Orientul Mijlociu

On March 5, Turkey and Russia reached an agreement on the “stabilization of the situation in the Idlib de-escalation area.” The agreement came after months of escalation came to a head with the Turkish “Operation Spring Shield” against government forces and its allied militias on March 1, in response to air raids that resulted in the death of 34 Turkish soldiers in Idlib province on February 27.

Following intensified fighting in Syria between Turkey and the Assad regime, thousands of refugees are fleeing the country in an effort to reach Europe.

Iran’s intervention in Syria’s civil war has provided Tehran with the ability to support its closest regional allies while simultaneously threatening Israel.

Dozens of Turkish troops have been killed in Syrian government air raids backed by Russia. Turkey has intensified its military operations, firing down two Syrian fighter jets as well as launching several ground attacks. It marks a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Turkey and Russian-backed forces in Syria.

Refugees, migrants, aid workers and journalists are facing an increasingly hostile environment in Greece since Turkey lifted restrictions late last month on Syrians, Afghans and others trying to reach Western Europe.

Context: Turkey’s conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – recognised as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU – continues in south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. In northern Syria, Ankara and the PKK’s Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Forces (YPG), remain pitted against each other. On the home front, Turkey is pursuing its crackdown on the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

Nearly a million civilians, 81 per cnet of them women and children, have been displaced from their homes in 90 days in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, amid a brutal military campaign by Syria’s Assad regime, Russia and Iran-backed militias.

Some Fundamentals

Many Community Policing articles, books, manuals and training sessions will, somewhere at their beginning, make reference to the origins of Community Policing dating back to Sir Robert Peel and the formation of the London Metropolitan police in 1829. While Peel’s nine Principles apply to democratic policing today as much as they did in 1829, this can have the effect of unintentionally and unconsciously, setting the scene that Community-Based Policing is a concept, brand and philosophy “invented” and exported from in the “West.” This can be reinforced and compounded by, what have been termed as, “One shoe fits all” and “Off the shelf” packages, un-boxed and then delivered with minimal consideration for “will this work here”? While there is nothing wrong with covering what can be presented as, the origins of contemporary community policing, the authors argue that it can dictate how technical assistance in this field is introduced and pursued.

“We’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives, letting convicted, known, radicalised jihadi criminals walk about our streets”. — Chris Phillips, former head of the UK National Counter Terrorism Security Office, The Guardian, December 1, 2019.