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| Clockwise from top, Erdogan, Ikhlas al-Badawi and Tlass with Davutoglu |
Would the “Mother of all Battles” in Aleppo between the Syrian army and
rebel forces “give birth” to a Turkish thrust into Syrian territory?
I suspect it could.
It is a battle neither side can afford to lose. For President Bashar
al-Assad, losing the country’s largest city and economic heart, would break his
back. For the armed insurgents, losing their Benghazi would be a devastating
setback.
Either way, a flood of Aleppo refugees into next-door Turkey, where the headquarters
of the opposition Free Syrian Army is based, could push Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan to carve up either a buffer zone or a humanitarian corridor in
Syria.
Turkey, already home to
almost 50,000 refugees, is on record saying it would weigh plans to establish a
security zone within Syrian territory if it were faced with a massive influx of
refugees – which, in this case, could be triggered by the battle for Aleppo.
Erdogan also accused Syria on Thursday of giving Kurdish rebels a free hand in its
northern provinces and warned that Ankara would not hesitate to strike.
“In the north, it (Assad’s regime) allotted
five provinces to the Kurds, to the terrorist organization,” Erdogan said,
referring to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).
He said the move was explicitly directed
against Turkey and warned, “There will undoubtedly be a response on our
part.”
“This could be one of the alternatives. A
security zone, a buffer zone all these could be part of the alternatives,” he
said, without elaborating.
There are reports the regime is about to
turn over control of the all-important city of Qamishli to the PKK and its
Syrian arm, the Democratic Union Party (PYD).
Qamishli is in
northeastern Syria on the border with Turkey, adjoining the Turkish city of Nusaybin,
and close to Iraq. It is regarded as the secret capital of the Syrian Kurds.
Erdogan would probably
invoke the 1998 Adana Agreement with Syria to justify a military thrust.
The governments of Turkey
and Syria signed the Adana Agreement on October 20, 1998. In it, Damascus not
only agreed to recognize the PKK as a terrorist organization but also pledged
to cease all aid to the PKK and to deport its leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is
now serving a life sentence in a Turkish jail.
Interestingly, a
Syrian legislator representing the province of Aleppo said on Friday she has
defected to Turkey, becoming the first member of the rubberstamp assembly
elected in May and dominated by Assad's Baath Party to defect.
“I crossed to Turkey and defected
from this tyrannical regime... because of the repression and savage torture
against a nation demanding the minimum of rights,” Ikhlas al-Badawi, a mother
of six, told Sky News Arabia.
Syrian Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, the most
senior defector from Assad's regime, arrived in Ankara for consultations
yesterday.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry said Tlass
joined Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu for Iftar
(the meal breaking the day's fast during Ramadan).
Tlass appeared briefly with Davutoglu
at an official guesthouse, but made no statement.
