After a pre-dawn barrage of heavy artillery and air strikes, Turkey sent tanks and special forces into Syria on Wednesday to help clear a border town of Daesh militants, marking the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member’s most significant military involvement so far in the Syria conflict.
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Then around 20 Turkish tanks, a team of Turkish special forces, and hundreds of Syrian rebels surged across the border, according to Turkish media and Syrian opposition activists. A Reuters reporter at the border witnessed intense bombardments, with palls of black smoke rising around the town.
Ankara views the YPG as an extension of Kurdish militants fighting an insurgency on its own soil, putting it at odds with Washington, which sees the group as its key ally in the fight against the Islamic State group.
It is not known if Mr Biden discussed with Turkish leaders the request to extradite US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, who Turkey has blamed for encouraging last month’s coup attempt.
But the US -backed Syrians in Jarablus, unlike the SDF, have undergone extensive vetting by American officials and received training from USA military personnel in Turkey as part of the earlier effort, which sought to create an anti-Islamic State force from scratch.
But for Turkey, it also pre-empts any attempt by Syrian Kurdish militia, who play a critical part of the USA -backed campaign against Islamic State, to take Jarablus.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the operation aims to curb the threats of the terrorist groups, targeting the IS and the Kurdish fighters, who are deemed by Turkey as terrorists.
“No (Kurdish) corridor. Period”.
“In the Turkish case, the Turkish fears are all about the Kurdish making of their state that stretches from the city of Qamishli in the countryside of Haskah all the way to reach areas under their control in the northern province of Aleppo, and Jarablus lies in the middle of their way, so capturing it will connect all of their areas together, something Turkey wouldn’t want”.
The offensive, dubbed “Euphrates Shield”, is Turkey’s first major military operation since a failed July 15 coup shook confidence in its ability to step up the fight against Islamic State. He said the operation was in response to a string of attacks in Turkey, including an IS suicide bombing at a wedding party near the border which killed 54 people.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry condemned Turkey’s actions as a violation of its sovereignty. Russia, which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said it was deeply anxious by the escalation of tension after Turkey’s move. The United States provided aerial surveillance for the operations and stationed Special Operations forces on the Turkish side of the border.
The operation – named “Euphrates Shield” – began at around 4:00am (local time) on Wednesday with Turkish artillery pounding dozens of IS targets around Jarabulus.
Turkey’s NTV television said that Daesh militants had shown little resistance to the advancing forces.
Saleh Muslim, co-president of the PYD, tweeted after the military operation was confirmed that “Turkey is in Syrian quagmire, will be defeated as Daesh (will be)”.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Kurdish fighters must return east of the river or Turkey would “do what is necessary”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition activist group that monitors the civil war, said Syrian rebels who were amassed at the Turkish border crossed into Syria, preceded by Turkish tanks and mine sweepers. When an initial group returned to Syria that fall, they were attacked by rival forces, and some turned over weapons to al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
Turkey had vowed on Monday to “completely cleanse” Islamic State militants from its border region after the Gaziantep bombing.
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Jennifer Cafarella, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, said Turkey is trying to “block the ultimate creation of a contiguous zone of territorial control under the authority of the PYD”, using the acronym for the Democratic Union Party, the YPG’s political arm. At least 10 mortar shells from Jarablus landed in and around Karkamis in recent days, forcing many residents to flee.
