The Duran Podcast - Erdogan's gamble in Syria

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Erdogan's gamble in Syria

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on what is going on in Syria. 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 compared to what was happening on Friday before the weekend started. So how do you see things? My view of it is that it appears that the situation has stated. or the advance of the jihadists has slowed down. But what are your thoughts?

I think that's right. I think that it's been contained and I think that you're going to see reinforcements rushing towards Syria from every country that backs the Syrian government. Iran is sending people. The Shia militias in Iraq are pouring into Syria. We're going to see people from Hezbollah in Lebanon turning up. There's reports that Vargasians fighters have been sent from Russia. The Russian air forces are reinforcing. They've now got

a new general who's in charge. 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. 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 Iranians have had to 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, first intervened in Syria a decade ago. Its air force is orders of magnitude bigger.

It's aircraft, a much more modern. Its pilots are far more experienced. It's got much bigger arsenal of weapons that you can use. It's got air-to-service missiles. It's got the guided bombs, which you didn't have in 2015. And 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 Russia is far more powerful. About Iran, I can't say 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, 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 looking at something very much like the starting lines that we had previously. So that is my guess, about where we are going. But of course, that still begs many questions about why what happened happened. As you rightly say, there is a huge amount of fog of war. We don't know exactly what the situation is in Aleppo,

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 intelligence failure, but also a massive buildup. This wasn't planned in one day or one night, obviously.

And all of these jihadists, definitely not Syrian, or at least a lot of them are not Syrian. We're talking al-Qaeda, we're talking al-Musra, we're talking HTS. They're all to say moderate rebels, ISIS. It's all the same, the same group. of people, the worst people in the world that were trying to overthrow Assad a few years back, they've returned or they've been reconstituted and they've been given a lot of weapons. And all of these forces, this force, this big force, I believe you're in the program that you did with Alistair Kruk, this force was 15,000. Was that the number that was estimated?

Okay, so, and they all must have poured in from where? Turkey, right? There's no other place that they could have come from. So what does this tell you about Turkey, about Erdogan, Turkey entering bricks, Turkey, moving away from NATO, Turkey, 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 Erdogan? What does this mean for Turkey and bricks, for Turkey and Russia going forward. Turkey and Iran as well. Actually, Turkey and Iran.

If we come back to Turkey and Israel, I never took Erdogan's rhetoric at all seriously. I know some people did, but I absolutely. I think we ever even discussed it in a program because I don't think either of them was. We never did. Yeah. It was just rhetorical hot air that Erdogan lets off. And it doesn't really mean anything very much. The thing to understand about Erdogan, and I mean, there's no easy way to say.

I could just say it as it is. Erdogan is compulsively treacherous. He will always come to arrangements with all sorts of people. And then at the first opportunity, he will backstab them. Erdogan was defeated in Syria before. 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 and resentments.

Erdogan consistently resents Putin and the fact that Putin is much more powerful than he is. So, you know, 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 Azov people go, which after telling the Russians that that would never happen. So he is 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 can't help himself, but act to try to annoy, irritate, upset Russians in every way he can't, and to win and to win against them. And of course, a couple of years ago, he was very successful in getting his proxy, Azerbaijan, to defeat Armenia. Armenia being a long-standing Russian proxy. Of course, the Russians were having problems with Armenia because of 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 Erdogan. By the way, I was talking to someone very well informed about China. This is just a month ago.

And they told me that even though the Chinese deal with Erdogan 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 backing secessionist groups in Xinjiang reasons. So the Chinese also resent him and are irritated by him at many particular levels. So I don't think this should come as any kind of surprise. and in terms of Erdogan's own policies, the thing about him is that he believes, and he has good reason to believe, that he can walk and chew gum at the same time.

