Breakthrough At Sochi Summit Unlikely As Turkey Aims To Keep Grip Of North Syria - Experts

The trilateral summit in the Russian resort city of Sochi on settling the Syrian crisis is unlikely to produce any breakthrough as Ankara wants to keep its control over the neighboring Kurdish areas on both banks of Euphrates as well as the key province of Idlib, experts told Sputnik

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th February, 2019) The trilateral summit in the Russian resort city of Sochi on settling the Syrian crisis is unlikely to produce any breakthrough as Ankara wants to keep its control over the neighboring Kurdish areas on both banks of Euphrates as well as the key province of Idlib, experts told Sputnik.

Comments come as Sochi hosts on Thursday the fourth summit of the presidents of three guarantor states of the Syrian ceasefire - Russia's Vladimir Putin, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran's Hassan Rouhani.

"There will be some debates and negotiations but Turkey's position changes, as deputy president of the [ruling] AKP party Numan Kurtulmus stated today. Turkey now claims both the east and west side of the Euphrates river. It means Turkey does not intend to leave Syria and tries to get stronger positions in the areas where Kurds are majority," Professor of International Relations at middle East Technical University in Ankara Huseyin Bagci told Sputnik.

According to Bagci, the issue of Idlib which is one of the last terrorist strongholds in Syria and the region where Moscow and Ankara agreed to set up a demilitarized zone will remain unresolved at the Sochi summit.

"Idlib will remain unresolved also in Sochi summit and it is Turkey's wish not to find any solution there which could end that Turkey loses the control on the groups stationed in Idlib ... The Afrin case seems very lucrative for Turkey but also Idlib is Turkey's target to control the city and area," he argued.

Gareth Jenkins, a non-resident senior research fellow with the Joint Center Silk Road Studies Program and Turkey Center at the Institute for Security & Development Policy in Stockholm, similarly agreed that the Sochi summit would hardly produce any breakthrough results, in the first place due to Ankara's stance.

"I don't think there will be a major breakthrough in the talks in Sochi today. Eventually Turkey and Russia are on a collision course in Syria. Moscow wants all of the country to pass back under the control of the government in Damascus while Turkey has set up de facto Turkish protectorates in the northwest of the country. This is unacceptable to Russia," Jenkins told Sputnik.

According to Jenkins, Turkey's policy on Syria has "failed," and it is only the question of time when Ankara will "have to give way."

Russia, meanwhile, "is probably not going to apply too much pressure" on Turkey at the moment, so no major shifts are expected with regard to Idlib, the expert suggested.

"There is currently no sign of an imminent major operation against the extremist groups there. It looks rather as if there will be an increase in small-scale operations against the HTS [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group, outlawed in Russia] but no full onslaught although the military pressure will probably be increased later in the year," he added.

Jenkins also opined that Ankara could seek to win some time at the summit not to make major concessions on Syria ahead of the nationwide local elections in late March.

In September, Putin and Erdogan agreed to set up a demilitarized zone in Idlib along the contact line of the armed opposition and the government forces by October 15. Not all militants have laid down weapons, however, and sporadic violence continued, with more than 10 different militant groups still operating in the region.