The title asks the question of the hour. From Gregory R. Copley at oilprice.com:
The Government of Turkey has now put itself in a position whereby it must act rapidly and precipitously to avoid moving to an ultimately losing strategic position in the war against Syria, which could result in being forced back to fight a full-scale civil war to prevent the break-up of the State into at least two compo-nents, one being a new Kurdish state.
Turkey’s leadership, in insisting — in 2011-12 — on sponsoring a proxy war to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has already led to a refugee crisis of irreversible strategic damage to Europe, but Turkish Presisdent Reçep Tayyip Erdogan, the Saudi Arabian military-political leadership, the U.S. Barack Obama administration, and the Qatari Emir now find themselves with nowhere to go except to escalate further in the hope that the Syrian revival, backed by Russia and Iran, will collapse.
Clear indications are emerging in Washington, DC, that the Pentagon is preparing to support a direct military invasion of Syria by Turkish Armed Forces, despite the Munich accord in the week ending February 13, 2016, which was meant to bring about a ceasefire in Syrian fighting. US officials have been actively en-gaged with those of Turkey and possibly Saudi Arabia in the preparations for ground force attacks on Kurdish military formations inside northern Syria, and U.S. Air Force Fairchild A-10 strike aircraft have deployed over northern Syrian territory in early February.
The planned intervention by Turkey (and possibly other powers, such as Saudi Arabia) is specifically not aimed at countering the activities of ISIS (asad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah f? al-‘Iraq wash-Sham/Islamic State), but solely about countering the growing capability of Syrian- and Iraqi-based Kurdish fighters, and to offset the gains which Syrian Government forces, supported by Russian and Iranian/HizbAllah forces, made in and around Aleppo.
The prospect of yet another abandonment of the Kurds is causing considerable division within some U.S. military and intelligence circles, but the fiction is that the Turkish battle is with ISIS.
It is understood that the Turkish Government wishes to establish a cordon sanitaire inside Syria, along the Turkish border, to prevent the flow of Kurdish fighters from Syria into Turkey, where they are reportedly supporting the civil war which is now underway in the Kurdish areas of Turkey. General Adem Huduti, commander of the Second Turkish Army, based in Malatya, has primary ground force responsibility for the areas contiguous with Syria and Iraq, and was believed to be key to the operation, which could engage, initially, some 20,000 or so of the Second Army’s 100,000-man strength, supported by Turkish Army Avia-tion AH-64W helicopter gunships, and other airborne systems, and possibly Turkish Air Force fixed-wing ground attack support and fighter cover, to protect against Syrian and Russian Air Force fighters. At least two armored brigades, with modern main battle tanks, and two mechanized infantry brigades, would be deployed, based on current observations of forward deployments by the Second Army. They would be supported by self-propelled 15mm artillery.
The Obama Administration and the Government of Turkish President Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appear to have calculated — probably correctly — that the Russian Government would not directly interfere with the assault on Kurdish forces, the YPG [People’s Protection Units (Kurdish: Yekîneyên Parastina Gel)] in a move designed to split those forces, driving to a depth of some 25 miles inside Syria.
Meanwhile, it should be expected that a number of false-flag attacks would be mounted by U.S. and Turkish operators to give the impression that the Turkish incursion would be responding to humanitarian concerns. Questions, then, should be raised by reports of attacks on February 14-15, 2016, by aircraft against civilian hospital targets in Aleppo. False-flag attacks (ie: purporting to be from one side, but in reality by another) have been used consistently by Islamist forces since the Sarajevo attacks (blamed on the Serbs) in the 1990s, and through later conflicts.
The proposed major military assault into Syria holds considerable risk for Turkey, not the least of that being a possible accidental escalation of hostilities with Russia, but it now seems unavoidable if Ankara is not to see a major disaster, not only wasting more than five years of intense effort to overthrow the Syrian Government of President Bashar al-Assad, but also to avert the unfettered escalation of the Kurdish war to wrench a large part of Turkey away from Ankara to create a new Kurdish state which would link with Iraqi and Syrian Kurds. Already, Turkey has paid an enormous price in unanticipated consequences from its ef-fort to lead a coalition (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the U.S.) into overthrowing Assad.
To continue reading: How Far Will The U.S. Go If Turkey Invades Syria?
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