Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria’s Afrin District is turning bloodier this weekend, with one of their tanks destroyed by an anti-tank missile, and at least seven Turkish soldiers, eight by some reports, killed in fighting.
Turkey invaded the Afrin District last month to try to expel the Kurdish YPG from the area. Turkish officials have said the offensive will expand into Manbij, and after that into the rest of Syrian Kurdistan.
This incident could be a major deal, in that the tank was destroyed with an anti-tank missile, and while Turkey’s President Erdogan says it’s “premature” to say where the tank missile came from, it’s no secret the YPG is awash in US-provided arms, and it’s almost certain the YPG would have US-made anti-tank missiles.
That means the lost Turkish tank, and any troops killed in its destruction, would have been killed by a missile provided by the US, a fellow NATO member nation. That’s potentially a major diplomatic problem, and a growing one given that US troops are embedded in Kurdish territory elsewhere in Syria, potentially in the line of fire for Turkey’s invasion.
These wars against largely untrained civilians do not cost invasive militaries heavy casualties, add up all the Turk, NATO forces US and it’s paid mercenary Kurds, ISIL and Al’Q dead, throw bodies on pile and less killed in last 20 years than any one battle of WWII.
7 dead Turks, a tank, and maybe some 150 dead Kurds and arabs, phtttt a spit on ground.
Cheap for US NATO Empire builders.
The infantry component of the Turkish forces is not much trained either. They are using militia proxy forces to do the most dangerous fighting. This is a pattern that can only make worse the losses inevitable in any sort of war.
Turkish army is large and powerful, and they have experience against the Kurds, but they’ve also had serious purges and they’re fighting on difficult terrain against opponents who’ve got american upgrades. I would like to know what their chances are but my intuition says: they’ll get bogged down, it will be easy for other parties (americans, syrians) to make it harder for them, and their opportunity to extract themselves will be when the Kurds agree to transfer authority back to the Syrian state. Not an opinion which carries a lot of weight.
Turkey has made little progress on the Afrin maps maintained by Almasdar and the Wiki. So far they seem focused on surrounding Afrin.
However, His Sultanship did say he was out to destroy some 4000 truckloads and 2000 planeloads of materiale. This changes the observed nature of the conflict from an attempted blitz to a methodical search and destroy of covert military infrastructure.
After which the land would be returned its rightful owners; Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds (yeah, right…). Not the Syrian government, probably due to a longstanding grudge against Assad for allowing Syrian Kurds to covertly back the PKK.
Stopping to search for hidden arms caches and tunnels will naturally slow the Turkish military down and leave them more exposed to counterattack. The long term results mean Afrin and the YPG are decisively kneecapped; they can’t double and sneak back behind Turkish lines to rearm from hidden stockpiles and bases.
Erdogan was in on the arms smuggling into Syria and knows how vital stockpiled arms are to an enduring insurgency.
His Sultanship may be murderously opportunistic but no fool; every weapons cache retroactively destroyed is one less cache that can be used against Turkey in future conflicts with American Kurdistan allied with the PKK.
Casualties happen when fighting wars. That is a major reason not to fight them. But if one chooses to do so anyway, loss of a tank and seven soldiers is not really “news.” It is a first deposit on the vast costs of war.
The near-painless Persian Gulf War re-set US expectations of war and overcame the Vietnam Syndrome. However, it was that Syndrome that was correct, and the unique circumstances of the Persian Gulf War that was misleading.
I expect the Kurds to move their “front line” into Ankara and Istanbul. I’m surprised it hasn’t already happened.
Better the Turks get hit rather than the Russians.. Turkey shares the responsibility for this whole imbroglio.
The US troops should not be there in the first place.
It’s worth pointing out that Turkey has instructed its media to report ‘patriotically’ and not to give the YPG any morale boosting stories. Basically, to lie. Their casualty figures will be much higher than they say, especially amongst the FSA jihadists.