Thanks for the reply@Koprulu Mustafa Pasha
Russia only intervened after Iranian general Qassem Soleimani convinced them.
interesting- any news links on this
If either Turkey or USA intervenes, Russian intervention is out.
The "first come, first served" rule, I suppose. Other respondents and voters have generally gone along the same lines.
However, a deal with Russia will be made by any of the states, especially Turkey. Russia gets something in return.
Hmm. Well there's no way Turkey gives any concessions that compromise its own sovereignty. I wonder what it gives - tacit support for an Alawite state in coastal Syria that leases naval facilities to the Russians?
The results of an intervention will differ. A Turkish intervention will be bloodier and less effective than a American one. And it might take longer.
Turkish intervention would be bloodier and less effective than American because?
a) less high-intensity combat experience
b) Turkey's been purging most of its own officer corps over this time
c) Toxic relations with the Syrian Kurds. Don't worry, we're getting to this one about right now in OTL,
The main things the Turks would have going for them would numbers and proximity.
I'm not saying an intervention, other than the type we are having right now, was bloody likely, but if any neighbor of Syria could have pulled it off, it would have been Turkey.
A full-on intervention for outright regime change is a bit hard to imagine, smaller powers than the US are not used to planning or committing to projects of such scale.
More plausible I would think would be occupation of a 100 kilometer buffer zone for security and refugee handling, or an occupation of the few northernmost Syrian provinces for that purpose.
---I would think that any US intervention, to be decisive, would have to have full logistic cooperation of Turkey anyway. Iraq, Lebanon or Jordan would all be more on a much less secure and more flimsy basis. A US intervention out of Iraq would not have been possible for much of this period, and in any case would be subject to sabotage. Lebanon would obviously be too contested an environment, and the logistics through Jordan would be quite a bit too circuitous. Turkey is on the shortest path between the sea and Syria other than the Syrian shore itself.