Bay also notes the ceasefire with the Kurds as a factor in this issue, as I did. Although I have hopes for larger goals than Syria (Iran), dealing with Syria also hurts Iran (and Hezbollah).
But getting potential access to Turkish air space for an attack on Iran is not the reason for the reconciliation, according to Bay. He focuses on the Kurdish angle. Taking the Kurd card away from a lot of unsavory actors will benefit us.
And this takes away the Kurdish card from Assad, too. He may have hoped that his loss of Kurdish regions of Syria would worry Turkey enough to avoid siding against Assad. But that worry is gone. And the lingering reasons for Syria's Kurds to work with Assad are gone now, too, with Turkey losing a worry that Turkish Kurds might unite with Syrian Kurds for a larger state including both countries' Kurds.
People in the media keep saying that the Syria rebellion is stalemated. It isn't. It may be fairly static in ground controlled, but behind that geographic fact the Syrian regime is eroding and losing strength while the rebels are gaining capabiities:
Mideast powers opposed to President Bashar Assad have dramatically stepped up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels in coordination with the U.S. in preparation for a push on the capital of Damascus, officials and Western military experts said Wednesday.
For a press corps that tries to school us on how insurgencies aren't a military problem, they sure do focus on the military surface factors of a conventional land-control metric, eh?
But a regime assessment that accurately judges Assad as losing would explain recent rumors of Syrian chemical usage. Of course, that requires Assad to accurately judge that he is losing and thinking that desperate times call for desperate measures.
We want to keep the chemical genie in the bottle. I've heard it raised in the press recently, so I should repeat my call to prepare for a post-Syria Assad rather than a post-Assad Syria. As much as I'd like to avoid saving Assad, the price of elimination might be too high. We might have to settle for near-total neutering and then work that problem if it keeps chemical weapons off the battlefield (which is the Syrian population, recall).
And if it is a dose of nuance you need, consider that Turkey's forced making up with Israel will be more enduring if a rump Alawite state under Assad or a loyal successor that is still angry at Turkey--but far weaker--sits south of Turkey.
