Saudi warplanes in Turkey spark ‘world war’ fears

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the world was “sliding into a new period of Cold War”.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the world was “sliding into a new period of Cold War”.

Saudi Arabia is deploying warplanes to a Turkish air base near the Syrian border, drawing a warning from Russia that the conflict in Syria could spiral into world war.

The impending touchdown of Saudi jets at the giant Incirilik facili­ty, five minutes’ flying time from Syrian territory, came amid a flurry of military activity on the ground ahead of a ceasefire due to come into effect this week.

But there was intense sceptic­ism that the Russian air force would stand down operations to help groundtaking assaults by President Bashar al-Assad’s battered forces against the Syrian rebels, or whether the Saudis and Turks themselves would go through with threats to inject ground troops into the confused Syrian battlefield.

Russian strike planes heavily bombed the Syrian hotspots of Aleppo and Raqqa, the Islamic State’s nominal capital in the country’s north. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the world was “sliding into a new period of Cold War”, singling out the Saudis’ threatened move on the ground as deeply provocative.

“A ground operation draws everyone taking part in it into a war,” he told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper. “The Americans and our Arab partners must consider whether or nor they want a permanent war.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry complained that the vast majority of Russia’s attacks in Syria were against “legitimate opposit­ion groups”, not jihadists.

The ceasefire was agreed by a conference of the US and major military powers in Munich last Friday after the collapse of UN-brokered peace talks in Syria.

Since then, a fierce offensive by pro-government forces, backed by heavy Russian airstrikes, have delivered the rebels some of their worst losses of the war, severing a lifeline between partly rebel-held Aleppo and the Turkish border to the north.

Also in the Aleppo region — centre stage of the conflict — Turkey has been accused of shelling both Kurdish and regime targets with bombardments of tank fire.

The Turks have been alarmed by YPG militia units of the Syrian Kurds moving into areas fled by the local population, in the face of Syrian advances or by pushing back the government forces in actions north of Aleppo. This goes to Ankara’s concern that the Kurds would consolidate a line from across eastern Iraq and Syria, boosting the position of Turkish PKK separatists on its own soil.

Senior government ministers, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have speculated that troops could be send in to Syria to take on Islamic State, when some observers say the main target of any incursion would be the Kurds.

The West would also be wary any incursion by the Turks could lead to direct confrontation with the Russian military.

The Saudis are yet to say how many ground troops would be committed. They could deploy special forces to operate with those of the West or other small, highly trained teams.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Riyadh and Ankara were co-ordinating plans to intervene in Syria despite the heavy Russia presence there to prop up Assad, along with Iran.

“If there is a strategy (against Islamic State) then Turkey and Saudi Arabia could enter into a ground operation,” he said.

Some military observers have questioned whether the Saudi and Turkish forces have the motivat­ion and training to take on Islamic State in the kind of land battle it has been hoping to spring on the West and Middle East allies. Turkish media report­ed that Saudi Arabia could send up to 10 warplanes to Incerlik.

Additional reporting: AFP