The situation with Turkey is rapidly getting out of control: not only have the Turks conducted artillery strikes across the Syrian border, Turkey
has refused to comply with its obligations under the Open Skies Treaty
and refused to let a Russian surveillance aircraft overfly Turkey. The Russian military has now declared that it had detected signs of Turkish preparations for an invasion.
The Turkish refusal to abide by the Open Skies Treaty is an extremely
worrisome development, especially when combined with the Russian
warnings about the preparation for an invasion of Syria, and the
Russians are not mincing their words:
There are plenty more indicators and
warnings showing that an escalation is possible: the Geneva negotiations
have been abruptly terminated, the Saudis are threatening to invade Syria
and there are signs that the Syrian army is slowly but surely preparing
an operation to liberate Aleppo from the Takfiris, creating a panic in
Ankara and Riyadh (so much for the stupid notions that the Russians are not winning or that the Syrian military does not exist).
In the meantime, there are plenty of
signs that Erdogan’s entire “grand plan” for Syria has completely
collapsed that that he has no more options left (please read the excellent analysis by Ghassan Kadi on this topic posted today as well as Pepe Escobar’s take on the same issue).
I am not a psychic or a prophet. I
cannot tell what Erdogan is really thinking, or whether the Turks will
try to invade Syria. But what I can do is to try to make some educated
guesses about possible Russian responses to such an event.
First, two basic principles:
1) If Russian forces are attacked they will hit back.
Putin already gave them that authority and this will happen almost
automatically with only local commanders making the final call. In other
words, such an exchange of fire would not automatically be tantamount
to a full-scale war between Turkey and Russia.
2) If Turkey invades Syria, Russia will act in strict compliance with international law.
That means that she will demand an emergency meeting of the UNSC and
that much will depend upon what the Council’s reaction will be. If the
usual gangs of puppets “covers” for Turkey (which is by no means
certain, in my opinion, at least not for very long, maybe a week or so
max) then the Russians will then refer to their obligations to assist
Syria under the 1980 “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation” between the two countries (Russia being today the successor state to the USSR the treaty is still in force) and the 2015 “Agreement
between the Russian Federation and the Syrian Arab Republic on
thedeployment of aviation group of the Armed Forces on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic“.
In other words, Russia will retain a
degree of flexibility to interpret the situation in one way or another.
That, in turn, means that much will depend on what the Turks really try
achieve.
If we are talking about the typical
Turkish violation of a national border to attack the Kurds, like what
they did many times in the past already, and if that intervention is
limited in depth, Russia will probably chose non-military means to put
pressure on Turkey. Again, while the crazies in Turkey badly want a war
with Russia to internationalize the conflict and force NATO to
intervene, the Russians have no interest at all in such an escalation.
Just as in the Donbass, the West is trying to bait Russia into a war and
Russia is refusing to take that bait. The problem is that unlike the
Ukronazis, the Turks have a much more powerful military machine which
the Russian cannot ignore like they have ignored the Ukronazi military
and various death squads. So if Erdogan’s goal is just to look macho and
flex some muscle, say like what Reagan did in Grenada, then he can
probably get away with it, at least for a short operation. But if
Erdogan is dead set in having a conflict with Russia, the Russian won’t
be able to just hunker down and wait for him to calm down.
In the latter case, Russia will have a number of escalatory options.
The first obvious options is to help the
Syrians and Kurds with intelligence. This is already taking place now
and will only intensify in the case of a Turkish invasion.
The second is to shoot Turkish fixed or
rotary-wing aircraft out of the skies. This is an easy option as the
Syrians already have some pretty good air defense systems (including
some Pantsir-S1, Buk-M1/2E, Tunguskas 2K22 and a fairly robust
early-warning system) and a few more or less capable aircraft (possibly
including upgraded MiG-29s). The Kremlin can thus enjoy a degree of what
the CIA called “plausible deniability”.
The third option for Russia is to help
the Syrians with the artillery system she reportedly deployed in the
country including 52-millimeter MTSA-B guns, BM-27 Uragan and BM-30
Smerch rocket launchers.
All these options would still fall short
of a “full-scale” war between Russia and Turkey. But if Erdogan is
determined to escalate further then a war will be inevitable. If Turkey
tries to attack Khmeimim directly, then Russia will strike back, no
doubt about it.
What could it look like?
The first thing I would say is that
neither country will try to invade the other one. The notion of Turkey
invading Russia is self-evidently ludicrous, but while Turkey does fall
within the 1000km depth the Russian military is trained to fight in, I
don’t believe that Russia would ever attempt this. For one thing, and
just as was the case with Georgia, nobody in Russia really believes that
the Turks, as a nation, want war. If anything, Erdogan is much more of a
“Saakashvili v2″ then a Hitler and he will be dealt with similarly.
