As we have seen over the past few months, Turkey and Russia have been working together, alongside Iran, to push into Syria and grow Russia’s influence in the region. However, some cracks are starting to emerge in the Turkish/Russian agreements. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan recently has attacked Russia’s escalation on the Syrian border and their escalation of military force in the region. Erdogan said that Ankara [the capital of Turkey] was losing patience with the military assault in Syria’s Idlib region, adding that Russia is violating agreements aimed at stemming conflict. Renewed bombardments by Russia-back Syrian government forces on Idlib have raised concerns in Turkey of a new refugee wave from the area, which borders Turkey and is home to 3 million people. Turkey has already received a large flow of immigrants from Syria and does not want any new military action that would cause such a large group to flood north into their land as political refugees. They have threatened to send the refugees to Europe if Western Europe attempts to intervene against Turkey.  

Turkey and Russia, which support opposing sides in Syria, have recently been working together to create a demilitarized zone in Syria so that there would no longer be a need for refugees to continue to flee north into Turkey. And, they have proposed the possibility to create a zone where Turkey could resettle the refugees that have already entered their nation. Despite several ceasefire agreements, fighting continues in the last remaining rebel bastion in the country’s nearly nine-year war. Erdogan, speaking to reporters, said Turkey is building houses in northern Idlib to shelter civilians fleeing the bombing. He said he also told Russia they are running out of patience.

Turkey had hoped that their recent agreement with Russia and Iran would solve these types of issues, but Russia has also made agreements with Syria. Syria, with Russia’s backing, is not afraid to violate the cease-fire agreements because they know Turkey is unwilling to risk a future escalation with Russia. Syrian government forces recently entered a town in southern Idlib. However, Turkey, who has 12 observation posts around the city, warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad they would retaliate against any aggression. A Turkish military convey, consisting of 30 armored vehicles, was sent to the region and is expected to establish a new observation post to detect Syrian aggression.

Meanwhile, the third member of the alliance, Iran, has their own plans for the region and would like to have a greater influence into Syria in order to use the location as a base for a future strike into Israel. Consequently, all three players in the region, supposedly working together to demilitarize the region, also have their own reasons and goals in mind.

While Ezekiel 38-39 speaks of a future Russian, Turkish and Iranian alliance in the battle of Gog and Magog, this does not automatically mean that this event will occur soon or even in our lifetime. The three nations could easily overcome these challenges and work together to try to invade Israel as Ezekiel described or their alliance may break up to be recovered in the future. Ultimately, only God knows the timeline for these events, and we can only pray for peace and do our part to reach as many lost souls as we can in the meantime. God will ultimately bring these events to their conclusion when He chooses, and we must simply continue our work for God’s kingdom.

Pray- Pray for peace in the region. Pray for the refugees that have had their entire lives disrupted by this long civil war.