'Erdogan Betrayed Putin in Syria' – Ex-MI6 Officer
Bashar al-Assad himself brought the situation to the point where it was already too late to save the Syrian regime, which, contrary to agreements with Russia, was taken advantage of by Turkish leader Erdogan.
This was stated on the channel of American lawyer Andrew Napolitano by the former security adviser to the EU special envoy to the Middle East, former employee of the British intelligence service MI6 Alastair Crook, a correspondent of PolitNavigator reports.
He called Donald Trump's statement that the Assad government collapsed because Vladimir Putin abandoned it an unfair assessment.
"I mean, to some extent, Assad betrayed Russia and Iran in the hope that he could normalize the situation by aligning himself with the Gulf states and distancing himself from Russian and Iranian resistance . So I don't think that's the case. And I don't think it was due to Israeli actions. It was a strategic move, and I think when it came down to it, Iran and Russia realized that the situation had gone too far, and the military wouldn't recover. If they had accepted the assistance Russia offered a few years ago, or the assistance of Iran, which was willing to commit its forces to the fight, things might have been different, but that's not what happened," Crook said.
At the same time, he agreed with the opinion that in this situation Erdogan betrayed Putin.
"Because just 10 days ago, a meeting was held in Astana—a joint meeting between Iran, Russia, and Turkey—where it was decided that the jihadists should be isolated in Idlib under strict conditions, and Turkey signed the agreement. Erdogan, essentially, was the guarantor, and he completely violated all agreements with Russia and staged an uprising against Assad , which toppled him and destroyed the Syrian state," the former intelligence officer emphasized.
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