Wall St.Journal Weekend 29Feb2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. *** Saturday/Sunday, February 29 - March 1, 2020 |A

WORLD NEWS

him to drive a wedge between

Turkey and other NATO mem-

bers, but his priority is victory

for the Assad government in

Syria, said Vladimir Frolov, a

foreign-policy analyst in Mos-

cow.

“There are shared objec-

tives with President Assad to

re-establish full control over

the border, defeat the rebels

and drive out the disloyal

Sunni population from Syria to

Turkey,” Mr. Frolov said.

Mr. Erdogan’s balancing act

between Russia and the U.S.

became more difficult when

Moscow started to play a

larger role in Syria and else-

where in the Middle East,

while the Trump administra-

tion began to reassess the ex-

tent to which it should get in-

volved in overseas conflicts.

President Trump spoke on

Friday with Mr. Erdogan, ac-

cording to the White House,

expressing his condolences

and condemning Thursday’s

attack that killed Turkish per-

sonnel in Syria. After the call,

Putin have struggled to keep a

lid on the growing tension be-

tween them.

Mr. Erdogan deployed about

10,000 troops to northwestern

Syria in February to help rebels

resist the advance of the Syrian

army, as well as to prevent hun-

dreds of thousands of civilians

fleeing fighting from streaming

into Turkey. But Russia refused

permission for Turkish aircraft

to provide air support in Idlib,

as it had done in other parts of

Syria in the past, leaving Tur-

key’s forces vulnerable to at-

tack.

Being shut out of the Syrian

airspace is “our biggest prob-

lem,” Mr. Erdogan said on

Wednesday. It can’t use the

S-400 either as it isn’t yet op-

erational.

Mr. Erdogan has also said

the U.S. has turned down a re-

quest to deploy the U.S.-made

Patriot missile defense system,

while the Pentagon has frozen

delivery to Turkey of F-

stealth jet fighters.

Former Turkish President

Abdullah Gul, who co-founded

the ruling Justice and Devel-

opment Party, urged Mr. Erdo-

gan to renege on the deal to

buy the Russian-made S-

system and refocus Turkey on

NATO.

“Military experts and diplo-

mats should have seen that a

country cannot have both

S-400 and an aircraft designed

to dodge them,” he said in a

recent interview with Turkish

daily newspaper Karar. “Per-

haps there is still time.”

Turkish officials say they

remain hopeful that Ankara

can reach a cease-fire agree-

ment in Syria with Russia and

avoid a full-blown military

confrontation. To that end, Mr.

Erdogan still needs Moscow in

his corner, analysts said.

“A cease-fire agreement is

still possible,” said Yasar Ya-

kis, a retired Turkish diplomat

who held several posts in the

Middle East, including in Da-

mascus. “But any deal will

leave a sour taste. Any trust

will be lost.”

full-blown clash between Tur-

key and Russia.

“From the air, Russian jet

fighters are pouring down

death,” Devlet Bahceli, head of

the Nationalist Movement

Party and a political ally of

Mr. Erdogan, said in a speech

on Tuesday, reflecting growing

opposition at home to Mr. Er-

dogan’s embrace of Moscow.

The Turkish president has

called Mr. Putin a reliable

friend, signing a series of con-

tracts with him in recent years

for the purchase of natural

gas, a nuclear power plant and

a sophisticated air-defense

system from Russia.

Mr. Bahceli said it has be-

come clear that Russia can’t

be regarded as a strategic

partner because, despite “hug-

ging Mr. Erdogan,” Mr. Putin

has chosen Damascus over An-

kara.

Russian authorities say that

the Syrian army has a right to

suppress extremist groups in

Idlib province.

Pivoting away from the U.S.

and toward Russia has been a

core plank of Mr. Erdogan’s

domestic and foreign policies

since surviving a failed coup

in July 2016.

While Turkey was angered

by U.S. decisions to arm Syr-

ian Kurdish fighters—whom it

views as terrorist threats—and

reject its request to help pros-

ecute alleged coup plotters,

Mr. Putin hosted Mr. Erdogan

in St. Petersburg later that

summer, and offered to boost

bilateral cooperation in mat-

ters from trade to defense.

In late 2017, Turkey signed a

$2.5 billion contract to acquire

Russia’s S-400 air-defense sys-

tem, sparking accusations from

fellow members of the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization

that it was turning its back on

the military alliance.

Mr. Putin’s pursuit of a

closer relationship with the

Turkish president has allowed

With mounting losses in

Syria and no sign that Tur-

key’s Western allies are willing

to provide significant military

support, President Recep

Tayyip Erdogan is confronting

the limits of his strategy of

working with the Syrian gov-

ernment’s main backer, Russia.

Turkey said Friday that it

retaliated against forces of

Syrian President Bashar al-

Assad, a day after at least 33

of its soldiers were killed by

airstrikes in northwestern

Syria.

Turkey blamed the casual-

ties, which raised its losses to

more than 50 in February, on

the Assad regime. The Russian

Defense Ministry said its jet

fighters, which control much

of the Syrian sky and conduct

most of the air raids against

Turkish-backed rebels en-

trenched in Syria’s Idlib prov-

ince, weren’t involved in

Thursday’s clash.

