There’s a new escalation in the building tit-for-tat feud between Turkey and Syria today as Turkish F-16s have forced a Syrian passenger jet to land at Ankara over a suspicion that the jet was carrying arms from Russia to the Syrian regime.
Even if Turkey finds weaponry on board, I’m not sure it’s ready to take on Moscow over this – but it’s still an incremental creep towards outright hostilities between Syrian and Turkey, which would raise the possibility of dragging in both NATO and Russia on opposite sides. That’s always been the main danger, to me, of calls for Syrian intervention – that battles by proxy have a bit of a tendency not to stay “by proxy”.
EA Worldview notes other worrying rumors too – that the US is prepping the ground for its troops to establish a Jordanian buffer zone.
U.S. Military Is Sent to Jordan to Help With Crisis in Syria
New York Times, by Michael R. Gordon & Elisabeth Bumiller, October 9
Washington — The United States military has secretly sent a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help the armed forces there handle a flood of Syrian refugees, prepare for the possibility that Syria will lose control of its chemical weapons and be positioned should the turmoil in Syria expand into a wider conflict.
The task force, which has been led by a senior American officer, is based at a Jordanian military training center built into an old rock quarry north of Amman. It is now largely focused on helping Jordanians handle the estimated 180,000 Syrian refugees who have crossed the border and are severely straining the country’s resources.
American officials familiar with the operation said the mission also includes drawing up plans to try to insulate Jordan, an important American ally in the region, from the upheaval in Syria and to avoid the kind of clashes now occurring along the border of Syria and Turkey.
The officials said the idea of establishing a buffer zone between Syria and Jordan — which would be enforced by Jordanian forces on the Syrian side of the border and supported politically and perhaps logistically by the United States — had been discussed. But at this point the buffer is only a contingency.
Russia-Syria plane carried ‘ammunition’ – Turkey PM
BBC, October 11
A Syrian-bound plane intercepted by Turkey was carrying Russian-made defence equipment destined for Syria’s defence ministry, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.
“Passenger aircraft cannot carry ammunition and defence equipment,” Mr Erdogan said, adding, “unfortunately there was such equipment on board”.
Turkish jets forced the plane, coming from Moscow, to land in Ankara.
Syria and Russia have denied the plane was carrying illegal cargo.
[...]
Speaking to reporters in Ankara, Mr Erdogan said: “This was equipment and ammunition that was being sent from a Russian agency… to the Syrian Defence Ministry.”
“Their examination is continuing and the necessary will follow,” he added.