WASHINGTON—Russian warplanes have carried out air strikes to support Turkey’s offensive in northern Syria against the Islamic State (IS), an important evolution in a budding Russian-Turkish partnership. The deepening ties threaten to marginalize the United States in the struggle to shape Syria’s ultimate fate.
The air missions, which took place for about a week near the strategically important town of Al Bab, represent the Kremlin’s first use of its military might to help the Turks in their fight against the militant group.
The Russians seized an opening to try to build a military relationship with Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) member, as the United States has sought to keep the emphasis on taking Raqqa, the IS’s self-declared capital.
The Russian bombing is a remarkable turnabout from November 2015, when a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Su-24 attack plane that had violated Turkey’s airspace. Russia and Turkey had been involved in a joint effort to establish a cease-fire in Syria—one that does not involve the United States. At the same time, ties between the United States and Turkey have come under growing strain as the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has become increasingly alarmed about the Kurdish forces known as the YPG. The United States has aligned itself with those forces to combat IS in Syria and capture Raqqa.
Some analysts say Russia appears to have arrived at an accommodation in which the Turks are moving to establish a security zone in northern Syria to preclude Syrian Kurds from setting up an autonomous region.
In return, the Turks appear to be backing off their efforts to unseat President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who, with Russian help, is strengthening his hold on the country’s major cities to the south.
“The Russian-Turkish rapprochement is largely tactical,” said James F. Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Turkey. “Russia can live for now with a Turkish enclave in northern Syria if it does not threaten the Assad regime. And it allows Russia to exploit the US shift to Turkey’s rival, the YPG, by providing air support to the Turks against the IS, which the US inexplicably is not providing.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump has spoken positively, though in vague terms, about the possibility of cooperating with Russia in the fight against the IS, also known as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. But the Obama administration’s efforts to forge a common political and military strategy with the Kremlin on Syria collapsed after Russia supported Syrian forces and Iranian-backed fighters with its air power in the brutal retaking of Aleppo.
Turkey began the operation at Al Bab, east of Aleppo, without coordinating with the United States and without the benefit of US air strikes. “This is something that they’ve decided to do independently,” Col. John Dorrian, spokesman for the US-led operation against the IS, said last November.
Turkey appeared to have assumed it would make short work of the IS fighters there. But the fighting has been stiff. In late November the Turkish military’s problems were compounded when three of its soldiers were killed in what Turkish forces said was a Syrian air strike.
Erdogan later spoke by phone with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, who assured him that Russia had not been involved in the air attack, according to Turkish news reports. The improving ties between the two autocratic leaders opened the door to greater cooperation.
The Turkish military spoke publicly about the Russian role in a January 2 statement that noted that Russian warplanes had struck targets the previous day about 5 miles south of Al Bab.
US officials, who asked not to be identified because they were discussing intelligence, said Russian air strikes in the Al Bab area began at the end of December, and Russian aircraft were flying near Al Bab as recently as Friday.
The effectiveness of the Russian air operations, which have mainly involved dropping “dumb”, or unguided, bombs, is unclear. As Turkey’s casualties have mounted in the Al Bab operation, Turkish officials have complained about the lack of US air support and have even made veiled threats that Turkey might suspend allied combat flights against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria from its major base at Incirlik, which would be a major blow to the US-led air campaign.
US officials suggested that the holdup in carrying out allied air strikes in recent weeks was related to a Turkish decision to ban the Americans from flying reconnaissance drones in and around Al Bab to help identify and confirm targets, as well as bad weather. The Turkish military said that measure was needed to ensure that no potentially hostile aircraft flew over its troops, but it has hampered the United States’s ability to carry out air strikes without endangering civilians.
Operating without the benefit of precise intelligence, the United States recently engaged in what officials called a “show of force” operation in which US aircraft flew low over Al Bab and dropped flares. But last week the Turks agreed that the United States could fly drones and other aircraft to gather intelligence, which paves the way for the US-led coalition to carry out air strikes against the Islamic State in Al Bab, US officials said.
The United States regards the Kurdish forces as some of the most effective fighters in the campaign against the IS in Syria. But in deference to Turkish sensitivities, the Americans have declined to arm them directly. The Turks, however, regard them as nothing more than an arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, an insurgent Kurdish group in Turkey and Iraq. Attacks linked to the group have killed dozens of Turkish security forces in recent weeks.