assad's forces in 2015, tipping the momentum back in the regime's favor, Turkey backed some rebel groups carving out sections of Syria's north in 2016.
Idlib: Syria's last remaining rebel stronghold
Syria's Idlib province has been at the centre of tensions between Russia, Turkey, and the President Bashar al-Assad's regime. What is actually happening the last rebel stronghold?
Image: picture-alliance/AA/I. Idilbi
Nowhere to seek shelter
Many Syrian families have been forced to leave Idlib, which remains the last stronghold of forces opposed to President Assad, and some — like this woman and her children — struggle to find refuge.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/AA/M. Said
Constant fear of airstrikes
Idlib has been the site for multiple airstrikes from Turkish forces, and pro-regime forces backed by Russia. Here, smoke is seen billowing over the town of Bsaqla, in the southern countryside of the province.
Image: Getty Images/O. H. Kadour
Rubble and glass
Assad's troops, with Russian air support, are trying to capture the province in what they call "the final battle." Here, a Syrian man tries to clear rubble at a damaged ward in a hospital that was hit by a reported regime air strike.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/A. Alhamwe
Making do with little
Idlib has been left devoid of any infrastructure, forcing families into refugee camps at the Turkish border. There, too, there is little in the way of resources and organization to make a normal life — and future — possible.
Image: picture-alliance/Anadolu Agency/E. Musa
Sprawling tent town
According to the United Nations, more than 500,000 people have been displaced from Idlib. This drone shot shows tents at a camp hosting families who have been displaced due to the attacks carried out by Assad regime and Russia.
Image: picture-alliance/AA/E. Turkoglu
Facilities in short supply
Rescuers are kept busy bringing in new patients, but medical authorities say there are no clinics left in the south of the province to treat the injured.
Image: picture-alliance/AA/I. Idilbi
6 images1 | 6
But a truce brokered by the governments of Turkey, Russia and Iran in the Astana and Sochitalks now looks to be under threat, with the Kremlin backing Assad's offensive into areas overseen by Turkey.
That leaves Turkey in a weaker position, Schneider said. Ankara's disputes with fellow NATO members have reduced the probability that the US or European countries would help re-balance the scales.
The political analyst Mohamad Kawas told DW that the most likely scenario is that a military intervention by Turkey would lead to new talks. "In this way the two parties can reach a balance, a Sochi 2," Kawas said, referring to the agreement reached in the Russian city in 2018.
'Slow managed collapse'
Schneider said he believed that Turkey's beefed-up deployment could be an attempt to reverse some of Assad's gains in order to stake out a better negotiating position. But, with Turkey's air force in "disarray," "fundamentally the question is: Can this hold without a credible threat vis-a-vis the Russians? And whether Turkey is prepared to go that far."
Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey's offensive
Those displaced by the fighting in northeast Syria are trying to survive in abandoned schools and houses. International NGOs have left and people queue for bread for hours. The few remaining doctors are overwhelmed.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
A first stop
UN sources say over 200,000 people have been internally displaced in Syria's northeast since Turkey launched its offensive on October 9. So far, the border town of Ras al-Ayn has paid the highest toll in the wake of a joint attack by Turkish militias and airstrikes. The city will remain under Turkish control following a deal struck in Sochi between Russia and Turkey.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
'We've lost everything'
A majority of those who have fled are reportedly Kurds. Those civilians remaining in the city are mostly Arabs who are still in touch by phone with their former neighbors. "They told me yesterday that the Islamists were looting our house. We've lost everything," this man told DW.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
Every crumb helps
The regime forces are stationed just a few kilometers away from Tal Tamr. As a result international NGOs formerly based in the area have fled over the past few days. Internally displaced people (IDPs) from Ras al-Ayn and the neighboring villages rely on the work of local NGOs who are struggling to cope with the crisis.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
Not enough to go around
Apart from Tal Tamr, other villages in the vicinity are also hosting hundreds of displaced people who rely on local NGOs. "They're settling in empty villages, many of them too close to other locations controlled by either the Turkish-backed militias or 'Islamic State' sleeper cells," Hassan Bashir, a local NGO coordinator, told DW.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
Food, glorious food
This Arab IDP from Ras al-Ayn has four wives but will struggle to get enough to feed all their children as local NGOs say they can only allocate a single food ration per family. "It's not their fault, they're just children," he told DW, after being given a single bag of food rations.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
School's out — forever?
Schools have remained shut across Syria's northeast since the beginning of the offensive and several of them are now hosting IDPs from Ras al-Ayn. Those who can afford it will move to cities like Al-Hasakah, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the south, but others will have to cope with the dire conditions in a border city that faces further attacks from the north.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
The closest thing to home
50 Kurdish families from Ras al-Ayn are now living in this abandoned school in Tal Tamr lacking both water and electricity. As the sanitary conditions deteriorate, local doctors and the hospital in Tal Tamr fear an outbreak of cholera and other diseases. "If we continue like this we'll have to get set for a huge humanitarian crisis," a local doctor told DW.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
Sick and stranded
Although the hospital in Tal Tamr is treating the wounded, it cannot help those suffering from diseases such as cancer.Two IDPs told DW that they were supposed to receive chemotherapy in Damascus before the offensive started, but that the current security situation makes it impossible for them to get there.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
A different type of playground
The Christian village of Tell Nasri on the outskirts of Tal Tamr had remained empty since IS took over the area. The majority of its former inhabitants left during the IS siege when the militants destroyed the churches with explosives before the fall of the Caliphate. With nowhere else to go, several IDP families from Ras al-Ayn are now settling in Tell Nasri.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
Living on a prayer
These boys are among dozens stranded in Tell Nasri but the dire living conditions are the least of their problems. Just before this picture was taken, settlers told DW that they had been attacked from a neighboring village reportedly in the hands of Islamists. "They started shooting at us and we engaged [with them] for over an hour," a fighter with the Syrian Democratic Forces told DW.
Image: DW/K. Zurutuza
10 images1 | 10
More likely, Schneider said, is a continuation of the "slow managed collapse" of Idlib as Assad continues to launch periodic smaller campaigns to chip away at rebel-held areas. On Tuesday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned that the city of Idlib, home to 280,000 people, could become a graveyard should hostilities continue.
Since December, the offensive has displaced 700,000 civilians within the northern province of 3 million — more than at any other time during the war, according to the UN, with many also facing extreme cold.
Turkey opposes admitting more people displaced by the civil war in Syria. There are 3.5 million already within the country's borders.
Erdogan has warned that, should a large number of refugees cross the border, he would allow many to pass onward to the European Union, in contravention of the agreement struck between the EU and Turkey in 2016. In that event the EU would probably renegotiate with Turkey and eventually sanction the country, Schneider said.
"While nobody wants a catastrophe in Idlib, the Europeans really see it as a border security and migration issue, and they are quite confident in their ability to contain that problem," he said. "They think they can basically resolve this by sending a lot of tents and locking down the border."
