The Turkish border offensive in Syria and its slow progress.

Turkey announced yesterday that had succeeded in taking a major town in its offensive into northern Syria. 

Of course, stating that doesn't make it true. But what likely is true is that Turkey is making advances.

Or, rather, we should say that Turkey and a Turkish backed Syrian militia are making advances.

Which might explain things.

Last week we ran an item entitled Old Equipment about the Turkish army and, to a very small extent, the Kurdish militias, and their equipment. What was noted in that is the Turkey has a good army, but it's equipped with a lot of old equipment.  That shouldn't matter in what they're doing, however.

Well, be that as it may the Turks, or perhaps their Syrian militia allies, aren't doing all that great in their effort to push 30 km, or about 20 miles, into Syria and create a buffer zone between it and the Kurds in northern Syria.

Before we go on in that, however, we'd have to note that that particular goal is somewhat nonsensical in and of itself.  If the Turks extend their frontier with the Kurds 20 miles to the south, they still have a frontier of the exact same length, so their strategic position will not have actually improved.  Of course, they'll dump a puppet Syrian militia in the new border zone as well, so that's likely an integral part of their aims.

Be that as it may, an offensive of this type, given their arms, shouldn't have taken much more than two or so days, maybe three, but now they're that far into it and they're still slugging it out in border towns.

Of course, the Turkish army is a 1970s style mechanized army. The Kurds are light infantry, although it turns out that they also have artillery now and they were capable of shelling Turkish towns.  The fact that they're fighting in border urban areas, however, would demonstrate that the Kurds are not only doing better than expected, but they're using a strategy which puts Turkish combatants at a disadvantage.

Beyond that it shows some decline in the quality of Turkish forces, a decline that might in part be explained by Turkey also using Syrian militias which are highly unlikely to be as capable as the Turks or the Kurds.

None of this should be taken to suggest that the Kurds will win. But the Turks might get much more bloodied than they expected.  Part of this is for tactical reasons, they're fighting in urban areas and the Kurds are in fact fighting back.  But part of it may be that sixteen years into Erdogan's administration (if we include his time as Prime Minister and President), the Turkish army may not be what it once was.

The longer the fighting goes on the more problematic it becomes for Turkey. Erdogan has declared that Turkey will fight as long as it takes, but as a President of a democratic county where he is already controversial, an excessively  high casualty rate may not be something that he can really weather.  Fighting as long as it takes is always something that's is a problematic statement in a democratic society.  And additionally a long period of fighting will increase the regional refugee problem while at the same time making the Kurds appear much stronger than many may have supposed.  Even when Turkey establishes its border zone there will still be a Kurdish entity in northern Syria and it will be in close contact with the same in Iraq.  Ramping up a war against capable fighters who have, in the past, been willing to wage a guerrilla war inside of Turkey may prove not to have been terribly smart.