QAMISHLI, Syria: Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Wednesday to order a land invasion of northern Syria targeting Kurdish groups, amid yearslong border violence and repeated Turkish incursions.
Turkiye has launched a barrage of airstrikes on suspected militant targets in northern Syria and Iraq in recent days, in retaliation for a deadly Nov. 13 bombing in Istanbul that Ankara blames on the Kurdish groups. The groups have denied involvement in the bombing, and say Turkish strikes have killed civilians and threatened the fight against Daesh.
Ankara’s allies, particularly Russia, have attempted to avert a ground incursion, but Erdogan said Wednesday in a speech to his ruling party’s legislators in Ankara that the air operations are “just the beginning” and that Turkiye is determined to “close down all of our southern borders ... with a security strip that will prevent the possibility of attacks on our country.”
Turkiye has carried out a series of incursions into Syria since 2016 and already controls parts of northern Syria. Erdogan said the new military offensive, planned to take place “at the most convenient time for us” would target the regions of Tel Rifaat, Manbij and Kobani, which is also known by its Arabic name Ayn Al Arab.
“The day is near when those concrete tunnels which the terrorists use for safety will become their graves,” he said.
The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria, meanwhile, said his group is prepared to repel a ground invasion by Turkiye.
SDF head Mazloum Abdi told the The Associated Press that his group has been preparing for another such attack since Turkiye launched a ground offensive in the area in 2019 and “we believe that we have reached a level where we can foil any new attack. At least the Turks will not be able to occupy more of our areas and there will be a great battle.”
He added, “If Turkiye attacks any region, the war will spread to all regions ... and everyone will be hurt by that.”
Following the weekend’s airstrikes, Turkish officials said that suspected Kurdish militants fired rockets Monday across the Syrian border into Turkiye, killing at least two people and wounding 10 others. Abdi denied that SDF had struck inside Turkish territory.
Russian presidential envoy in Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said that Turkiye should “show a certain restraint” in order to prevent an escalation in Syria and expressed hope that “it will be possible to convince our Turkish partners to refrain from excessive use of force on Syrian territory.”
Mazloum called on Moscow and Damascus, as well as on the US-led coalition fighting against Daesh in Syria, with which allied with Kurdish fighters in the area, to take a stronger stance to prevent a Turkish ground invasion, warning that such an action could harm attempts to combat a resurgence of IS.
“We can say that our work against IS with the international coalition has stopped, because we are preoccupied with the Turkish attacks,” he said. “Our coordination and work with the Russians on the ground has also been affected by the Turkish attacks.”
Late Wednesday, Turkish airstrikes also hit near the Al-Hol camp in Hassakeh province where tens of thousands of wives, widows, and children of Daesh militants are held. SDF forces and a camp official said the strikes appeared to target security forces in charge of keeping the crime-ridden camp secure.
Sheikhmous Ahmad, a Kurdish official overseeing camps for displaced people in northeast Syria, said that some detainees tried to escape.
“The security forces currently have Al-Hol camp under control, but that could change if these attacks continued and the detainees could disperse in the area,” Ahmad told the AP. “This would also threaten international security, not just our own.”
A US Central Command spokesperson said that one of the Turkish strikes on Tuesday had hit within 300 meters of US personnel, adding, “These strikes continue to put US forces at risk.” He declined to say where the site that had been struck was.
The Pentagon said on Wednesday that the Turkish air strikes in northern Syria threatened the safety of US military personnel and the escalating situation jeopardized years of progress against Daesh militants.
The public comments represent the strongest condemnation by the United States of NATO-ally Turkiye’s air operations in recent days against a Kurdish militia in northern Syria to date.
“Recent air strikes in Syria directly threatened the safety of US personnel who are working in Syria with local partners to defeat Daesh and maintain custody of more than ten thousand Daesh detainees,” the Pentagon’s spokesman, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, said in a statement, referring to another acronym for Daesh.
Ryder said the escalating situation threatened the progress made in the fight against Daesh militants in the region.
He added that the United States recognizes Turkiye’s “legitimate security concerns.”
The United States has roughly 900 soldiers in Syria, mainly in the northeast of the country, who work with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is led by Kurdish fighters from the YPG, to fight against Daesh remnants.
Baghdad said Wednesday it planned to redeploy federal guards along its border with Iran and Turkiye, after repeated bombardments from both neighboring countries against opposition groups in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.
The announcement appeared to respond in particular to Iran, which had publicly urged such a move.
Authorities have decided to “establish a plan to redeploy Iraqi border guards... along the border with Iran and Turkiye,” a statement said, issued after a government security meeting overseen by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani.
The initiative will be “in coordination with the government of the Kurdistan region and the peshmerga ministry,” the statement added, referring to the Kurdish regional forces whose chief was also present at the meeting.
Iraqi Kurdistan’s borders are currently guarded by the peshmerga, who however work in the area under the direction of the federal defense ministry in Baghdad.
The Turkish airstrikes, which have killed a number of Syrian army soldiers operating in the same area as the SDF forces, have also threatened to upset a nascent rapprochement between Damascus and Ankara. The two have been on opposing sides in Syria’s civil war but in recent months have launched low-level talks.
Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said that the events unfolding “will probably culminate in a Turkish incursion into Syria,” but perhaps not immediately.
“I think Ankara is aligning the two stars required for an incursion into Syria, the stars being the American star and the Russian star,” Cagaptay said, noting that Washington and its allies need Turkiye’s support to give NATO membership to Finland and Sweden, while Russia is angling for a deal between Ankara and Damascus that could “wrap up the war” in Syria.
(With AP, AFP and Reuters)