A week after Israel National News reported that Turkey was on a crash course with Russia over Syria the parties are now at war technically speaking.
This happened after talks between a Turkish delegation and the Kremlin in Moscow about the worsening crisis in northeast Syria and the imminent threat of a new Turkish invasion in Syria over the Idlib Province, which is home to a range of Sunni Islamist groups supported by Turkey, broke-down.
The Turkey-backed Islamist militias in Idlib are on the verge of defeat after the Iranian-Russian-backed pro-Assad coalition rapidly advanced in the last rebel stronghold and even surrounded Turkish observation posts which were set up to monitor a 2018 de-escalation agreement between Russia and Turkey that failed miserably.
After the new talks between Russia and Turkey broke down Turkish autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to launch a new incursion into Syria, a promise he kept this time around.
"If the countries that we are in negotiations with do not do what needs to be done in Idlib, then we will do it ourselves. For the time being, we do not see the result that we want from these talks. We are fully prepared for our own operation in Idlib, it's only a matter of time we can start at any moment. This is a vital operation for us," Erdogan said on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Turkish troops with heavy weapons entered northern Idlib as Turkish artillery heavily shelled Syrian army positions while the Russian air force bombed Turkish positions in the same region.
Within a few hours fifty Syrian soldiers or members of Iranian-backed Shiite militias had been killed while Turkey lost only two soldiers. The Turks and their Islamist allies also destroyed five tanks and four armored vehicles belonging to the pro-Assad troops.
The fighting again drove Syrians from their homes and roughly 900.000 people are now camping out in the region along the Turkish border in freezing cold weather because Turkey - that has already absorbed more than 3.7 million Syrian refugees - closed down all border crossings in the region. READ MORE