ANKARA: Turkey’s military operation in north-western Syria and the participation of a Kurdish militant in recent talks in Sochi has hinted at potential cracks in the partnership between Ankara and Moscow.
Relations between the two countries fell to a low point in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near its border with Syria.
Months earlier Russia had launched its military offensive in support of Bashar Assad, while Turkey had backed rebel groups fighting the regime from the start of the uprising.
After the jet was brought down, there was fear a direct conflict between the two nations, but relations gradually improved leading to an agreement over safe zones in Syria last year.
Last month, Turkey’s military launched an offensive into the Syrian region of Afrin against Kurdish militants which it considers terrorists. Operation Olive Branch was only possible after Russian forces were withdrawn from the area and Turkish jets were allowed to use the airspace, which is controlled by Russia.
But that tacit support may be in doubt after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Wednesday highlighted that the number of casualties had “reached hundreds, including civilians” and “urged the parties to exercise restraint.”
She also reiterated Moscow’s concern that the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) blamed Russia for allowing the Turkish offensive to go ahead and that Moscow had “betrayed the Kurds.”
Russia had previously had close relations with Kurdish groups in Syria.
Another point of contention was the participation of Mihrac Ural, a Kurdish militant wanted in Turkey, in the Russian sponsored peace talks in Sochi on Tuesday.
Ankara was angered that Ural attended the talks as a delegate in the pro-Assad groups. He is the leader of an outlawed organization, the People’s Liberation Party-Front (THKP-C), that Turkey says killed 52 people in an attack in Hatay province in 2013.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday that Turkey had asked Russia to extradite Ural.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also spoke with Vladimir Putin on the phone on Wednesday to discuss the outcome of Sochi Congress, which failed to make diplomatic headway toward resolving the war.
Experts think that the Kurdish situation will become increasingly problematic for cooperation between Turkey and Russia in Syria in the coming months. But they say the two countries will try to remain united on key issues about the future of Syria — including the fight against Daesh.
Emre Ersen, an expert on Syria from Marmara University in Istanbul, said Russia’s call for restraint in Afrin was a reminder that their cooperation over Syria is “an alliance of convenience.”
“The outcomes of the Sochi Congress have been somewhat underwhelming,” Ersen told Arab News.
“This was partly because the Russian leaders failed to convince Turkey to delay its military operation in Afrin.
“Both countries are aware that they need each other in Syria, although they have important concerns regarding the intentions of one another.”
Turkey and Russia are dependent on each other in reaching their own objectives in Syria.
Turkey needs Russia’s consent for Operation Olive Branch to be a success and Russia needs Turkey for Moscow’s plans in rebel-held Idlib province, Ersen said.
The rift over the Kurdish operation between Turkey and the US, which supports the Kurdish militants as part of its strategy against Daesh, also means that the cracks between Ankara and Moscow will not develop into a schism.
“Moscow is aware of the serious disagreements between the two Nato allies and it wants to continue to exploit this situation to its own advantage not only in Syria, but also in terms of its ongoing geopolitical rivalry with Nato in East Europe and the Black Sea,” Ersen said.
Timur Akhmetov, a researcher at the Russian International Affairs Council, said Russian diplomatic successes were made possible by skillful balancing between major rival parties.
“Russia has never claimed or wanted to abandon Syrian Kurds once and for all,” he told Arab News.
Russia’s main motive for allowing the Turkish offensive in Afrin was to warn the PYD about its cooperation with the US as it could harm the sovereignty of the Syrian state.
“Russian diplomatic officials now are trying to restore the balance and send positive signal to the Kurds. I think we must see this as a policy of stick and carrot,” Akhmetov said.
“I think Russian officials believe that Turkey will be much more inclined to push Kurds under the influence of Damascus and Russia rather than leave them under the US, considering American plans to establish a long-term presence in northern Syria,” he added.
The PYD has had a political office in the Russian capital for two years, while Russian observers in Afrin had been in close cooperation with the PYD’s military wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) until the beginning of Turkish offensive.
Both groups are considered by Ankara to be “terrorist”, and associated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that was waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
Afrin offensive strains Turkey and Russia’s ‘alliance of convenience’
Afrin offensive strains Turkey and Russia’s ‘alliance of convenience’
Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region
- The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported that the strikes had targeted military installations
DAMASCUS: Syrian state media reported an Israeli strike Saturday on the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib that injured soldiers and caused damage.
“At around 00:45 after midnight, the Israeli army launched an air aggression from the direction of southeast Aleppo, targeting a number of sites in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib,” the official SANA news agency said.
The report added that the attack had “resulted in the injury of a number of soldiers and some material losses,” without providing further details.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported the strikes had targeted military installations.
The war monitor also said members of the Iranian revolutionary guards and pro-Tehran factions were based in the area.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.
The Israeli military has intensified its strikes on Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on the strikes but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead
- The report detailed a raft of violations of international law since Oct. 7
GENEVA: The UN on Friday condemned the staggering number of civilians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, with women and children comprising nearly 70 percent of the thousands of fatalities it had managed to verify.
In a fresh report, slammed by Israel, the United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) detailed a raft of violations of international law since Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
Many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even “genocide,” it warned, demanding international efforts to prevent “atrocity crimes” and ensure accountability.
“Civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial ‘complete siege’ of Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN said.
“Conduct by Israeli forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease.”
It pointed to “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.”
Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva “categorically” rejected the report, decrying “the inherent obsession of OHCHR with the demonization of Israel.”
