I'm John Batchel, visiting with Sinan Chidi, Senior Fellow Foundation for Defensive Democracies,

who's helping me understand conflict zone, Syria.

Sinan, the deal with the SDF, yes, I understand.

But the larger picture of Syria is that this is a very strange landscape now with Assad in Moscow.

For one, the Israelis have moved major forces into the DMZ, the southern part of the country,

from the Golan Heights inward, and control Mount Airman.

Two, the Russians have not left their naval or air base in Latakia to my knowledge

and very much want to maintain their presence in the eastern Mediterranean.

Three, the Americans or their contractors have been in the east of the country,

bordering Iraq and Jordan, and maintaining a watch on ISIS operating in the ungoverned

spaces of former Syrian control.

And four, Turkey itself has a very large contingent of military, but at the same time, MIT, which is not the university, that's Turkish state security, very active in Idlib province.

And I'm told sponsoring HTS. What is Anchor's vision of this Balkanized state that has been at Civil War at least

more than almost 15 years? Yeah, as you correctly say, there's a lot of moving parts here.

And it's hard to sort of pass these out so that it's intelligible and understanding, understandable

to folks that are interested in this, not least of all because of the sort of plethora of countries,

but also non-state actors that you just mentioned, but also because the ground constantly shifts,

right, in terms of, you know, alliances and in terms of, you know, who wants what.

But if we could sort of take a bird's eye view and sort of try to answer and in terms of, you know, who wants what. But if we could sort of like

take a bird's eye view and sort of try to impact the question of what does Turkey seek,

I mean, at its most fundamental level, I mean, Turkey is seeking to essentially project power.

It very much, you know, perceives itself as the rising and dominant power in the region, and it would essentially

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