With Turkey having captured the Afrin District over the weekend, President Erdogan is even more bellicose about the ongoing invasion of Syrian Kurdistan on Monday. He is even suggesting the offensive could grow more than ever expected.
Erdogan is now saying that the offensive is going to span the entire Turkish border with Kurdish territory. This includes not just Manbij, the long-expected next target, from further east towns like Kobane and Qmishili as well.
These are both potentially huge targets, with Kobane having risen to fame during intense fighting with ISIS as a key Kurdish territory. Qmishili is the reputed site of a US airbase as well, which means it’s another location where, like Manbij, a Turkish invasion puts them in line to fight US forces.
Erdogan went on to declare “one night we could suddenly enter Sinjar.” That’s an ever more extreme declaration, because Sinjar isn’t in Syria in the first place. Rather, Sinjar is a Yazidi town in Iraq’s Nineveh Province, and while Yazidis are ethnic Kurds, a sudden Turkish invasion of Iraq would be a very strange way indeed to escalate fighting with the Syrian Kurds.