This is John Baster, colleague Gregory Copley, observing the Syria tumult, notes that Erdogan is the

coup master here, running HTS and other jihadists into Damascus and driving out of Lepo.

So that Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, in the imagination of people in Turkey,

especially Erdogan, is back in Damascus. Gregory connects it with Lawrence of Arabia in 1918.

Is Gregory Copley to explain the the romance and at the same time the risk of

Assad fleeing and Turkey's surrogate back in Damascus more of this tonight so he they're all

at a bit of a quandary at the moment. But here's the really

interesting thing about this, which we tend to forget. And that is that by having a Turkish

surrogate now in power in Damascus, possibly even leading to a formal Turkish presence throughout Syria.

We have Turkey now on the border of Israel. It is now a neighboring state. It becomes a direct

combatant against Israel at that point. So that's going to be really critical in the way this

starts to evolve. And whether or not President Erdogan can handle a formal conflict or not is

debatable. But right now, for the first time, we see the Ottomans basically back

in charge, more or less, not only of Damascus, but Syria. And this is, you know, shades of

1918 in October 31st, 1918 when we saw Lawrence of Arabia with his few Australian troops going into Damascus and pushing the Ottomans out, the Turks out at that stage.

And it has not been Ottomanized or Turkish since that time.