Thread by @sfrantzman

Ankara working with Assad regime, Russia, Iran...no surprise. Ankara was already working with Moscow and Tehran to try to get the US to leave Syria under Trump admin, it would threaten US, and call White House and make demands, it often got a blank check under false narratives

https://twitter.com/Didar_____/status/1357444529918513154

During the Trump admin Turkey sold itself to US policymakers and its lobbyists in DC as "Turkey is confronting Russia and Iran geopolitically"...when in fact Turkey was doing deals with Russia and Iran....but Ankara knew how to play one tune in US and another on Moscow, Tehran.

Ankara's goal over last several years was to co-opt Syrian rebels, let Syrian regime take Aleppo, for rebels to be dependent, then create SNA to get rebels to fight YPG and Kurds, this began near Manbij and then isolating Afrin in 2017, invasion in 2018 and then Tel Abyad

For Ankara the real goal was to have the poor recruits it operationalized be used to strike at people like Hevrin Khalaf, for Ankara the greatest threat in Syria would be to have any kind of freedom, liberals, women leaders; it had to have only extremism or authoritarianism.

This is why Ankara co-opted Syrian rebels and then began sending them to fight in Libya and other places, it's goal was always to move them away from frontline against Assad, and redirect them to oppose Kurds, get opposition areas to fight amongst eachother, give Russia/Iran win

The end goal for Ankara has been to dismantle the US role...and then hand back Idlib to regime...hold on to Kurdish areas and ethnically cleanse them like in Afrin...and then withdraw...but can't figure out what to do with the refugees and Syrian recruits...

The greatest threat to the Syrian rebellion to undermine it was ISIS and then Turkey and Ankara's work through Astana model to slowly enable the destruction piece by piece of rebel-held areas, to redirect the entire rebel movement to fight YPG, with Russia and Iran and Assad

You'll notice that Ankara's role in Syria also enabled ISIS and fueled extremism, which sidetracked rebels, harmed and balkanized their areas and then forced them to be dependent and made them into a kind of Abkhazia/Donbas held area; based on Russia model.

Ankara may even have studied the model of 2014 in Ukraine and considered this could work as Astana got going in 2017; how to co-opt and control and then ruin.