Erdogan's gamble in Syria

all right Alexander Let's do an update on what is going on in uh Syria uh still a lot of fog of War it is difficult to get a clear understanding as to what is going on but I think we do have a better understanding as to the situation uh compared to to what was happening on on Friday yeah before the weekend started so how how do you see things uh my view of it is that it appears that the situation has stay ized or the advance of the jihadists has slowed down but uh what are

your thoughts I think that's right I think that I think that it's been contained and I think that you're going you seen reinforcements rushing towards Syria from every country that backs the Syrian government um Iran is sending people the Shia militias in Iraq are pouring into Syria we're going to see people from Hezbollah uh in Lebanon turning up uh there's reports that V Fighters have been sent from Russia the Russian Air Force is reinforcing they've now got a new general who's in charge uh the bombing is going to intensify I'm going to make a guess

I think that in a couple of months time we will be back roughly to where we were before this episode happened in other words it will be reversed um a a number of things people are talking about Iran and Russia being overextended and distracted at the moment now they clearly are distracted I mean the uh the um Iranians have had to uh face up to the situation in Lebanon the Russians have the war in Ukraine but specifically in the case of Russia as I have pointed out now in several programs Russia is militarily far more

powerful now than it was when it intervened in intervened in Syria a decade ago its Air Force is orders of magnitude bigger it's uh um aircraft are much more modern its Pilots are far more experienced it's got much bigger arsenal of weapons that you can use It's Got U air to surface missiles it's got the um guided bombs which it didn't have in 2015 and we've we've gone from a situation in 2015 when Russia was basically making do with what was left over from the Soviet Union to a situation today when the Russian military has

been completely rebuilt so we we're Russia is far more powerful about Iran I can't say so so much but I get the sense that even the Iranians are stronger in military terms at least than they were in 2015 and the Arab states the various Arab states which in 2015 were backing the Insurgency against Assad are not interested in doing so this time so when you put all the things together uh it looks to me as if overwhelming forces are going to be brought to bear against the jihadists in Northwest Syria as you say the situation

looks as if it's stabilized and I expect that in the next couple of months but weeks first and then months it will be brought back under control and we will end up eventually uh looking at something very much like the starting lines that we had previously so uh that that is my you know guess about what we are where we are going but of course that still begs many questions about about why what happened happened as you rightly said there's a huge amount of fog of War we don't know exactly what the situation is in

Aleppo um Syria's second bigger city there are some claims this morning that the government does still control parts of Aleppo but regardless of that it does look as if a large part of Aleppo probably the bulk of it plus the airport and the Citadel have fallen under Jihadi control something which has never happened at any point during the main Syrian Civil War it does look as if there was a massive military and intelligence failure and that begs many questions about how it happened well a massive uh intelligence failure but also a massive buildup no this

wasn't planned in one day or one night obviously no and um and all of these these jihadists um definitely not Syrian or at least a lot of them are not Syrian we're talking Al Qaeda we're talking al-nusra we're talking HTS they're all the same moderate Rebels Isis it's it's all the same the same the same group of people the worst the worst people in the world that were trying to to overthrow Assad uh a few years back uh they've they've returned or they've been reconstituted and they've been given a lot of weapons yeah and all

of these forces this Force this big Force I believe you're in the program that you did with Alistar crook this this force was 15,000 was that the number that was estimated okay so and and they all must have poured in from from where from Turkey right absolutely there's no other place that they could have that they could have come from so what what does this tell you about turkey about erdoan a turkey entering bricks turkey moving away from NATO turkey going going against Israel or being the one country that's going to stand up to Israel

and stand up to the United States what does this tell you about turkey and erdoan what does this mean for turkey and Bricks for turkey and uh and Russia going forward yeah I turkey and Iran as well actually turkey turkey and Iran if if we come back to Turkey and Israel I I never took edan's rhetoric at all seriously I know some people did but I I Absol I think we ever even uh discussed it in a because I don't think hether is we never yeah never did just rhetorical hot thatan um lets off and

it doesn't really mean anything very much um the thing to understand about Eran and I mean there's no um there's no easy easy way to say it's like it just say it as it is erdoan is compulsively treacherous he will always come do arrangements with all sorts of people um and then at the first opportunity he will backstab them Eran um was defeated in Syria before this is all he's always resented that fact he has a much more complex relationship with Putin than many people understand in the sense that the two do work with each

