Tahrir al-Sham official on Turkey's intervention to implement Astana: "That’s not the reality."

Below is a translation of a 13 October Telegram post by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (previously Jabhat al-Nusrah) media official Muhammad Nazzal (“Abu Khattab al-Maqdisi”).

This post represents the purest distillation I’ve seen of how Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seems to be justifying the limited entrance of Turkish forces in the northern Idlib/western Aleppo countryside, including the various pragmatic considerations at work and the mutually agreed-upon, explicit conditions of the Turkish presence.

What Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has agreed to, per Nazzal and other prominent Tahrir al-Sham figures, would seem not to satisfy the expected terms of a tripartite Turkish-Iranian-Russian agreement in Astana. Nazzal is emphatic that Turkey is taking up positions opposite the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin, an enclave north of the insurgent-held northwest, and not deploying further south to police the line of contact between Tahrir al-Sham and the Assad regime. It’s tough to imagine how this would address the concerns of Turkey’s co-guarantors in Astana – unless there is another big shoe to drop, one these Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders don’t know about or won’t acknowledge. Nazzal’s contention is that when the Turks claim to be implementing the Astana de-escalation, they’re basically just fudging it.

These sorts of claims from Tahrir al-Sham only raise more questions about a Turkish intervention that is, frankly, bizarre. For a NATO member state to enter Syria with an armed escort from a sort-of al-Qaeda affiliate is, um, non-standard. It currently seems impossible to say how far Turkey’s intervention will go, or where it will end. Maybe Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani has deceived his own rank-and-file about the scope of his agreement with Turkey, or maybe Turkey plans to unilaterally amend or abrogate the terms of the agreement it’s reached with Tahrir al-Sham. If the deal between Turkey and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is less explicit or mutually understood than Nazzal says, then an armed showdown between the two is likely on the way, whatever the Turkish government has claimed publicly about a non-combat observer mission.

And if Turkey and Tahrir al-Sham turn on each other and this does get violent, then – as Nazzal makes clear at the start – Tahrir al-Sham has options.

Translation and original post follow, below the jump.

Jabhat al-Nusrah/Hayat Tahrir al-Sham media official Muhammad Nazzal (“Abu Khattab al-Maqdisi”), 13 October 2017:

“If it happens – and this is possible – that Turkey betrays [us] after entering the liberated territories, it won’t make any difference. Anyone who thinks repelling a cross-border Turkish invasion with one long defensive line makes military sense is mistaken. Even if there were an invasion – without this latest [Turkish] entrance – you wouldn’t deal with it just by facing it with a defensive line. Rather, that would be part of it, but the larger, stronger, and more important part would be inside the liberated territories. That’s if it happened, God forbid…

“And anyone who draws an equivalency between allowing the Turks to enter as part of a clear, explicitly drafted agreement to assume three military positions opposite these Kurdish militias and a full [Turkish] invasion, which would lead to grave ills, is likewise mistaken.

“No one says that the Turks’ entrance to these points is some desirable interest; rather, it’s the lesser of two evils. And none of what is now happening involves the implementation of the Astana agreement on the ground, as some are trying to depict it.

“Yes, Turkey wants to show to Russia and others that it’s implementing what they emerged with from Astana. But that’s not the reality.

“Likewise, drawing an equivalency between the Hayah and Ahrar [al-Sham] on the grounds that the Hayah did an injustice to Ahrar and aggressed on it because of Astana – just Astana – is also incorrect. Everyone knows what happened, and how things developed and worsened, starting with the Hayah’s request for military positions and a presence alongside Ahrar on the borders to secure [itself] from [Ahrar’s] treachery, and because Ahrar, in the Hayah’s view, wasn’t worth of its trust; and then these positions came from Ahrar, then the problems in the Badiyah, then Jabal al-Zawiyah, then Ahrar expanded the fight to Sarmada and its surroundings, then Salqin and its surroundings; until things ended with removing Ahrar from the border strip. Even if that had been the Hayah’s goal, it wouldn’t have been capable of doing it if it hadn’t been for Ahrar’s own aggression and behavior, starting with Jabal al-Zawiyah and on through Sarmada, and before that the points on the border.

“And there’s a point that some dear ones who have discussed [Turkey’s] entry have neglected, which is that what the Hayah – and previously the Jabhah – has done now, ending with its agreement to the entrance of a Turkish force, is a reaction and an attempt to minimize the losses from what happened in the Astana and Geneva agreements and the equivalent. It is not an acknowledgement of [those agreements], as some are claiming and trying to portray. [They’re trying] to show that the position of someone who went [to these talks], negotiated, sat down, and signed, to the point of giving coordinates and maps of his locations is similar to the positions of the Hayah, which has worked to minimize the harms of what they produced in these meetings and conferences abroad.

“And for [everyone’s] information: This [Turkish] entrance has conditions, including that the Turks will not control [these areas] or interfere in any form in the administration of any village or city, as well as our total dominance over them, such that we have the power to expel them at any time. This is the biggest distinction between [the Turks’] entrance within this framework and between those who wanted to bring them in unconditionally, for [the Turks] to come in to supervise the de-escalation agreement, which stipulates their presence on the entirety of the fronts with the regime… So the revolution would end, and it would come to a close overnight!”