The Putin-Erdogan Deal Is Bad News For Europe
The Idlib ceasefire won’t hold for long, but it may be time enough for Turkey to focus its ire on Europe.
Only one of them is holding the cards.
Photographer: Bulent Kilic/AFP
It won’t hold. It can’t hold. The only question to be asked about the Idlib ceasefire agreed by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is whether it is a matter of days, weeks or months before the bloody battle for the long-besieged city in northwestern Syria is rejoined.
This ceasefire will fail for the same reason that every previous cessation of hostilities in Syria has: because the regime of Bashar al-Assad is not interested in ending the humanitarian crisis. In Idlib, as elsewhere, Assad’s strategy is to drive out civilian populations with maximum malice, and then take control of the emptied villages, towns and cities.