other very very closely but it's fairly well known that at a personal level there are all sorts of tensions between them as well well and resentments uh erdogan consistently resents Putin and the fact that Putin is much more powerful than he is so you know there there's there's always been this issue there erdogan has supported Ukraine he has talked about the fact that he backs Ukraine's entry into NATO he let the azof people go which after telling the Russ that that would never happen so he he he he's somebody who even as he at one

level always moves forward to build up relations with Russia applies to join the bricks does all of these things he he canot he can't help himself but act to try to um annoy irritate upset the Russians in every way he can and to win and to win um against them and of course A couple of years ago he was very successful in getting his proxy aeran to defeat Armenia Armenia being a long-standing Russian proxy of course the Russians were having problems with Armenia because of the new the change of government that had taken place there

but I suspect that that to some extent has emboldened him as well so this is a known fact about Eran by the way I I was talking to someone very well informed about China this was some months ago and they told me that even though the Chinese um deal with Eran as well they also have the same issues with him that on the one hand he is always talking about how important it is to develop Eurasia to build up the bricks to do all of these things at the same time he's working constantly to try

to undermine Chinese and Russian influence in Central Asia and his uh uh backing uh secessionist groups in syj re Reon so the Chinese also resent him and um and IR are irritated by him at many particular levels so I I don't think this should come as any kind of surprise and in terms of eran's own policies the the the thing about him is that he believes and he has good reason to believe that he can uh walk and chew gum at the same time he can go on doing these things backstabbing his Earth while friends

in the bricks and keeping in with the Americans and the Israelis at some level um even as at the same time he makes rhetorical attacks well the Israelis and the United States and the Western powers and appears to maneuver turkey towards the bricks so it it's a game that he constantly incessantly plays and which in truth it has he has always been able to win against now if you're talking about this particular episode there's no doubt at all these insurgents these jihadis have had backing from Israel and the United States I I'm sure that this

is true I say no doubt I personally have no doubt about that there can be no doubt at all that their main help has come from Turkey as you rightly said the supplies have must have been sent through turkey the training has clearly been provided in turkey turkey has played the major role in protecting idlib and preventing the Syrian government from occupying the whole territory of idaly region which is the one area of Syria that was outside um Syrian government control well there's also the Kurdish area in the East but in Northwest Syria at least

so this operation could not have happened without turkey being involved and without Eran himself being involved everybody everybody knows this there's also reports that there's a headquarters in Turkey which has been directing this entire operation and again I am personally sure that is true now erdoan and his officials are going around telling everybody we had absolutely nothing to do with this we don't support this this is nothing to do with us it's it's more lies to say it straightforwardly just as it's highly likely that erdogan lied to Putin if not in fact at least by

a mission they had a conversation only last week very friendly call by all accounts and I think it is inconceivable that other one in fact told Putin that this was coming so Putin is going to be very very angry but I have to say this also turkey remains so important to the Russians it's important as a route to sanctions to obtaining you know to conducting trade uh um without having interfere in some sanctions uh turkey is so important in the whole process of bricks construction that I suspect there's still going to be some people in

Moscow probably people close to Putin himself who say look what we've got to do we've got to we know we know who are one is we know the kind of things we he does we know that he's an absolutely treacherous duplicitous um well they you undoubtedly using even stronger terms but let's play poker faced let's go on pretending that he's not involved in the way that he is let's get this area Aleppo back under Syrian government control let's get this whole territory back um under Syrian government control let's focus on this and one way or

the other impossible man though erdogan himself is let's nonetheless still continue to work with him because the alternative of making him into a simple enemy would be worse it would complicate things for us not just in Syria but in the Caucasus in Central Asia in terms of bricks construction even more and you see this you see this with lavro calling fadan the Turkish foreign minister they're talking about having more aana meetings the Iranians who are making exactly the same calculations as the Russians are also pretending that turkey remains a partner they're sending their foreign minister

to Anchor to talk to the Turks um my guess is that what's going to happen as I said is that the is going to be pushed back many of them have already been killed there will be then another Summit meeting of the three leaders Putin uh um beesan on this occasion and Eran um and they'll try and put this whole asanao process as they pretend back um back um together and what Eran will want and I suspect at some point because he always knows when to pull back what erdogan will insist on is a meeting

