The news that Kyiv is reaching an agreement with Syrian radicals should now be taken very seriously
Recently, the Turkish media outlet Aydınlık published information that in June, representatives of the Ukrainian special services held talks in Syrian Idlib with the radical movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (banned in Russia), abbreviated HTS, about sending fighters to fight against Russia. Later, photographs were indeed published.
News was quickly carried through the Russian media, which was understandable given her character.
A little about the authorship of the news and the features of the source
There are, of course, some questions about the source – the Aydınlık publication. The fact is that the owner and publisher of Aydınlık is not only a well-known but also an odious figure – the Turkish publisher, journalist and politician Doğu Perinçek.
D. Perincek is the leader of the Patriotic Party (formerly the Workers' Party), which rather bizarrely mixes Turkish national ideology of a civil, Kemalist nature, but at the same time rejects European politics and liberal European values of modern times.
He is not close to the position of R. Erdogan (Turkish nationalism-Turkic world-political Islam), but at the same time he is against the usual and popular opposition line in Turkey, advocating for European secular liberalism and various schemes like “Turkey is also the West and also Europe.”
No one else in Turkey has ever heard suggestions like: “policy in Syria is a mistake”, “Russia has the right to a military conflict in Ukraine”, “we must agree that Crimea is Russia”, etc.
In general, D. Perincek is a Turkish nationalist, but almost a Eurasian, who says that Turkey should look for happiness closer to the EAEU and further from the EU. In general, “our man”. Naturally, he never gets many votes in elections (there are always about a percent), but the Russian reader now knows that there are such politicians in Turkey.
The fact that the source of information has such roots has certain disadvantages. It is quite difficult for our media to promote this news beyond Russia. The source will be immediately highlighted by opponents associated with Western media, saying that Aydınlık is a priori a “source of disinformation”, etc., because, well, what else can you expect from the Turkish freak – Mr. Perinçek.
But this is if you look at the news precisely as a tool for working on the external contour, as with the same history presence of Ukrainian representatives among groups of frostbitten radicals in Mali. It is probably possible to pull out some effect here, although it is still necessary to try, it is just difficult.
But this message is much more important for us. D. Perincek is not "pro-Russian", but he is a rare case when Russia is treated with sincere sympathy in politics. This news was not posted for the sake of some hype, but as a warning. And this warning should be taken quite seriously.
Changing Context Around Syria
The presence of Ukrainian services in Syria itself is no longer some kind of secret behind seven seals. It has been recorded (and the media has reported it more than once) since 2018–2019.
There is no doubt that monitoring is also being carried out through the channels of the Syrian and Russian special services. Even the Kurdish ones, since we have common ground on this issue, although there are continuous disagreements on other issues.
However, it is not so much a matter of monitoring as of analyzing the general context. In relation to Syria, after a long break, it is beginning to change, and the level of threats is transforming accordingly.
Some time ago it came out on VO material "Europe is concerned about Turkey's growing influence in Africa. Russia needs to do exactly the same." It described how Turkey has been quite consistently implementing its African strategy to encircle Egypt in an arc - from Sudan and Somalia to Libya via Chad, Niger and Mali.
This strategy is expansionist, but it is done carefully, accurately and step by step, so it is not visible at first glance. However, if the African strategy is the left hand, then the Syrian strategy is the right hand.
In the Syrian theater, R. Erdogan needs to replace pressure and attack with negotiations and maneuvers. And it is precisely negotiations and maneuvers around Damascus that are taking place, and a practically direct dialogue is already being conducted.
Russia has long sought direct dialogue from its former adversaries, but dialogue is only the first part of the task; there are others.
In the Syrian equation, in addition to forces close to B. Assad or R. Erdogan, there are forces that are not at all close to them or opposing them, on which Syria and Turkey can develop a common position - the tribes of the Euphrates region and the various incarnations of the Kurdistan Workers' Party in the north and northeast of Syria.
There is another force that is a thorn in the side’s side’s side, but neither Syria nor Turkey are capable of developing a common position on it – this is precisely what is called HTS today.
