ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

TURKEY - AUGUST 24 : An Infographic with the title "Operation Euphrates Shield", created on August 24, 2016 in Ankara, Turkey. The sources said that the operation, called Euphrates Shield, is aimed at clearing terrorist groups from the Turkish border region, tightening border security, and supporting Syrias territorial integrity. (Photo by Ahmet Tamkoc/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) The Asayish (Kurdish police) began its aggression against the pro-government militia force the National Defense Force (NDF) on 16th of August when it launched an RPG attack at a checkpoint without provocation. This was not the first provocation the Asayish have committed against the NDF in Hasakah in Syria’s northeast. This has been a long ongoing issue for well over a year with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) doing very little to control the situation. In fact the YPG had encouraged the Asayish’ aggression against government forces in Hasakah.What transpired were on and off battle...

The situation in Syria’s largest city of Aleppo has taken a dramatic turn as government troops and rebel forces managed to seize each other’s supply route, all within two weeks. These supply lines have otherwise been in place since 2013. Aleppo has been dubbed ‘the mother of all battles’ with good reason – some 5,000 to 12,000 fighters were lined up by Jaish al-Fateh and Fatah Halab for the southwestern Aleppo offensive, completely overwhelming the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) manpower. Although Islamist factions have definitively broken through the SAA’s defensive line in southwestern Aleppo, they are yet to secure a road safe enough for them to reach insurgents in eastern Aleppo. However, it is indeed possible for Islamist rebels to sneak into eastern Aleppo districts through tunnels and makeshift doorways in the Ramouseh district which is entirely under Jaish al-Fateh and Fatah Halab control. Meanwhile, the SAA has established a supply road along the Castello-Bani Zaid axis in northe...

By Pepe Escobar So Turkish President, a.k.a. Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan is about to make a high-profile visit to Tehran – the date has not yet been set - to essentially kick start the ATM (Ankara-Tehran-Moscow) coalition in Syria. Anyone as much as hinting at such a massive geopolitical tectonic shift a few weeks ago would be branded a madman. So how did the impossible happen? A major strategic game-changer – Russia using an airfield in Iran to send bombers against jihadis in Syria – had already taken place, with its aftermath spectacularly misreported by the usual, clueless US corporate media suspects. Then, there’s what Turkey’s Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said last Saturday in Istanbul: “The most important priority for us is to stop the bloodshed [in Syria] as soon as possible.” The rest are irrelevant “details.” Yildirim added Ankara now agrees with Moscow that Bashar al-Assad “could” – and that’s the operative word – stay in power during a political transition (although ...