Assad regime presses Idlib assault despite Turkish warning

DAMASCUS - Syrian regime forces Wednesday pressed on with their offensive in the northwest that has displaced half a million people, despite heightened tensions with Turkey.

Intensive aerial bombardment and ground fighting in the jihadist-dominated Idlib region since December have killed almost 300 civilians and triggered one of the largest waves of displacement in the nine-year war.

The United Nations and aid groups have condemned the escalation and called for an end to hostilities in a region that is home to three million people, half of them already displaced from other parts of Syria.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday warned that his country would not allow Syrian forces to gain more ground and accused them of driving "innocent and grieving people" towards the Turkish border.

The mass displacement of civilians in Idlib has coincided with a biting winter and is one of the largest since the 2011 start of a conflict that has seen more than half of Syria's pre-war population of 20 million displaced. Turkey, which already hosts some 3.7 million Syrian refugees, wants to prevent a further influx.

The violence in Idlib has accelerated in recent months despite several ceasefire efforts, including as recently as January, displacing hundreds of thousands of people. UN regional spokesman David Swanson said 520,000 people had been displaced since the beginning of December and the numbers could swell further.

Erdogan gave even greater numbers, claiming that nearly one million people were moving towards the Turkish border and Syrian territory under Turkish control. "No one has the right to place such a weight on our shoulders," he said.

Last chance

Russian-backed Syrian regime forces on Wednesday pressed on with their offensive in Idlib, where they have seized more than 20 towns and villages from rebels and jihadists over the past 24 hours, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and state news agency SANA.

With their latest advance, Damascus loyalists have nearly encircled Saraqeb in southern Idlib and were now within one kilometre (less than a mile) of the strategic highway town which has been emptied of its residents following weeks of bombardment, the Observatory said.

Holdout rebels and jihadists can only exit from the north, with regime forces deployed on all other sides, according to the war monitor group.

A military source quoted by SANA late Tuesday said the Syrian army was giving its enemies in Saraqeb and nearby areas a "last chance," calling on them to surrender their arms.

The Syrian government was poised this week to recapture Saraqeb. But its push hit a snag after regime forces exchanged deadly fire with Turkish troops on Monday, an escalation UN chief Antonio Guterres called "extremely worrying".

Regime shelling of Turkish positions in Idlib killed at least five Turkish soldiers and three civilians, Ankara said. The Observatory reported that retaliatory fire from Turkey killed at least 13 Syrian government troops. The exchange was their deadliest clash since Ankara sent troops to Syria in 2016.

It further tested the uneasy coordination between Russia and Turkey, the two main foreign brokers in the Syrian conflict. Under a 2018 cease-fire deal with Russia, Turkey set up 12 military observation posts in Idlib aimed at preventing a full assault by Syrian forces.

Under the deal, Russia was to prevent Damascus from launching a devastating operation in Idlib in exchange for Turkey containing extremist groups running the region - but its proxies were largely sidelined by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Erdogan on Wednesday urged Damascus to back off the Turkish posts.

"At the moment, two of our 12 observation posts are behind the regime's lines," he said. "We hope the regime will withdraw from our observation posts before the end of the month of February.

"If the regime does not pull back [to the cease-fire line], Turkey will be obliged to take matters into its own hands." 

He added that two of the Turkish observation posts are now behind Syrian lines. The post at Morek was surrounded by Assad's forces in December, while another at Surman now lies within the regime's area of control.

Coordination

Erdogan said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Syrian forces must retreat during a late-night phone call on Tuesday.

"This is a new era in Syria. Nothing can remain the same where the Turkish soldier's blood has been shed," he said, in reference to Monday's deadly clashes.

“If our soldiers' safety cannot be ensured in Idlib, no one can deny our right to ensure it ourselves,” he said.

But Jana Jabbour, of Sciences Po in Paris, said the latest tensions would not derail Russia and Turkey's cooperation.

"(They) know perfectly how to manage their differences. They need to cooperate and maintain good relations because they are economically interdependent," she said.

Their priority, she added, is to ensure a "regional solution, designed by Moscow and Ankara, as opposed to an international solution parachuted in by the West".

Erdogan on Wednesday also called for the withdrawal of Syrian Kurdish forces from regions near Turkey's border. He threatened to resume a Turkish military offensive that was launched into northern Syria last year against Kurdish militias there.

Turkey regards the US-allied Kurdish forces as terrorists because of their links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) across the border in Turkey. But the Kurdish-led forces inside Syria had also partnered with the US as a valuable ally against the Islamic State group.

A Reuters report said the US has halted a drone program that for years had helped Ankara target PKK militants, in response to Turkey’s cross-border military incursion into Syria in October. That offensive targeted components of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), America's top allies in the region.