Experts are in disagreement over the extent of the effect of Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian military aircraft on both the French attempt to form a large coalition including Russia and the US to fight “Islamic State” (IS), and the conflict in Syria.
Egyptian security advisor Sayed Ghoniem believes the conflict over the fate of Bashar Al-Assad has begun to expand from a civil war inside Syria to a regional conflict.
“What happened may be what the Pentagon pointed to on 8 November, when they said that they are preparing a plan with allies to stop the Russian intervention in Syria,” Ghoniem said.
This may be a plan to drag Russia to launch hostile action against Turkey inside its lands in order force a confrontation with NATO, Ghoniem believes.
He also believes the Russian reaction may vary between three probabilities. “What is most likely to happen is that Russia may try to drag Turkey into Syria, which will drop the protection of the NATO, as the operations will be outside its jurisdiction,” Ghoniem said.
Russia may also decide not to react, in spite of the measures they have already undertaken, which is the least likely probability according to Ghoniem.
The security advisor believes the most dangerous scenario for Russia is to start a military operation inside Turkey.
“This will be recklessness, and will take Russia into the trap,” he said.
The incident coincides with French President Francois Hollande’s attempts to form a large collation to fight IS in Syria. Irrespective of whether this will have an impact on France’s moves, French political analyst Gespard Estrada believes that for the time being, this incident will remain on the bilateral level between Turkey and Russia.
“However, I can imagine that President Putin will talk about this situation with President Hollande during their meeting this week,” Estrada said.
Andrew Korybko, Moscow-based political analyst and journalist for the Sputnik news agency and an expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies and Predictions, believes the incident will have an impact “but not in the sense that most people understand it”.
“This idea of a ‘large coalition’ fighting against IS is somewhat of a myth, since there are actually three coalitions active in the conflict right now,” Korybko told Daily News Egypt.
“These are: the Russian-led anti-terrorist coalition; the US-led front coalition that covertly supports terrorism but publicly makes dramatic but ineffective gestures in supposedly countering it; and the Turkish-led pro-terrorist coalition that Qatar is a part of and which does not conceal its goal in seeing violent Islamists seize power all across the region,” he continued.
According to Korybko, the only grand coalition that could be formed, at least theoretically, is between the Russian and US-led ones, or more practically, between the Russian grouping and former members of the US one, like France.
“Seen from the perspective of some members potentially ‘defecting’ from the US-led coalition and over to the Russian one, such as France and Jordan, Turkey took the dramatic action most likely influenced by US pressure to shoot down the Russian anti-terrorist aircraft in order to send a strong and militant message to Moscow’s coalition,” he added.
The inference here is that any aircraft that is not part of the Turkish or US-led coalitions are “fair game” for being shot down, and this implicit threat is directed towards the French and Jordanian militaries that were thinking about cooperating with Russia, Korybko added.
He also believes Turkey probably would not directly target their militaries, but would make sure that terrorists have the potential to take down any of their helicopters or low-flying planes just as they did the Russian rescue helicopter.
Sharif M, a consultant and an analyst on the post-Soviet countries, believes the incident will have an impact on forming a large coalition only if Turkey and NATO use this case strategically in their policy-making and diplomacy.
“It will have an impact on forming of a better international coalition. And there will not be problems for such coalition after the Holland Putin meet,” Sharif said.
Sharif also believes the Russian involvement in Syria is not because Russia wants “to fight IS”; rather the latter is just “an empty Russian empty proclamation”.
“On the contrary, IS helps Russia ‘get back to the track’ as the main international actors of the world. However, I believe the global actors want to ‘let Russia use its soldiers on the ground’,” Sharif said.