Russian President Vladimir

Putin and Mr. Erdogan spoke

by phone Friday and agreed to

organize a meeting to address

the situation in Idlib, the

Kremlin said.

The drama in Idlib has

demonstrated the limitations

of Mr. Erdogan’s strategy of

confronting the Assad re-

gime—whom Ankara has op-

posed throughout the Syrian

civil war—while pursuing a

partnership with Mr. Putin.

Thousands of rebel fighters

and more than a million civil-

ians have retreated to Idlib as

Mr. Assad regained much of

the country.

As Mr. Assad moves to take

Idlib, the last large chunk of

Syrian territory that he

doesn’t yet control, Mr. Erdo-

gan is facing the prospect of a

ByDavid Gauthier-

Villarsin Istanbul and

Ann M. Simmonsin

Moscow

In Syria, Erdogan

Finds Limits of

His Pivot to Putin

Mourners attended a funeral ceremony for a Turkish soldier killed in Syria. Ankara said Friday it retaliated against Syrian regime forces.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WORLD WATCH

CANADA

Economy Inched Up

In Fourth Quarter

The Canadian economy barely

grew in the final three months

of 2019, as declines in exports

and business investment contrib-

uted to the weakest quarter of

activity in more than three years.

Some market watchers fear

another weak performance could

be in store for early 2020, as the

impact of the coronavirus on the

global economy and rail blockades

on key commercial corridors sub-

tract from Canadian growth. Pres-

sure is mounting on theBank of

Canadato act, and some econo-

mists believe it will do so next

week with an interest-rate cut.

Canada’s gross domestic

product, or the broadest mea-

sure of goods and services pro-

duced in an economy, increased

at a 0.3% annualized rate in the

fourth quarter, to 2.100 trillion

Canadian dollars ($1.571 trillion),

Statistics Canadasaid Friday.

That matched both market

expectations and the Bank of

Canada’s most recent quarterly

economic forecast. Third-quarter

GDP was revised down, to 1.1%

annualized growth from a previ-

ous 1.3% estimate.

Overall, Canada’s economy

grew 1.6% in 2019, a deceleration

after a 2% advance in 2018. In

comparison, U.S. GDP increased

2.3% last year.

—Paul Vieira

HONG KONG

Media Mogul Charged

Over Demonstrations

Police swooped in at dawn to

arrest a media tycoon and two

other veteran pro-democracy fig-

ures who support the antigov-

ernment protests, charging them

with illegal assembly six months

after the fact.

Jimmy Lai, founder of the

popular Apple Daily newspaper,

known for criticizing and mock-

ing China’s leaders, was arrested

Friday at his home, his newspa-

per said. Opposition politicians

Lee Cheuk-yan and Yeung Sum

were arrested separately, accord-

ing to their parties.

Police said the arrests are re-

lated to an unauthorized march

on Aug. 31 that ended with po-

lice beating people inside sub-

way trains.

The arrests were “blatant

acts of political suppression” by

the Hong Kong government and

Beijing, said Samuel Chu, manag-

ing director of the Washington,

D.C.-based Hong Kong Democ-

racy Council. “The rights to as-

sembly and protest are en-

shrined in Hong Kong’s

constitution.”

The government didn’t re-

spond to a request for comment.

A police statement issued after

the Aug. 31 demonstration

blamed protesters for escalating

the violence.

—Joyu Wang

INDIA

Spending Slowdown

Restrains Growth

India’s economic growth re-

mained below 5% for the second

straight quarter, hurt by a slow-

down in consumer and corporate

spending.

Gross domestic product in

Asia’s third-largest economy

grew 4.7% in the three months

through December, according to

government data released Fri-

day. That is slightly higher than

the 4.5% in the previous quarter.

The Indian government proj-

ects the country’s economy will

expand just 5% in the fiscal year

ending March 31. That would be

its slowest growth in 11 years

and far from the more than 8%

growth many economists say

the economy needs to provide

additional jobs for the more

than 10 million people a year

who enter the workforce.

The slowdown—which has

been particularly tough on the

rural regions where most Indians

live—is emerging as the biggest

challenge for Prime Minister Na-

rendra Modi. New Delhi has

launched measures to boost

lending, investment and con-

sumption in recent months.

The Reserve Bank of India

earlier this month made it easier

for banks to offer auto and

housing loans, but left its key

lending rate unchanged.

—Vibhuti Agarwal

PROTEST: Israeli forces pushed back Palestinians Friday during a demonstration marking the 26th

anniversary of the shooting attack by Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein in Hebron, the West Bank.

ABED AL HASHLAMOUN/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

the White House didn’t an-

nounce any new specific mea-

sures of support for Turkey.

In an apparent bid to re-

ceive more support from the

U.S. and the European Union,

both to deal with its swelling

refugee population and con-

front the Assad regime, Tur-

key opened its land and sea

borders with the European

Union on Friday, allowing the

country’s swelling refugee

population to stream toward

Greece and Bulgaria. The two

EU countries responded by in-

creasing patrols along their

borders.

With fighting intensifying

in Idlib, Messrs. Erdogan and

As Mr. Assad moves

to take Idlib, Turkey

faces the prospect of

a clash with Russia.

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