Yes, but you can’t blame Erdogan for that. First, Wests want to remove Assad. Then they saw that legacy of Assad could be Islamists or a government which is unwilling to be controlled by EU/USA, they removed from the plan and let Erdogan alone to face Assad and Russia. That Assad is still in power is just the fault of USA/EU and Israel. They don’t want to make same “mistake” like they did in Egypt. An uncontrollable government who is next to Turkey.
It was never about removing Assad. They can't remove Assad because Political Islamists would have taken over and that would have been good for Erdogan and terrible for Israel.
Back in the day i actually used to point this stuff out to people that it was a clear trap and not to fall into it. For about 6 months AK party were doing the reasonable thing and trying to get Assad to step down or hold elections. The western media back then was playing its dirty game of portraying Turkey as siding with east and being an enemy of the west to create pressure on Turkey to join their evil plans.
Anyway, the aim was to destabilise the country to weaken Assads grip over the PKKistan regions and to have the rest of the players ruin themselves and exhaust themselves in the syrian quagmire. If they can help it they would like this situation to go on another 100 years.
When Isis came about, they never once attacked Israel. After Iraq and Syria Turkey was the next most targeted nation with their terrorist attacks. Muslim fanatics/terrorists who spent all their time killing Muslims, something that only Hollywood could come up with.
Everything that is happening there is to the benefit of the americans/russians/isrealis. Everyone else is getting used. Turkey at all costs cannot be in Syria, because the more land Turkey controls in Syria the weaker their pkkistan card against Turkey becomes. And without the PKK card they have no effective enemy from within to stir. They already did this in the past with the greeks and armenians, all that happened is that greece and armenia were reduced to non entities, the armenians worse then the greeks due to geography.
The aim has to be to control the land, there is no real other choice remaining for Turkey. The enemies of Turkey know that the worst thing that can happen to their plans is for Turkey to control the lands. This is why both the USA and Russia move in unison against Turkey in Syria.
