Turkey’s latest military incursion in northwestern Syria is one of its biggest moves yet in the six-year-old Syrian conflict.<br /><br />It also highlights a diplomatic and military rapprochement with Moscow that’s been making NATO allies uneasy.<br /><br />The operation carried out late on Thursday (October 12) is part of a joint plan agreed last month by Turkey, Russia and Iran to set up a de-escalation zone in Idlib province to help bring an end to Syria’s six-year old civil war.<br /><br />Ankara has long supported rebels fighting to oust Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. But since last year its focus has shifted to securing its own border and preventing a new influx of Syrian refugees.<br /><br />“We said we may come unannounced one night, and tonight our armed forces started the operation in Idlib with the Free Syrian Army,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech to his AK Party on Friday.<br /><br />“We are the ones with the 911 km border with Syria, the ones who are constantly under threat,” he added.<br /><br />The military deployment in Idlib is also intended to rein in the Kurdish YPG militia, which holds the adjacent Afrin region, a senior rebel official involved in the operation told Reuters.<br /><br />Simmering tension with the West<br /><br />Turkey’s plans to buy a missile defence system from Russia have raised concern in Western capitals, given tensions with Moscow over Ukraine and Syria.<br /><br />However, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said this week Turkey was not seeking to antagonise the alliance by purchasing the system and was in talks with France and Italy to buy similar weapons.<br /><br />With the second-largest army in the alliance, Turkey has enormous strategic importance for NATO as a bridge to the Middle East, due to its geographical proximity to Iraq, Syria and Iran.<br /><br />But relations have frayed. Simmering tension came to a head on Sunday (Oct. 8) when the United States and Turkey suspended visa services for each other’s citizens, after Turkey arrested an employee of the American Consulate in Istanbul.<br /><br />‘No corridor of terror’<br /><br />Ankara has grown furious to see Washington supply arms to Kurdish fighters in Syria. Turkey considers them part of a terrorist group with links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-old and bloody insurgency in Turkey’s southeast.<br /><br />Iran and Russia are now looking like helpful allies to fight what it calls a dual threat from these Kurdish fighters and the Islamic State militant group.<br /><br />President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday (Oct. 12) he would never allow a “corridor of terror” to be set up at its border.<br />
