Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
Turkey being a NATO country, NATO is hardly a neutral party in this. It's also already established by Turkey's own press releases that at most the Russian fighter crossed the Turkish border for some seconds.
Yes. In this case that would be the Al-Qaeda affiliated islamists, such as Al-Nusra.
In that part of Syria the fighting is split mostly four ways.
We have
1) SDF rebels, lead by the Kurds and partially backed by the West.
2) Daesh / ISIS, partially backed by Turkey.
3) Al-Nusra and other Al-Qaeda affiliated islamist forces, backed by Turkey, Saudi-Arabia and Qatar at least. There are also persistent rumours that the US is still backing these guys.
4) Assads government forces, backed by Iran, Russia and Hezbollah.
Those four parties are involved in five active conflicts, which are:
1) Assad vs. ISIS
2) Assad vs. Al-Qaeda affiliated islamists
3) ISIS vs. Al-Qaeda affiliated islamists
4) SDF vs. Al-Qaeda affiliated islamists
5) SDF vs. ISIS
There seems to be an unofficial truce between Assad and SDF, as there hasn't been any active fighting between those two sides. I think that can only be seen as a good thing. It's an indication that if they could crush the both ISIS and the Al-Qaeda affiliated islamists, there's a chance the SDF and goverment could come together for peace talks.
The lack of fighting between SDF and Assad also strongly implies that there's no reason for Russia to bomb the SDF.
(On the other hand, Turkey is bombing the SDF. Who are the main force fighting ISIS.)
Knowing the above, I don't see why it's hard to defend Russia. What I'm struggling with is why would anyone defend Turkey here?
Russia was most likely there bombing Al-Qaeda affiliated islamists, who the Turkey is backing. Screw the islamists, and screw Turkey for trying to protect them. And screw NATO for trying to excuse Turkey.
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I don't defend Turkey. However, I don't defend Russia either. A major factor in all this was Assad's refusal to step down early when protests started for a democratic election. Since 2012, Russia has been vetoing any kind of action against Assad. Assad is also using Russian made weaponry to kill hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. While ISIS is exceptionally brutal, Assad is responsible for far more deaths in sheer numbers.
Russia stepping in as soon as it became clear that Assad was really on the ropes is hardly commendable. They've had numerous chances to work with the UN to find a solution, but have consistently vetoed any action, for the simple reason that Syria is within their sphere of influence and they want to keep it that way.