>>8292981 (lb) Will state the obvious, which is not obvious at all to 90% of Americans. In addition to all the other factors influencing the position in Idlib, we have Arab vs. Turk. Until a century ago, Turkey controlled a chunk of the Arab world. TE Lawrence, etc., thrown out after centuries. This anon finds it fascinating to see them go at it after all this time. And the fight is in large measure the same fight that was fought in WWI. Let's face it, Erdogan is fighting to add Idlib to Turkey's domains. If successful, they will continue the attempted expansion elsewhere–in line with his current mineral wealth grab in the med. Turkey looks like a scurrilous backstabber to this anon.
You read about Arab literary achievements and support of knowledge in general, back in the long ago. While personally appreciative of those things, and what they contributed to the overall river of man's development, they are exaggerated & overhyped by politically correct, intellectually dishonest people IMO. The Arabs are in the coils of Islam, grievously infected by its poison. This automatically lowers the level they are able to reach as an overall society, and this will not change as long as that political regime controls them.
Yet the Arabs as a rule possess machismo, such as they inculcated in Iberia for 8 centuries. So many examples from history could be cited, but will only go to a quite recent demonstration, which was the long & brutal war with Iran, over the period 1980-88. Fought for reasons delineated here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War The point is that the Arabs held their own vs. the Persians, in another ethnic wrestling match. They took 200,000-600,000 dead. Think about what that means.
Extrapolate to Syria, and we can expect the Arabs to fight like dervishes. The Syrian armed forces are now highly experienced in every aspect of combat operations. Turkey some, but not nearly as much. Syrians fighting for their own ground, Turks trying to force their way in where they have no legit biz. No one, no one at all, supporting Turkey, while Syria has the Russians there dealing powerful air blows. Turks talking hysterical smack & lying about battlefield results. Syrians & Russians fighting silently, grimly. My money is on them to drive the Turks out of Syria.
The Turks look to me like a chess player who is offered a draw, eschews it, goes for the jugular, then gets his ass kicked. They should have recognized an inflection point on the board, and taken what they could get. And now they are going to have to fight to hold what they had when it started. How dare they threaten Europe with an invasion of angry flotsam, on top of the prior outrages, as NATO gives them the finger. How dare they announce how many times they have fought the Russians, and that they expect to do it again. These are the ravings of madmen. Wouldn't it be a pity if the Turks were driven out of Europe, and Istanbul was again called Constantinople? That land area could either join Bulgaria or be a new state with its integrity guaranteed by multiple powers.