With international attention focused on the war in Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to be in a good geopolitical position to launch a new military operation against the Kurds in northern Syria. Despite US warnings, Erdogan has threatened an offensive on two strategic Syrian towns near Turkey’s southern border.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has once again started threatening a new military operation in northern Syria in a bid to create his much-wanted buffer zone along the Turkey-Syria border.
Erdogan’s plan, which he was forced to shelve last year, has resurfaced in recent weeks as Ankara has calculated that the war in Ukraine has turned the geostrategic tide in Turkey’s favour.
“We are meticulously working on new operations to fill the gaps in our security line on our southern borders,” Erdogan told lawmakers of his AKP party earlier this month. “We will clean up Tel Rifaat and Manbij,” two towns west of the Euphrates River, he said before promising to proceed “step by step” in other regions.
Erdogan’s sights are once again trained at territories controlled by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
Supported and armed by the US military, the YPG formed the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Arab-Kurdish alliance that fought the Islamic State (IS) group in the US-led international coalition against the jihadist group.
Turkey, however, views the YPG and its parent Kurdish political party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as “terrorists”. Ankara claims the YPG and the PYD have links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US and the EU.
Replacing the Kurds with ‘Arab populations’
“Erdogan’s threats against the Kurds should always be taken seriously,” warned Fabrice Balanche, a professor at the University of Lyon-II and research associate at the Washington…
Source : france24
