Turkey reduces its activity in Syria as a result of the coronavirus

Turkey adjusts its strategy in Syria because of the coronavirus. The Ankara Ministry of Defence has issued an official statement informing of its decision to limit the movement of its troops in the neighbouring country as much as possible. All entries and exits from the areas of operation are to be duly monitored by the commanders of the armed forces.

Similarly, a contingent of doctors has been sent to Turkish bases in northern Syria to provide care and attention to any member of the Armed Forces who tests positive for COVID-19, as well as to conduct an awareness campaign among military personnel deployed in the area.

In addition, all those soldiers who arrive in the country from Turkey will be subject to a period of surveillance that will last fourteen days, at the end of which they will be given a medical check-up to verify their state of health. The document also states that the government has taken the necessary measures to disinfect military vehicles and common areas. 

These precautions include sending NRBQ protection equipment to the front (against nuclear, radiological, biological or toxic chemical material) and masks of various types. It is specified that the national factories are producing two and a half million a week.

Everything suggests that, in this way, the so-called 'Spring Shield' operation, which Ankara launched a little over a month ago after the death of more than 30 of its soldiers following a bombing by the Syrian Arab Army, is going be considerably reduced in impact in the coming weeks. It is true, however, that the Ministry of Defence's order leaves a loophole open for operations on the ground to continue, since it urges limiting movements 'unless it is mandatory'. Depending on how far the military commanders take this exception, ther will be more or less activity.

In any case, Defense says that joint patrols with Russian troops on the strategic M4 road near Idlib will continue to be operational. These patrols were established under the ceasefire agreement for the de-escalation zone signed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin in Moscow early last March.

The communication also takes the opportunity to briefly review the progress of the Turkish campaign. In particular, the Ministry notes that Turkish troops received 57 attacks from pro-Damascus militia in the last month, which were duly countered on the basis of self-defence. There are also reports of the arrest of nearly 60 suspected terrorists associated with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party, considered a terrorist organization) and the YPG, its branch in Syria.

Indeed, the military deployments undertaken by the Turkish Government on Syrian soil have the dual objective of, on the one hand, eliminating, as far as possible, members of the mainly Kurdish militia groups, which Ankara considers a threat. On the other hand, it is trying to continue destabilising the general situation in the country in order to gain geopolitical weight in the region; a victory for Al-Asad's armed forces, as is apparently happening, means for Erdogan to have a regime supported by Iran, one of his greatest regional rivals, at his doorstep.

In addition, Turkey continues to face another problem related to the war in Syria that is being aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic: the management of refugee flows from the south. Border guard units have been properly trained to avoid any physical contact with people arriving from Idlib and its surroundings because of the fighting between the Syrian Arab Army and the Protestant militias. Despite the pandemic, thousands of people continue fleeing the war to the Turkish border, where they settle in camps suffering from extremely poor sanitary and hygienic conditions.

These settlements, where it is virtually impossible to effectively implement the preventive measures prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO), are now a time bomb. As members of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and humanitarian NGOs have warned, contagion in these settlements can have devastating effects.

Outside the camps, the situation is not much better. Turkey is being hit very hard by the pandemic. The latest update of official data, provided by Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and collected by the worldometers.info portal, acknowledges more than 30,000 cases of infection in the country, as well as 649 deaths. However, Turkish health officials have repeatedly accused Ankara of making up these figures. In reality, the number of positives could be much higher.

The health emergency, however, is not the only one facing the country's authorities. The economic side of the coronavirus crisis is particularly damaging to an economy like Turkey's, which is not very diversified and is highly dependent on the income generated by tourism. 

With leisure travel, both domestic and foreign, on hold, many businesses of all sizes are preparing for a period of scarcity this summer. A recent report published by the Moody's rating agency predicted a cumulative contraction of 7% in Turkey's gross domestic product in the second and third quarters of 2020.