Many dream of living in an independent Kurdistan some day – a prospect that displeases the governments of all four states.
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The men will be deployed to the northern Syrian towns of Kobani, Tal Abyad and Suluk along the border with Turkey, Ahmed said.
Jan Gildemeister, director of the Action Group Service for Peace NGO, said stopping Germany’s Turkish military exports was an “urgent necessity” in light of recent geo-political developments. “As a country that has suffered from terrorism, Azerbaijan strongly condemns all forms and manifestations of terrorism and supports the efforts of the global community in its fight against terrorism”.
The United States has been urging Ankara to show restraint after the Turkish military hit Kurdish militias that had aided the US -led fight against the Islamic State (IS) extremist group.
The U.N. says the displaced fled from areas near the border but are still inside the enclave. Thus far Ankara has not produced any evidence of this. This is the historical perspective that has pushed Turkey to attack the YPG.
At one level, it boils down to necessity. Together they have captured huge tracts of territory from IS fighters.
This deal will likely involve some kind of a de-escalation agreement between the Syrian regime and Turkish-backed rebels in the Idlib area, which in turn will free up Arab fighters to battle the Kurds. That claim can not be independently verified and CNN has no indication there are ISIS fighters in the area Turkey is targeting.
The announcement followed a Turkish cross-border military intervention Saturday on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. Now it appears that Turkey’s leaders – as they see the Syrian regime consolidate control on Aleppo and move in towards Idlib, and as the Syrian Kurds get comfortable east of the Euphrates river with American backing – want to define their terms.Exactly what those are remain unclear, but Turkey is getting part of what it wants already.
Ankara has said the operation would be swift, but a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signalled an open-ended cross-border campaign, saying it would end only when some 3.5 million Syrian refugees now living in Turkey could safely return home “and the separatist terror organisation has been cleansed from the region”.
How is the world responding? On Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said “we are not afraid of anyone on this, we are determined”. The war against Turkish Kurds continues in south-eastern Turkey, with curfews in Kurdish towns and with Kurdish political parties effectively banned. Manbij is much larger than the city of Afrin that has been directly assaulted by the Turks and their Syrian proxies, and unlike Afrin, it has several thousand USA military personnel deployed within it.
The “Afrin Operation” adds a picture to the new strategic scene in Syria.
The US government and the National Security Council are “concerned about the situation”, said a second senior administration official. The U.S., following its NATO partner Turkey, had declared the PKK as a terrorist organisation.
The U.S. relies on Turkey in a number of areas.
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US leaders from President Donald Trump on down have appealed for restraint, but appear to have little influence over their North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally Turkey when it comes to its fight against the Kurds.
