With Turkey-backed jihadists having ousted Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is preparing a major offensive in north-eastern Syria, which is controlled by the mostly Kurdish, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Erdogan, whose country is home to a sizeable Kurdish minority, regards the SDF as allies or an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated as a terrorist organization for its armed resistance to Turkish rule.
“We will show that the time has come to neutralize the terrorist organizations present in Syria. We will do this to prevent any further threats coming from the south of our borders,” Erdogan has vowed, warning: “The end of the road for the terrorist organizations is near. There is no room for terrorists in the future of the region. The shelf life of the PKK terrorist organization and its extensions has run out.”
U.S. officials have observed a build-up of Turkish and Turkish-backed militia forces at the Syrian border and are pressing for “restraint,” while Kurdish officials have written to President-elect Donald J. Trump warning of a “catastrophic” Turkish invasion before he can take office.
GEOPOLITICS.
Turkey has been occupying two so-called “buffer zones” in northern Syria for years, directing much of its firepower in the region against Kurdish forces rather than the Islamic State and other Sunni jihadist factions. Indeed, the al-Qaeda franchise that has supplanted Assad in the portion of Syria he formerly controlled, Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is effectively sponsored by the Turkish government.
The destruction of Rojava, as the oil-rich Kurdish-controlled territory in Syria is known, would be a significant embarrassment to the U.S., drastically reducing American influence in the country and threatening Europe with another migration wave.
Meanwhile, Russian bases in the country established under Assad have—so far—been allowed to remain in place by HTS.
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