{"id":16870,"date":"2016-01-24T18:27:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-24T23:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16870"},"modified":"2016-01-24T18:30:56","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T23:30:56","slug":"turkey-russia-tensions-spike-as-russia-moves-into-northern-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16870","title":{"rendered":"Turkey-Russia Tensions Spike as Russia Moves Into Northern Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turkey-Russia Tensions Spike as Russia Moves Into Northern Syria\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n

Russian air strikes in Syria are coming closer and closer to the Turkish border in Latakia in the northwest, and there are rumors that Russia is looking at establishing an airbase at Qamishli in the largely Kurdish northeast of Syria.\u00a0 Turkey risks having Russia as a neighbor all along the Syrian border to Turkey\u2019s south, as well as beyond the Black Sea to its north.<\/p>\n

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Turkish President\u00a0Tayyip Erdogan said at a news conference<\/a>, \u201cWe have said this from the beginning: we won\u2019t tolerate such formations (in northern Syria) along the area stretching from the Iraqi border up to the Mediterranean. . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Over on the Mediterranean side, Russian air strikes have\u00a0enabled the Syrian Arab Army of the Bashar al-Assad regime to move back into northern Latakia Province<\/a>, taking a large number of villages in the far northern areas of Turkmen Mountain and Kurd Mountain.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0strategic city of Rabia was surrounded\u00a0<\/a>on three sides by government troops.<\/p>\n

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Syrian government sources maintained that 150 rebels<\/a>\u00a0had been killed in the fighting, including guerrillas of the Nusra Front, while others had fled across the border into Turkey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It was to protect the anti-regime Turkmen fighters of Turkmen mountain that last fall the Turkish air force shot a Russian fighter jet out of the air.<\/p>\n

The SAA has also retaken Salma in the east of Latakia Province.\u00a0 Salma had been in rebel hands for 3 years and is in higher land and so was a useful way for the rebels to dominate the surrounding area.<\/p>\n

This post originally ran on Truthdig contributor\u00a0Juan Cole\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/i>Russian strategy since last October has been to intervene from the air to give courage to the Syrian troops and allow them to push back the rebels from the key port city of Latakia in the province of the same name.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey-Russia Tensions Spike as Russia Moves Into Northern Syria\u00a0 Russian air strikes in Syria are coming closer and closer to the Turkish border in Latakia in the northwest, and there are rumors that Russia is looking at establishing an airbase at Qamishli in the largely Kurdish northeast of Syria.\u00a0 Turkey risks having Russia as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3218,11930,1908,694,776,8738,818],"class_list":["post-16870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-juan-cole","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-truthdig","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16872,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16870\/revisions\/16872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}