The Turkish military has boosted its naval group in the Eastern Mediterranean as the battle of Idlib is looming in Syria, Turkey’s pro-government daily Yeni Safak reported on September 2. According to the daily, “Turkey, which previously had 10 warships in the region, dispatched several more naval vessels to the region, the exact number of which is unknown.”
The daily also recalled multiple remarks by the Turkish authorities claiming that the Idlib offensive by the Syrian Army will be disaster and lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.
The report comes amid the ongoing Russian naval drills in the same area, which started on September 1 and will continue until September 8.
It should be noted that on August 31 Turkey finally designated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a new brad of Jabhat al-Nusra – the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, as a terrorist group. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is the most powerful group in the militant stronghold of Idlib in northwestern Syria.
Ankara’s move followed a similar decision by the US State Department made on May 31. The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham brand was crated by Jabhat al-Nusra in the framework of a series of efforts to hide the terrorist group’s essence, on February 8, 2017. So, both the US and Turkey needed more than a year to admit an open secret of the Syrian war. Most likely, this took such significant amount of time because these moves are an open admission that the so-called Idlib opposition is terrorists or allied with them.