After a six-hour conference in Moscow between the Russian President, Vladimir Putin and Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a ceasefire took hold in northwest Syria at midnight on 6th March. Idlib province has witnessed some of the most bitter fightings of the Syrian War, sparking the biggest displacement of Syrian civilians since the 2011 uprising against the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, mutated into civil war.
“We have established very sincere dialogue and we have expressed our opinions (some different) and deliberated on them,” said Erdoğan to the press conference gathered at the Kremlin. “We have reached a partial peace in Idlib, Syria. We are going to have secure zones in the region, and prevent attacks in the region and maintain the status quo.” Erdoğan went on to slam Assad’s government for sparking the refugee crisis, targeting Turkish soldiers and breaking clauses outlined in the Sochi Agreement. “Turkey will be in a difficult position because of the immigrants (refugees). (We) will not sit and watch. The observation points we have built-in Idlib and on the borders are to observe the ceasefire…We were trying to control other entities in the region who are trying to damage the ceasefire.”
The message from both sides seemed to be clear, that the Turkish government required Russia to reign in the Assad regime to prevent more refugees from crossing the southern border of Turkey and that Erdoğan curb the ‘entities’ amongst the rebel and jihadist fighters violating the ceasefire, including Hei’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Syrian National Army (SNA) and The National Front for Liberation (NFL).
The ceasefire (5 March Additional Protocol to the Memorandum on Stabilization of the Situation in the Idlib De-Escalation Area) laid out by Turkey and Russia’s foreign ministers, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Sergei Lavrov aimed to establish as security corridor and de-escalation zone, spanning 6 kilometres north and 6 kilometres south of the M4 highway. Turkey and Russian forces, as agreed between the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation and Minister of National Defense, would be the joint guarantors of this corridor. Pledges were also made to maintain the delivery of humanitarian aid to internally displaced persons in this “safe-zone” who had fled Assad’s offensive, one which stepped up in December 2019. Turkey also reiterated that it would repatriate refugees to Syria who fled recent fighting.
Step Vaessen, Al-Jazeera’s journalist reporting from Moscow, noted that it was not a dissimilar agreement to October 2019 ‘safe zone’ established by Putin and Erdogan in Sochi in the wake of Turkey’s invasion of north-east Syria to push back Syrian Democratic Forces and the YPG. Ceasefires in Syria have fallen apart multiple times, however, de-escalation along with the M4, the key strategic point of contention around the town of Saraqib, has staved off the likelihood of a Russo-Turkish conflict breaking out.
President Assad has vowed to retake all of Syria, yet the conflict between Turkey, Syria and Russia in February and March made it clear that without Russian support, the Turkish military could shred the Syrian Arab Army.
The Syrian military had been reconfigured by Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Quds Forces, for an asymmetrical conflict, and was shored up by paramilitary fighters (predominantly Shia) from Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan. It drew strong support from Russian special forces as well as the Quds Force, who is responsible for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ foreign operations - particularly covert ones - across the region.
A string of war crimes and crimes against humanity were carried out, but from a military perspective, Soleimani’s strategy worked. The combination, shored up by Russian air-power, eviscerated the insurgency and allowed regime forces to win important battles in Homs, Eastern Ghouta, Al-Qusayr, Daraa and Aleppo. In Idlib, the same strategy has been replicated but with Turkey’s direct intervention in the conflict (traditionally Turkey had been arming the opposition until it began performing joint operations with the SNA and NFL), the Turkish military evened the odds for the remaining factions fighting the Assad regime and his backers, Iran and Russia.
Assad’s war machine was brought to a standstill without Russian air support as Turkish drones, artillery and aircraft pounded Syrian positions across the northwest in late February and early March. This was the price the Russians were forced to pay, along with the Syrian army, for inflicting casualties throughout February on Turkish soldiers, the majority of whom were killed in a single air raid by Russian and Syrian aircraft.
