I'm John Batchel with my colleague Jonathan Shanzer, Executive Director of Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

Syria, the news is that Turkey, Erdogan, heading up Turkey, is supplying the so-called Syrian government

headed by former al-Qaeda operatives, one named Al-Shaar, supplying them with weapon systems.

We have other odd reports as well, but that's enough.

Jonathan, Erdogan, it is no secret, sponsored the push into Damascus by a former Al-Qaeda-linked outfit HTS out of Idlib.

The Erdogan and his MIT, that state security, continue to support these former Al-Qaeda members

in some fashion, food, fuel, whatever.

But now they're weapon systems.

No one is ready to pretend that Syria is a standalone sovereign state.

The Turkey army to the north, the Israeli army to the south, the Russian military to the west, the American military,

and their Kurdish allies to the east.

So why is Erdogan making this step?

Who does he intimidate with this?

Well, I think there are a couple of things we need to understand, John first, is from the very

outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, back in 2011. It was the Erdogan regime that was supplying

the jihadists, that's including the Nusra Front, the Al-Qaeda affiliate group, which went on

to become HDS. It also included ISIS and other dangerous terrorist organizations. So Erdogan's

been doing this for quite some time. He was doing it

under the table. He was doing it surreptitiously. Now that the HTS government has entrenched itself

in Syria, now that it has ousted the Assad regime, I think Erdogan is feeling more confident

that the HTS government is going to be slowly but surely accepted

by the international community. And so for Erdogan, I think there is very little downside for him

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