So as not to be a piece of the game or a spectator in Syria

As we enter the 8th year of the crisis in Syria, we are in a situation in which it is accepted that the whole matter has come up against the borders of Idlib. Everyone is no longer discussing what will become of Syria, but what will become of Idlib.

For the Russia, Iran and Regime troika, once the Idlib problem is also settled the way they want, there will be no issue left. Of course, the solution that this troika envisages in Idlib promises no result other than tens of thousands of deaths from an air attack carried out without distinguishing between civilians and terrorists, the destruction of the city, and the 3.5 million inhabitants leaving the city and fleeing as refugees to wherever they can flee.

When this happens, the problem will have been solved from their standpoint, but it is a solution whose outcome will be genocide. A solution behind which lie more than 1 million deaths, millions of wounded and missing, and more than half of the country's population turned into refugees.

First and foremost, this solution produces major problems for the rest of the world, above all for Turkey and Europe. The only country shouting out loud that these massacres, which the regime is thinking of undertaking with Iranian and Russian help in order to get rid of its opposition, will be a solution neither for itself, nor for this Troika in general, nor for anyone at all, is Turkey.

In fact, it is not that there is no Europe that has realized the seriousness of the matter; on every occasion it makes statements of support for Turkey on this. Moreover, this is a surprisingly strong support from Europe, of a kind we had forgotten to hear regarding Turkey in recent times. Yet it is not a surprising support. Indeed, they know very well that a new wave of migration likely to be carried to Turkey by a new massacre to be repeated in Idlib with the support of Iran and Russia will far exceed Turkey.

The Europeans also see very well that such a new wave would directly turn into a question of survival for the EU. Otherwise, unfortunately, their concerns about the massacres that will take place in Idlib are not humanitarian but entirely about the harm it will do to themselves. Indeed, their stance in the past as well toward the developments that led to the death of one million people and the displacement of more than ten million has not been one of principle, but entirely about the side that touched themselves.

In the face of the process touching the EU in this way, the support shown for Turkey's stance is nonetheless not a support on which much can be counted. The EU currently has no effective instrument it can resort to in order to stop the process, or it lacks a strong initiative with which to use the instruments it has. It is content to watch what is happening with concern and wishing that Turkey's theses win.

The Tehran Summit was a summit at which the Idlib issue, put on the table, was expected to be brought to a resolution. But the result that emerged there for now showed that Iran and Russia prioritize not conceding a millimeter of the gains they have obtained on the ground, and that they care neither about civilian life nor about the order that will be established in the future in Syria and embrace all Syrians. The diplomacy they have put forward is leagues away from humanitarian politics, and moreover shows that they do not even care how Turkey, with which they are together in this process, will be affected by their own operations.

When Idlib is settled, perhaps the Syrian problem will have been settled for them. But the US presence there does not bother them any more than Turkey's presence in Jarablus and Afrin. Yet the US presence in Syria is, at best, an entity dividing Syria, advancing step by step toward forming a small armed-organized state out of the terrorist organization PYD-YPG. Yet the principle of Syria's indivisible integrity, together with the principle of foreign elements leaving Syrian territory, was a matter agreed upon in the Astana process.

The US presence and activities in Syria are contrary to the essence of the Astana process. Because it has built its whole strategy, under the pretext of fighting terror, on the partition of Syria, ultimately to bestow power and statehood on terror.

The "foreign elements" that Astana defined for Syria and whose withdrawal from Syria it ultimately envisaged did not include only terrorists. It included everyone other than the Syrians, Russia, Iran and Turkey among them. The most valuable and important acceptance of the process was in fact that Syrians belong only to Syrians and that only Syrians would decide the future of Syria. Yet in the language Russia and Iran used in Tehran there is a fait accompli that, as it were, redefines their own presence as the only essential element. This was based on an excessive self-confidence provided by an advantage that they thought they had gained in Syria.

This self-confidence has made them thoroughly insensitive also to the innocent loss of life in Idlib, which they will attack in cooperation with the regime. What provides this self-confidence is, again, their successes (!) in Eastern Ghouta, which, though declared a "de-escalation zone" in the Astana process just like Idlib, they ruthlessly attacked and brought under control despite thousands of civilian losses and destruction.

This is a situation showing that both Iran and Russia in fact see the Astana process as a ground for stalling. Indeed, before coming to the Tehran summit, they calculated beginning their attacks on Idlib and sitting at the table with an advantage.

The holding of the Tehran summit open to the press was also a fait accompli by the host, Iran. It was contrary to the customs of such international meetings, but its being open in one respect made everyone's position on this matter visible with great transparency.

There are countless examples of Erdoğan gaining a clear advantage over everyone in an open debate with his sincerity and consistency. The same happened at this summit. With his speech, his timely interventions and the humanitarian sensitivity he brought to the fore, he showed the whole world the sincerity, virtue, rightness and difference of his own style of politics.

President Erdoğan, after returning from the Summit, in any case declared with his statement that this pessimistic picture, which seems to have turned the whole process into a fait accompli and a game, was not the end of the matter: "If tens of thousands of innocent people are allowed to be killed for the sake of the regime's interests, we can be neither a partner nor a spectator in such a game."