Turkish army expands deployment in Syria's northwest

Ah, so Turkey is doing this in agreement with Russia.

Turkey says its operations there, along with the Syrian rebel groups it backs, is part of a deal it reached last month with Russia and Iran in Kazakhstan to reduce fighting between insurgents and the Syrian government.

Syria on Saturday denounced the Turkish incursion saying it was a flagrant violation of its sovereignty and demanded Ankara pull its troops.

Turkey, Russia, and Iran made the deal behind Syria's back

Heavily populated Idlib has been the target of hundreds of strikes by the Russia and Syrian air forces in the past year that has killed hundreds of civilians and destroyed hospitals and civil defence centres.

My Russian friend told me the conflict would be over in a matter of days when Russia got their military involved in Syria. That was over a year ago.

expanding its deployment

illegal invasion to murder kurds me thinks.

Your Russian friend was right. The tide turned decisively after Russia's intervention.

Do you honestly think your Al Qaeda and ISIS army have any chance of taking Damascus?

And to boot, Russia's strategy created a burgeoning rift between the US and Turkey.

Brilliant chess play don't you think.

And all they had to do was sell out Syria

Syria's the big loser here - Turkey's in; Assad will not be able to retake the rebel lands that's protected by Syrian Turkmen; the Syrian Kurds will vote on a referendum for independence

But hey, at least Damascus is safe, and Russia gets to keep its Mediterranean naval base (that's their main goal after all, who cares if the rest of Syria is divided)

What a friend - even Assad didn't see that checkmate coming

Probably the only country which has a legitimate argument of intervention because they share their frontier with a country hosting the most terrorist in the world and being constantly threathened of terrorist attacks it's not acceptable.

In fact they should have done this years before. Too bad for them the country was to instable for this kind of operation before they lost their opportunity long ago and now they can only cooperate for every futur operation.