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Turkey's operation in Syria and “Islamic anti-terrorism coalition”

Commentary Materials 26 August 2016 16:11 (UTC +04:00)
Interests of a number of countries clash in Syria and it increasingly complicates the solution of the crisis in the country
Turkey's operation in Syria and “Islamic anti-terrorism coalition”

Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 26

By Rufiz Hafizoglu – Trend:

Interests of a number of countries clash in Syria and it increasingly complicates the solution of the crisis in the country. The continuation of the crisis, in turn, creates more obstacles for its settlement.

Today, the main task of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is to stay in power by any means and important support is provided for him.

Russia’s support is related to the fact that Moscow doesn’t want to lose its bases in Syria. These bases are the 720th Logistics Support Point of Russian Navy in Syria’s Tartus city and an aviation group of Russian Air Force stationed at the Khmeimim airbase in the southeast of Syria’s Latakia city.

As for Iran, it is obvious that Syria has always been a main corridor to provide Hezbollah with arms against Israel. However, if earlier the Sunni rule in Iraq stood between Iran and Syria, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, who was an enemy of Iran, Tehran has acquired the perfect chance to expand its interests in the Arab world.

Syria has been a training camp for almost all anti-Israeli groups for many years.

As for ethnic Kurds in Syria, they almost had no civil rights even during the country’s President Hafez al-Assad’s term. As a result of military clashes and a growing number of terrorists, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decided to attract ethnic Kurds by promising to provide them with autonomy in case of the crisis settlement.

But as it is known there are no friends in politics but only interests.

As a result of the ongoing military conflict, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) are the main unofficial allies of the US in Syria today, actually fighting solely for their own interests, namely pro-US interests to seize a plot of Syrian land.

As for the Free Syrian Army, which is the main ally of Turkey, the situation is not so smooth.

The Free Syrian Army’s main problem is that there is no clear line between resistance and politics. Today the Free Syrian Army is one of the vulnerable and unorganized groups in Syria. Almost all, including the Syrian government forces, Hezbollah, YPG and PYD, as well as those fighting for the Caliphate are against the Free Syrian Army.

There is also ‘Jabhat al-Nusra’ (a Sunni Islamist militia group), which announced its dissolution, the IS militants as well as armed looters on the territory of Syria.

It is worth noting that there are a number of international coalitions for the fight against the IS in Syria.

But for some reason participation of the ‘Islamic anti-terrorism coalition’ led by Saudi Arabia has been never mentioned.

In February 2016, the Turkish Armed Forces took part in the military drills of the ‘Islamic anti-terrorism coalition.’

If one carefully reviews the list of countries included in the coalition, one can notice that the list doesn’t include either Iraq or Syria which suffer from terrorism. Iran, which is a member of the anti-terrorism coalition with Russia, Iraq and Syria, isn’t on the list, either. This once again confirms the fact that the ‘Islamic anti-terrorism coalition’ is largely of political nature.

There is no doubt that the ‘Islamic anti-terrorism coalition’ will not join the Turkish military operations in Syria.

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