Furthermore, while during the 08.08.08 war Russia had to protect the
Ossetians from the quasi-genocidal Georgians, Russia has no such
obligations in Kurdistan.
A much more likely scenario is a repeat
what we have already seen, but on a much larger scale: if Erdogan really
forces Russia into a war, what will happen will be cruise and ballistic
missile attacks on the infrastructure supporting the Turkish invasion,
the sinking of any Turkish Navy ship involved in this effort, and bomb
and missile attacks on Turkish force concentrations, ammo and fuel (POL) dumps and, especially, airfields. The
goal of the Russian response will not be to “defeat” Turkey militarily,
but to push back the Turks long enough to force some kind of a
ceasefire upon Erdogan. Even if the Russian military is capable of completely defeating Turkey in a war, the Kremlin also realizes that any
war between Turkey and Russia ought to be stopped as soon as possible
and that rather than “defeating Turkey” the real Russian objective ought
be to defeat Erdogan.
For this reason, the Russians, far from
being trigger happy, will undertake every imaginable effort to show that
they did not initiate the war, even if that means letting Turkey enter
into Syria, at least as long as the Turks stay close to their border and
do not attempt to change the course of the war. If all the Turks want is a thin “security zone” inside Syria, I don’t see the Russians using military force to deny this to them.
They will protest, vehemently, on a diplomatic level, and they will
help the Syrians and Kurds, but they will not directly attack the
Turkish forces.
What about the Saudis? Well, what about
them? They can’t even deal with the Houthis in Yemen, why would anyone
think that they could make a difference in Syria? The Saudi military is a
joke, a degenerate repression force barely capable of engaging in
anti-Shia repression operations. They can make all the threats they
want, but if they try to move into Syria the Syrians, Russians, Iranians
and Hezbollah will all try to race each other to be the first one to
finally get a hold of these SOBs in teach them a lesson they shall not
forget in a long time.
Frankly, I simply don’t want to believe
that Erdogan and his advisors are crazy enough to try to trigger a war
with Russia or even to invade Syria. While Erdogan himself is clearly a
maniac, I cannot believe that his entire staff is also composed of
lunatics. Furthermore, I cannot imagine that the US/NATO/EU would
actually support a Turkish invasion of Syria or, even less so, an attack
on Russia. Russophobia is great only as long as it does not expose you
to a continental war, at which point your self-interest and survival
prevails over any ideological notions. At least I hope so.
And maybe I am naive, but I want to believe that the Turkish people
are not going to just sit back and do nothing while their leader is
dragging their country towards a war with Russia.
The Elder Saint Paisios the Athonite. Credit: The Saker
In conclusion, I want to mention one disturbing thing. A Greek elder, a monastic named Paisios,
whom the Greek Orthodox Church has glorified as a saint, was known for
his prophetic visions. One of the most famous one was his prediction
that Turkey and Russia would have a major war which would result in a
complete break-up of Turkey and the liberation of Constantinople from
the Ottoman yoke (if you are interested by the details, click here and here).
Now I quite realize that in our times most people will immediately
dismiss such things as meaningless nonsense, obscurantism, superstition,
wishful thinking on the part of a “resentful Greek”, religious
gobbledygook etc. But please keep in mind that between the 15th and the
20th century, Russia and Turkey have already fought 12 wars (!). That over 2 wars (2.4 exactly) per century and that the last one happened a century ago.
The Elder Saint Paisios the Athonite. Credit: The Saker
So whether you look at prophecies, past
experience or statistics, things look very, very scary, at least to me.
And, as Ghassan Kadi and Pepe Escobar have explained, Erdogan is now
cornered. That also makes him very dangerous.
The AngloZionists are experts at
unleashing crazed ideologues (Wahabis in the Middle-East and Nazis in
the Ukraine) but that they always seem to eventually somehow lose
control over them. I just hope that the American ‘cover’ of the Turkish
regime did not result in the unleashing of yet another rabid ideology –
Ottoman Imperialism – or, if it has, that it is not too late for the US
to rein in this lunatic before it is too late.
Erdogan and his regime are a threat to
regional and even world piece. I don’t really care who removes him, the
Turkish people or the White House, but I sure hope that his days in
power are numbered because as long as he is in power a catastrophe of
major proportions can happen.
The original source of this article is The UNZ Review
Copyright © The Saker, The UNZ Review, 2016
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