TURKEY / AFRIN – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday ignored calls for restraint and announced his intention to expand Turkey’s military intervention in northern Syria against Kurdish people’s protection units.
On the seventh day of the operation, which is called the “olive branch” and particularly the United States’ concern, Erdogan announced his intention to send troops to the Syrian city of Manbaj, where US forces are stationed, and then eastwards “to the Iraqi border.”
The Turkish attack is currently targeting the Afrin region in northwestern Syria, which is a stronghold of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units. While Ankara regards these Kurdish forces as “terrorist”, it is at the same time a key ally of the United States in the war against the organization of the Islamic state in Syria.
Pro-Turkish factions have been trying to break Kurdish lines in the Afrin region, backed by Turkish air and artillery, since Saturday. Faced with this difficult reality, the self-governing region of Afrin called Thursday for the Syrian regime to intervene to stop the Turkish attack.
The military operation led to increased tension between the United States and Turkey, which was not eased by the two heads of state on Wednesday.
Erdogan’s comments on Friday are expected to fuel the fire, especially as he promised to “clean up” Manbij, controlled by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, about 100 kilometers east of Afrin, where hundreds of members of the US military are stationed.
Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara that after the control of Afrin, “we will clean the camp of terrorists (…) Then we continue our struggle so as not to remain a terrorist to the Iraqi border.”
– “On the Edge of the Abyss” –
Commenting on the developments in the field, analyst Anthony Skinner of the consulting office on the conflict zones said that after Erdogan’s threats to advance to Manbaj, “the direct military confrontation between the Turkish army and the US forces is possible,” adding that the relationship between the two sides.
The disagreement over the position of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units is the root cause of the deterioration of the relationship between Washington and Ankara for more than a year, knowing that they are members of NATO.
During a telephone conversation on Wednesday with Erdogan, Trump urged Turkey to limit its military actions and called for avoiding “any action that could cause confrontation between Turkish and US forces.”
“How long has the operation lasted in Afghanistan? How long has the operation been going on in Iraq?” Erdogan said in his speech on Friday.
On the seventh day of the attack continued Turkish artillery deployed on the border with Syria, bombing on the sites of units of protection of the Kurdish people in the region of Afrin, according to the official Anatolia news agency reported.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that since Saturday, 110 people have been killed in pro-Turkish Arab-Syrian fighting, as well as the death of 38 civilians, most of them in Turkish shelling.
Turkey, which says it is not targeting civilians, has said it has so far lost three soldiers.
– Kurds look to Damascus –
In response to the Turkish attack, the joint chairman of the Executive Council of the self-governing council in the province of Afrin Osman Sheikh Issa Thursday called on the Syrian regime to intervene to prevent Turkish planes from bombing the area.
“If there is a real and national stand for the Syrian state, which has its potential, it must stand up to this aggression and say it will not allow Turkish planes to fly,” Sheikh Issa told AFP in a telephone call from Beirut.
Sheikh Issa stressed that “Afrin is an integral part of the Syrian territory and any aggression against it is an attack on the sovereignty of the Syrian state, and therefore we appealed to it to break its silence and show its attitude towards this vicious aggression.”
Kurdish factions in northern Syria have benefited from the withdrawal of the regime’s forces from the north of the country to extend its control and establish a self-governing system.
With the exception of limited clashes between the two sides coexisted Kurdish forces with the forces of the regime or look at each other, prompting factions opposed to the regime to accuse the Kurds in cooperation with the regime.
In the face of massive military support from Washington, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units have taken control of large areas of northern Syria where Kurds do not constitute a majority.
It seems that the Turkish military operation accelerated the declaration of the international coalition determined to establish a “border force” of about 30 thousand elements, based on the Kurds, spread on the border between Syria, Turkey and Iraq.
In addition to the United States, other countries such as Germany and France, as well as the European Union, expressed concern about Turkish military intervention.