In the build-up to the death of 34 Turkish soldiers in the air raid, Russian generals had become increasingly hostile to the belligerence of the Turkish military, whose convoys, tanks, artillery and drone were directly supporting the offensive of the SNA and NFL - Turkish proxies wielded in the war against the Syrian Kurds and now Assad - around Saraqib, the strategic point on the M4 highway which Assad had recaptured. When Russian aircraft in the skies and the Khmeimim base was targeted by man-portable air-defence systems (MANPADs) from Turkish military outposts, Russia responded ferociously. Red-lines were crossed by the three main parties to the conflict, Putin, Assad and Erdoğan, which culminated in a tense stand-off between the Russia and Turkey, and scramble by Erdoğan and his proxies to capture Saraqib before his meeting with Putin in Moscow.
The confrontation in February stemmed from the failure of Russia and Turkey to enforce the ten points outlined in the Sochi Agreement on 17th September 2018. Assad’s army surrounded several Turkish observation posts, and lobbed shells into them, contravening the point that they would ‘continue to function’. Russia in-turn failed to curb a military attack on Idlib while Turkey utterly failed to fulfil the removal of ‘all radical terrorist groups from the demilitarised zones’ as HTS established control over Idlib province. Coordinated patrols did not start until March-April 2019, and occurred at the precise moment Syrian, Russian and Shia paramilitaries were stepping up their military operations in Idlib.
The two partners agreed in principle at Sochi but the reality of Syria’s battlefield sabotaged high-level diplomacy, putting Turkey and Russia on a collision course for the conflict in February. With the Western powers side-lined, or unwilling to get heavily involved in the complex civil war (and now distracted by the COVID-19 pandemic), Erdoğan has gone into Syria’s malaise alone for the last three years, with limited support from NATO. This has come with far-reaching consequences for Turkey with over a hundred of soldiers dead, many more wounded and suicide attacks targeting civilians on multiple occasions on Turkish soil.
Without NATO’s full-support, there are limits on how far Erdoğan can go toe to toe with Russia. Metin Gurcan described 27th February as Turkey’s ‘gloomiest day in the Syrian conflict’ as the military sustained its heaviest losses in one day since the intervention began. The response by Erdoğan against the Assad regime, rather than the Russian military, showed the power dynamics at play. Turkey could bully Assad’s regime with ease, but they could not stand up to Russia’s power, and control of the Syrian battlefield.
Erdoğan had to shore up the narrative that ‘the Turkish martyrs were being avenged,’ and that Turkey was responding to this crisis. Given that the Russians sustained zero casualties (on paper,) despite being responsible for the death of the Turkish soldiers, Erdoğan’s response was limited as he lashed out the only way he could by targeting Assad. Whether or not Putin and Erdoğan tacitly agreed in their initial telephone call after the airstrike that Assad was to bear the brunt of Russia’s raid is subject to debate.
What happens next is important. The detente between Assad and Erdoğan with Putin as a broker could pave the way for a permanent ceasefire in the northwest, and the “partial peace” outlined by Erdogan and Putin. Assad will have to abandon his zero-sum game on the opposition, and Russian pressure will likely force him to capitulate. As Crisis Group noted during the Syrian-Turkish conflict, ‘Damascus’s uncompromising rhetoric vis-à-vis the rebels – stating it will not talk to “terrorists” – and its bloody dispatch of past opponents make it hard to conceive of a peaceful middle ground.’ Even with the support of Iran’s foreign paramilitaries, Assad cannot recapture northwest Syria without Russian airpower, and if Russia withholds that support, it will bring Assad to the table.
Buthaina Shaaban, Assad’s media and political adviser - who also served Assad during the Israeli-Syrian peace talks in the 1990s - stated: “it is not possible to hold a summit meeting between President Assad and Erdoğan, while Turkey occupies Syrian territories.” The Syrian government’s stance is simple: no negotiations until all Turkish forces withdraw from northern Syria. It is a similar stance Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad, regularly adopted with the Israelis in southern Lebanon and the Israeli army’s continued occupation of the Golan Heights throughout the Arab-Israeli conflict. In a televised address, Assad himself stated that “the battle to liberate Aleppo and Idlib will continue as will the battle to liberate all of Syrian soil.”