“Gaza is now a rubble-strewn landscape,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN rights office’s activities in the Palestinian territories, said via video-link from Amman.
“Within this dystopia of destruction and devastation, those alive are left injured, displaced and starving.”
Friday’s report also found that Hamas and other armed groups had committed widespread violations that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including seizing hostages, killings, torture and sexual violence.
Those violations, it said, were especially committed in connection with the October 7, 2023 attack, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly of civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The report also tackled the contentious issue of the proportion of civilians among the nearly 43,500 people killed in Gaza so far, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.
UN agencies have been relying on death tolls provided by the authorities in Hamas-run Gaza due to lack of access. This has sparked harsh criticism from Israel but the UN has repeatedly said the figures are reliable.
The rights office said it had now managed to verify around 10,000 of the more than 34,500 people reportedly killed during the first six months of the war.
“We have so far found close to 70 percent to be children and women,” Sunghay said, highlighting the stringent verification methodology that requires at least three separate sources.
He said the findings indicated “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.”
He said 4,700 of the verified fatalities were children and 2,461 were women.
The rights office found that about 80 percent of all the verified deaths in Gaza had occurred in Israeli attacks on residential buildings or similar housing.
Children between the ages of five and nine made up the largest group of victims, with the youngest victim a one-day-old boy and the oldest a 97-year-old woman, it said.
Israel says its operations in Gaza target militants and are in line with international law.
But Friday’s report stressed that the verified deaths largely Gaza’s demographic makeup rather than that of combatants.
This, it said, clearly “raises concerns regarding compliance with the principle of distinction and reflect an apparent failure to take all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life.”
UN rights chief Volker Turk called on all countries to work to halt the violations and to ensure accountability, including through universal jurisdiction.
“It is essential that there is due reckoning with respect to the allegations of serious violations of international law through credible and impartial judicial bodies,” he said.
“The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid.”
After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group
- Negotiators from Israel’s Mossad spy agency have repeatedly met mediators in Doha over the last year and Qatari government officials have shuttled back-and-forth to Hamas leaders in the political office
WASHINGTON/DOHA: The US has told Qatar that the presence of Hamas in Doha is no longer acceptable in the weeks since the Palestinian militant group rejected the latest proposal to achieve a ceasefire and a hostage deal, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
“After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, its leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner. We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Qatar then made the demand to Hamas leaders about 10 days ago, the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said. Washington has been in touch with Qatar over when to close the political office of Hamas, and it told Doha that now was the time following the group’s rejection of the recent proposal.
Three Hamas officials denied Qatar had told Hamas leaders they were no longer welcome in the country.
Qatar, alongside the US and Egypt, has played a major role in rounds of so-far fruitless talks to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages the militant group is holding in the enclave.
The latest round of Doha talks in mid-October failed to reach a ceasefire, with Hamas rejecting a short-term ceasefire proposal.
The spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for confirmation or comment.
Last year, a senior US official said Qatar had told Washington it was open to
reconsidering the presence of Hamas
in the country once the Gaza war was over.
This came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
told leaders
in Qatar and elsewhere in the region that there could be “no more business as usual” with Hamas after the group led the Oct. 7 attacks on Southern Israel.
Qatar, an influential Gulf state designated as major non-NATO ally by Washington, has hosted Hamas’ political leaders since 2012 as part of an agreement with the US Doha has come under criticism from within the US and Israel over its ties to Hamas since Oct. 7.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has said repeatedly over the last year that the Hamas office exists in Doha to allow negotiations with the group and that as long as the channel remained useful Qatar would allow the Hamas office to remain open.
Negotiators from Israel’s Mossad spy agency have repeatedly met mediators in Doha over the last year and Qatari government officials have shuttled back-and-forth to Hamas leaders in the political office.
US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart
- Katz was sworn in before parliament the previous day
- The US defense chief also discussed “the need to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza“
WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed Lebanon and Gaza on Friday in his first call with his new Israeli counterpart Israel Katz, the Pentagon said.
Katz was sworn in before parliament the previous day, after his predecessor’s shock dismissal by the prime minister over a breakdown in trust during the war in Gaza — a conflict that began with a devastating Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
Austin “held an introductory call today with the new Israeli minister of defense, Israel Katz, and congratulated him on his recent appointment,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said in a statement.
He told Katz that Washington is committed to a deal that allows Lebanese and Israeli citizens displaced by more than a year of cross-border violence to return to their homes, as well as to the return of hostages seized by Palestinian militant group Hamas, Ryder said.
The US defense chief also discussed “the need to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza,” after he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel in a letter earlier this month that it needed to allow more aid into the small war-wracked coastal territory.
Palestinian leader tells Trump ready to work for Gaza peace
RAMALLAH: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas expressed readiness to work toward a “just and comprehensive peace” in Gaza during a phone call with US President-elect Donald Trump on Friday, his office said.
Trump’s victory came with the Middle East in turmoil after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, triggered by the unprecedented attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Congratulating Trump on his victory, Abbas expressed “readiness to work with President Trump to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on international legitimacy,” his office said in a statement.
It said that Trump also assured Abbas that he will work to end the war.
“President Trump stressed that he will work to stop the war, and his readiness to work with president Abbas and the concerned parties in the region and the world to make peace in the region.”
While Trump struck a note of peace during his campaign, he also touted his status as Israel’s strongest ally, even going so far as to promise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he would “finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza.