He can go on doing these things, backstabbing his erstwhile friends in the bricks, and keeping in with the Americans and the Israelis at some level. even as at the same time he makes rhetorical attacks on the Israelis and the United States and the Western powers and appears to maneuver Turkey towards the bricks. So it's a game that he constantly incessantly plays and which in truth he has always been able to win against. Now if you're talking about this, this particular episode, there's no doubt at all that these insurgents, these jihadis, have had backing from Israel and the United States. 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 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 Idlib region, which is the one area of Syria that was outside 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 Erdogan 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 Erdogan and his officials are going around telling everybody

we had absolutely nothing to deal with this, we don't support this, this is nothing to do with us. 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 omission. They had a conversation only last week, very friendly call by all accounts. And I think it is inconceivable that Erdogan, in fact, told Putin that this was coming. So Putin. and it's 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 without having interference from sanctions. Turkey is so important in the whole process of Briggs 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 who Erdogan is. We know the kind of things he does. We know that he's an absolutely treasurer's duplicitous. Well, they're 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 under Syrian governed 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 Lavrov, calling Fadhan, the Turkish foreign minister. They're talking about having more Astana meetings. The Iranians who are making exact.

the same calculations as the Russians are also pretending that Turkey remains a partner. They're sending there for a minister to Ankara to talk to the Turks. My guess is that what's going to happen, as I said, is that the jihad 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, Pezzisgian on this occasion and Erdogan and they'll try and put this whole Astana process as they pretend back back together and what Erdogan 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

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 Erdogan is. Al-Arabiya, which is, I believe, a Saudi-based news outlet, actually said straightforwardly that the entire purpose of this whole operation, from Erdogan's own point of view, is to put pressure on Assad to agree to that meeting, just trying to start moving away, drifting away from Iran and to some extent Russia and to accept that it'll be Turkey rather than Iran that will have the predominance say in Syria. And something along those lines might eventually be agreed.

Yeah, you forgot to mention the fighter jet, the Russia jet that was shot down by Turkey. When was that? 2017. 2017, exactly. Exactly, yeah. 17? Yeah. Somewhere around there. Exactly. The Russians swallowed that.

Yeah, they... I was there. I was in Moscow when that, yeah. They swallowed it. Swallowed it. So, I mean, you know, everybody knows the sort of person that Erdogan is. But 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's my next question to you or my observation, given everything that we've seen from Erdogan over the years. Can you say that he's the one world leader that has leverage over Putin and Russia? Can you make that claim? Because of Turkey's position, its geopolitical position, its connection, its membership of NATO and in the West, but also it's, it's, it's,

pathway or at least it intends to move towards bricks and to the east. The fact of that you have Turkstream, which is now the only with Ukraine, but pretty much the main way to move Russian gas into Europe, or at least one of two major ways to get Russian gas into Europe. So Turkstream has gained a lot of power because of the blowing up of Nord Stream. So you have Turkstream. You have the S-400s. You have that deal. You have a lot of deals made for for Russia nuclear power plants in Turkey as well. So you have a lot of business. You have a lot of tourism. You have a lot of payment integration as well between Russia and Turkey. And Turkey also controls the Black Sea. I mean, if Turkey wanted to, it could start opening up the Black Sea to the U.S. or to the UK, which I've requested.

from Erdogan to open that up. So Turkey understands, Erdogan understands, that he may be the one leader that does have leverage at this moment in time 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. 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 Erdogan understands all of this. And he completely plays Russia off against the West.

And he consistently betrays Russia. Every couple of years, he betrays them. Absolutely. And this is, it's not a good look, but, you know, as well, we do geopolitical analysis, it is the reality of the situation. It is absolutely the reality of the situation, because if we're talking about Russia's relations with other countries that are friends of Russia, China, Russia, Russia, Iran, obviously, those countries have leverage over Russia too, but Russia has extensive leverage over them.

With Turkey, it's different because the balance of advanced. in the relationship lies very much with Erdogan. And by the way, what you mentioned about the danger of Erdogan opening the Dardanelles and letting Western warships into the Black Sea is absolutely correct. It is definitely something that the Russians do not want to see whilst 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 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 winners. When that happens,

some of his leverage starts to fall away. It becomes less important for the Russians to keep the Dardanelles closed, particularly if the Russians are able to establish some kind of protectorate or even control over, you know, the remaining coastline of the Black Sea, Odessa, that is still under Ukrainian control. 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.

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. We will end the video there,

and we will be monitoring the situation in Syria as well. Things can change very quickly, so we'll be monitoring the situation there closely. The durand.com, we are on Rumble odyssey, bidshoot, telegram, rockfin, and X, and go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch, like what we are wearing in this video update. Today, I will put a link to the Duran Shop in the description box down below. Take care.