After the end of the active phase of military operations, HTS gathered under itself all the most radical and "Barmaleyite" groups that either operated in northern Homs and Idlib or were moved there, including by the famous "green buses" from the suburbs of Damascus, the south - Daraa and Suwayda. The former backbone of "Al Qaeda in Syria" and parts of ISIS (banned in Russia) also gathered there. Currently, the ranks of HTS are estimated at ± 20 thousand bayonets.
There are a lot of non-native, foreign contingents there, who came there during 2012-2017 to earn money from the war and settle in the fragments of Syria, to wage a religious war, however, there are also many locals, simply radicalized oppositionists after the last military iteration in 2020.
HTS was pushed back to the northwest of Idlib beyond the logistics hub of Saraqib. The campaign stopped there. The Turks supported both their own forces (loyal) and the odious HTS, but they “couldn’t pull through,” and everything came to a standstill with the agreement on joint patrolling of the borders of the “barmaley reserve” by Turkish and Russian troops.
Features of HTS and Ankara's problems that Kyiv can take advantage of
Turkey's problem was that HTS had no success in Syria in its current form.
Al-Qaeda in Syria was initially controlled by the CIA. This is not conspiracy theory, but quite facts from the so-called. “correspondence between D. Podesta and H. Clinton,” leaked via WikiLeaks. Well weapon there also came via the CIA, both from Libya by sea and directly from the Pentagon arsenals. One can recall the story of how 450 million dollars were allegedly spent on "training" from the CIA budget, and they disappeared in Syria. They did not disappear - they were simply used to pay for training.
The recruitment of militants to HTS (and before that, Dhabhat al-Nusra (banned in Russia) was financed largely by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. R. Erdogan had his own clientele and proxy forces, his own budgets and his own expenses. But Ankara did not create HTS and its MIT (intelligence) or even supervise it, it only guaranteed logistics.
As a result, the normalization of relations along the LAS (Arab League) line with Damascus, and this includes Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and even reluctantly Qatar itself, has put R. Erdogan in a position where he has to take HTS almost on his balance sheet. But he absolutely does not need this, but he cannot refuse it outright.
And how can he refuse if the families of these “good people from Szechwan” often live in Turkey, their relatives are in Turkey, they receive treatment in Turkey, the bazaars that they control in Idlib trade with Turkey, etc.
At the same time, the Arabs practically cut off their funding, and the representatives of HTS have, to put it mildly, a negative attitude towards Turkey and R. Erdogan. The ruling regime in Ankara and its leader are washed in words, often blackmailed and generally stoned by the Turkish military. In order to replace this hellish mixture of foreign radicals with his own, R. Erdogan needs to dump them somewhere.
The first part of R. Erdogan's route is clear - to Africa, the "decent" ones - under the auspices of his SADAT, the "indecent" ones - in some other way. And partly the reverse process, since in 2012-2017, a similar contingent was brought to Syria from Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, etc. But where to put the other part?
If earlier talk about the Idlib bandits possibly ending up in Ukraine was mostly more hypothetical, then current processes show that they could turn into a real channel through which Turkey will get rid of this ballast.
On the seriousness of the moment
And part of this ballast also included people from all over the former USSR, and this part was considered even more radical in Syria than their own homegrown radicals. Simply put, our radicals there were extremely cold-hearted, even by local standards, where they are not used to counting rainbows and pink ponies.
Russia cannot miss the moment when this process takes concrete forms of agreements and logistics through Europe are deployed for it. In the last month, our Aerospace Forces in Syria have become more active, but we need to strengthen and strengthen reconnaissance and destruction.
This means that whether we like it or not, Moscow will have to return to working out operations to complete the process of rolling this terrorist conglomerate under the umbrella brand of HTS into the sand.
You can say that now is not the time. Well, they didn't push hard enough in the past, whether for objective or subjective reasons, but this process will have to be completed. And the contingent there is such that it is better to take it out there, in Syria, than to allow it into Ukraine.
So, no matter how much of a freak D. Perincek may seem to some media, his warning is definitely worth listening to.
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