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Turkey Sends More Tanks to Syria, Demands Kurdish Fighters Withdrawal
The US military operates out of – and in cooperation with – Turkey, but is also backing Turkey’s bitter enemy, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Washington and European allies were against such a move by Turkey, fearing should Turkey enter Syria, it might be very hard to pull it back. Biden threatened to cut off supplies to the Kurds if they didn’t fall back. Rather than aid the Kurdish-Arab alliance, Turkey backed a rival Sunni rebel group to take over Jarablus.
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It started out as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, but now it’s a free-for-all. A Turkish official said he had no immediate comment on the reported clashes. The Kurds have been driving westward over the past year and a half, and earlier this month captured the town of Manbij, a key IS supply hub west of the Euphrates River. Manjib is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Jarablus.
Skirmishes broke out between Turkish-backed Syrian rebels and the USA -backed Kurdish fighters, raising the potential for an all-out confrontation between the two American allies that would also jeopardize the fight against the Islamic State group in the volatile area. Could it be, as most Western commentators believe, a mask for an assault on Syrian Kurds?
Some of the Syrian Democratic Forces remained in the region to remove roadside bombs, US officials added. The U.S. says its 300 servicemen are performing an advisory role.
But they also aimed to block the advance of Syria’s US-backed Kurdish militia.
The PYD share control of the northeastern city of Qamishli with government forces.
The Turkish deployment prompted an angry response from the Syrian government, which condemned the presence of Turkish troops as a “blatant violation” of Syrian sovereignty.
The Kurdish YPG and its allies are fighting them. The PYD has denied the allegations, insisting it is fighting for democratic self-rule.
The operation is in line with the country’s right to self-defense borne out of worldwide treaties and a mandate given to Turkey’s armed forces by the Turkish parliament in 2014, which was extended for another year in September 2015.
Syria’s civil war is not only one of the bloodiest conflicts in the world today, it’s also one of the most complicated.
Both Damascus and Ankara are deeply opposed to the Kurdish proposal, and may have even found some rare common ground over it.
He told Press TV on Wednesday night that all sides were playing a “double game” in Syria, except Iran and Russian Federation which are there at the invitation of the Syrian government.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said, “We are determined to clear Daesh [the Islamic State] from the border”, according to Reuters. But while IS was the main target, the operation was widely seen as an escalation against the Kurds, who are dug in just to the south, in Manbij. US Vice President Joe Biden, who visited Turkey on Wednesday, reiterated Washington’s demands that Kurdish militia do not move west of the Euphrates following recent advances.
It wouldn’t be the first time. The YPG militia has successfully recaptured swathes of land from ISIS but Ankara is wary of the group seeking to carve out its own de-facto state on Turkey’s southern border.
Other analysts expressed worries that Ankara could be playing its long-declared goal of establishing a safe-zone in northern Syria to protect against the ambitious Kurdish fighters.
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The Iranian-supported Hezbollah militia is backing Assad, while the USA is backing the YPG.