Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Friday that Turkey’s military needs to invade the Afrin District of Syria and “cleanse” the region of Kurdish forces, which he labeled the “YPG terrorist organization.”
Turkey has long talked up its forces in Syria carrying out strikes against the YPG, and they’ve traded artillery fire along the Afrin District border repeatedly during the course of Turkey’s offensive against ISIS.
With no ISIS forces to fight anymore, the oft-threatened fight against the Kurdish forces seems like a likely next step in Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria. This is a fight that US officials have long warned against.
But Erdogan is just saying how “disappointed” he is in the US for supporting the YPG, and with the US publicly saying ISIS is defeated in Syria, they can no longer warn Turkey that such a fight will interfere with the ISIS conflict.
There are Kurdish terrorists who kill a lot of people in Turkey, who have done that for a long time.
There are a lot of Kurds who are not terrorists attacking Turkey, who have no interest in terrorizing Turkey.
“The Kurds” are not all one thing, nor even just five of six things. There are lots of groups.
This could be solved, but it requires moving past posturing and simplification.