with uh Assad he's been trying to get this meeting with Assad organized for years Assad has consistently said no Assad knows exactly also the kind of man that Eran is um alabia which is I believe a Saudi based um news Outlet actually said straightforward that the entire purpose of this uh whole operation from eran's own point of view is to put pressure on Assad to agree to that meeting to try to start moving away drifting away from uh Iran and to some extent Russia and to accept that it'll be turkey rather than Iran that will

have the predominant say in Syria and something along those lines might eventually be agreed yeah you forgot to mention the uh the fighter jet the Russian jet that was shot down by turkey when was that 20 20177 exactly exactly somewhere around there exactly the Russians swallowed that and was there I I was in Moscow and yeah they they swallow yeah they swallowed it swallowed it so I mean you everybody knows uh the sort of person that thean is but as I said at the end of the day they make these very tough calculations through gritted

teeth and they just go on pretending that he's somebody whose work can be trusted well that that's my next question to you or my observation uh given everything that we've seen from erdogan over the years um can you say that he's the one world leader yeah that has leverage over over Putin in Russia can you make that that claim because of uh of turkey's position it's geopolitical position its connection its membership of NATO and in the west but also it it's uh it's pathway or at least it's it intends to to move towards bricks and

to the east uh the fact that you have Turk stream which is now the the only with Ukraine but pretty much the the main uh way to to move Russian gas into into Europe or at least one of two major ways to get Russian gas into Europe so a Turk dream has gained a lot of power because of the the blowing up of nordstream so you have turkstream you have the s400s you have that deal uh you have a lot of deal in uh a lot of deals made for uh for Russia nuclear uh power

plants in Turkey as well so you have a lot of business you have a lot of Tourism you have a lot of uh payment integration as well between Russia and uh and turkey and and turkey also controls the Black Sea I mean if if Turkey wanted to it could start opening up the Black Sea to uh the us or to the UK which have requested yeah from erdan to open that up so turkey understands Eran understands that he may be the one leader that does have leverage at this moment in time yeah over Russia and

over Putin and he plays that card over and over again knowing like you said that Russia really can't do anything about it because if Russia really wanted to solve Syria they would pound idlib and get turkey out of there yeah but they don't no and there's a reason they don't because they understand that they have to keep turkey on side at least as best they can and and and erdoan understands all of this and he and he completely uh plays plays Russia off against the west and he and he uh and he consistently betrays Russia

yes every couple of years he betrays them absolutely and and this is this it's not a good look but you know as we do geopolitical analysis it is the reality of the situation it is it is absolutely the reality of the situation because if we're talking about Russia's relations with other um countries that are friends of Russia China Russia Russia Iran uh obviously those countries have leverage over Russia too but Russia has extensive leverage over them with turkey it's different because the balance of uh advantage in the relationship lies very much with Eran and by

the way what you mentioned about the danger of them of erdan opening the dardel and letting Western warships into the Black Sea is is absolutely correct it is definitely something that the Russians do not want to see was the conflict in Ukraine is still underway and that now brings us to the timing of this event which is I think that it is partly related to the developments in Ukraine obviously there's been all the things that have been going on in the Middle East as well the fighting between Hezbollah and um Israel the fact that that

is distracted and meant that Hezbollah had to withdraw many of its fighters in Syria and that weakened the overall Syrian military position but beyond that erdogan can see that the war in Ukraine is now heading towards an end point with the Russians as the wind as the winners when that happens some of his leverage starts to Fall Away um it becomes less important for the Russians to keep the Darden naels closed particularly if the Russians are able to um establish some kind of um protector at or even control over um you know the remaining Coastline

of the Black Sea adessa that is still under Ukrainian control um for the Russians it's not impossible that sanctions relief could start to kick in or it could be that with the conflict in Ukraine ended the enthusiasm in the west to go on piling on sanctions starts to slacken so that payment movements start to payments start to move more easily besides after Kazan we're likely anyway to be in a world where those kind of financial sanctions are less important at that point again turkey becomes less important so erdogan probably calculates and calculates rightly that this

is the moment to do this because a year from now his leverage over the Russians might be significantly less than it is at the moment all right uh we will end the video there and we will be monitoring the situation in Syria as well um things things can change very quickly so we'll be we'll be monitoring the situation there closely the durant. locals.com we are on Rumble Odyssey bit your Telegram rockfin and x and go to the Durant shop pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update today I will put

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