Saudi, Turkey backpedaling on Syria invasion?
A Turkish army tank at the border with Syria.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey appear to be backpedaling on rhetoric to launch ground operations inside Syria, with officials sayingthey would wait for a go-ahead from the US and to see if a planned ceasefire transpires.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday Turkey will continue to take preventative measures to avoid becoming involved in the war in Syria.
He made the remarks in an address to members of his ruling AK Party in parliament as Turkey’s military shelled a Syrian city across the border for the fourth straight day.
Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have said they were waiting for a US nod after announcing their bid for ground operations inside Syria.
Moscow and Washington said on Sunday Russian President Vladimir Putin and and US President Barack Obama spoke by phone about a possible ceasefire.
The Kremlin said the phone call was at Washington’s initiative, and that the two leaders agreed to implement an agreement reached in Munich to determine the technicalities of a Syria ceasefire.
On Tuesday, a Turkish official said Ankara would not launch an offensive in Syria on its own, even though it thought “there should be a ground operation.”
“Turkey is not going to have a unilateral ground operation. We are asking coalition partners that there should be a ground operation. We are discussing this with allies,” the official told reporters at a briefing in Istanbul.
The official, however, said four Saudi jets to will be deployed to Turkey’s Incirlik air base by end of February, which indicates earlier claims of warplanes having already been deployed to the base were not true.
Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz had said on Sunday that Ankara had no intention of intervening in Syria.
Meanwhile, a Saudi diplomat said the kingdom was “very serious” about sending ground troops into Syria, but would wait to see if the planned truce would take effect, The Independent reported.
The unnamed diplomat said Saudi Arabia and Turkey were largely “on the same page” concerning the potential deployment and that Saudi officials had discussed the possibility with Prime Minister Davutoglu.
“Turkey isn’t against the ground troops, but they want to say ‘we gave the peace process a chance,’” added the diplomat, whose name was not published.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, meanwhile, said, “The kingdom’s readiness to provide special forces to any ground operations in Syria is linked to a decision to have a ground component to this… US-led coalition.”
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” … Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have said they were waiting for a US nod after announcing their bid for ground operations inside Syria …”
In other words, everything that Turkey and Saudi Arabia do needs permission from the US first. That would suggest the Turks shot down the Russian Sukhoi fighter with US approval and Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen with US approval.
I believe a Turkish-Saudi invasion of Syria to be extremely unlikely. Despite all its shiny new hardware, the Saudi armed forces are a joke. The air force is good at dropping bombs indiscriminately but is far from being up to the task of precision attacks, which is what would be required in Syria. Of the Saudi army, only its mercenaries are capable of fighting. How big a bribe would it take to persuade mercenaries to fight in Syria? Then there is the Turkish army, which has probably fed Erdogan just about all the rope it’s prepared to. Take Erdogan’s mad caliphate ambitions out of the equation and Turkey has no reason to invade Syria. The Turkish army will not risk a conflict with Russia, which it knows it cannot win. It would depose Erdogan first–a move that might not be far off. And when it comes to the crunch, Europe will not go to war with Russia to support Turkey, or for any other conceivable reason. The louder Europe’s rhetoric, the less chance that it will actually do anything. The Empire of Stupid has painted itself into a corner by backing the Turks. There is now no reasonable solution other than wait for Russia to finish the job, although the neocons probably are feverishly hatching new and even more insane schemes in their smoke-filled rooms.
The corrupt western anti Russian governments did not denounce Turkey regarding the Su bomber being downed in contested Syrian/Turkish air space and emboldened by this apparent affirmation of such wrong doings the Turkish “formerly known as” Erdogan prat bluffs his way into making haughty suggestions about invading Syria with Saudis help. Washington, it’s alphabet soup of agencies and it’s president start thinking with what limited brain they have and realises that taking on Russia might not actually be such a good idea after all. Iran, China, India and a few other nations are all interested in acquiring Russian military hardware(because they need it) and will be disinclined to advocate war with Russia. The US cannot compete against Russia in a non nuclear war – their F15 along with the F1-11,F14 Tomcats, Nimrods and Vulcans were the much lauded US air superiority some 30 odd years ago. They are of course dinosaurs from a previous era. So not only can the US not fund further terrorists globally but they will not be able to compete in the arms sales arena and have realised they cannot afford to put themselves in further hock than they already are. So the US is waiting to see if Saudi and Turkey will go it alone without promises from the US of aid. They really can’t fund war in Iraq, War against IS(supposedly), war against Syria, war against the Kurds whether Syrian/ Turkish or Iraqi, war in Afghanistan, War in Libya and war against Russia. Just who is the aggressor in all this?
Reblogged this on Siem Reap Mirror.
I knew it! Erdogan and the Saudis are punking out. Soon enough, Syria will triumph and then this war will be over.