The difference is that Damascus talks from a position of weakness, not from the one of strength that it had under Hafez Assad. The economy has collapsed in Syria with the Syrian lira at its lowest level ever. The army is a shell, filled by conscripts, warlords and foreign paramilitaries, unable to wage a sustained war with Turkey alone. Assad barely survived the early years of the civil war and would have fallen had it not been for his allies, who have their own problems to contend with domestically. Syria is entirely dependent on its allies, and the black market to stay afloat militarily, economically and politically.
Allies are also weakening. Iran is now contending with multiple proxy wars, and with COVID-19 and sanctions wreaking havoc on the country’s health systems and economy, overreach in Syria has sucked Tehran into a quagmire. Anti-Iranian sentiment is high in Iraq and Lebanon with huge protests being directed against Iranian meddling in politics and their paramilitaries’ abuses in Beirut and Baghdad. Several revolts have shaken Iran itself with hundreds perishing in the crackdowns and thousands more being arrested. Iran cannot sustain Assad’s army in perpetuity nor are their paramilitaries a match for the Turkish air force in Idlib. Despite recent events, Russia and Turkey have both shown a lack of desire to escalate into a full-fledged war over Syria.
Without Russia or Iran, Assad is extremely vulnerable and any campaign against Idlib after the ceasefire would result in failure. After the final details of the ceasefire agreement were ironed out by Russian and Turkish officials in Ankara on 10th March, joint patrols are now set to begin on 15th March. Erdoğan has vowed to hit Assad’s forces hard if they violate the new ceasefire. “We will not just retaliate (against) even the smallest attack here (in Idlib), we will give a much harsher response,” he rumbled in Parliament. Unless Turkey crosses red-lines agreed upon with Russia, Assad will be arm-twisted into negotiating with Erdoğan either by proxy or directly. This remains to be seen, given the precarious situation in Idlib, and how disastrously the previous agreement unravelled. Ceasefires have been violated countless times throughout Syria’s civil war by local factions and jihadist groups, and any diplomatic outcome will inevitably have involve HTS who Russia and Assad regard as a terrorist organisation (with previous ties to Islamic State and Al-Qa’ida.
If the ceasefire becomes permanent, the situation in Idlib now and in the future will hardly be peace, but a frozen conflict similar to the aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars in southeastern Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. Idlib will be akin to a partitioned Bosnia and Herzegovina, where warring local parties are kept apart by international armed forces. With millions of refugees hemmed into Idlib province and ruled by HTS, the humanitarian crisis will remain dire for years, and ordinary civilians will continue to be the target of retribution.
Speaking to a Syrian aid worker in Idlib, he believed that the conflict was far from over. “I think this is just the beginning of a new stage in the civil war, attacks on army checkpoints in Daraa and other areas are increasing. Even if the Idlib crisis was solved (either by Assad establishing full control or through an agreement with Turkey) this will be just the beginning.” The hunt for activists and insurgents, he believed, would step up.
“After 1982 Hama uprising, the regime spent more that two decades tracking down its supporters. It was done in revenge, and a lesson to anyone who might think to protest or even have say anything against the Assad regime. The next phase now will be the same after as the 1980s: "Hunting people" in regime controlled areas.”
Even if the Syrian-Turkish conflict in the north is resolved, the civil war has several other ‘wars within a war’ occurring, including the ongoing conflict with Islamic State’s cells, Israel and Iran’s shadow war in the south-east and rebel insurgents continue to operate in the south launching attacks against regime forces. With the humanitarian crisis deepening, and so many battlefields still unresolved, the war in Syria is far from over. For the Syrian people who have been killed, maimed or forced to flee, and those in hiding within the country from the regime, it will be a generational conflict. “The regime will never forget.”