Turkey is never not in the middle of a military operation in northern Syria, targeting Kurdish groups that they have a problem with. The latest reports are that a new round of fighting is coming around Manbij.
Thursday, though, Turkish officials reported that they had carried out a “neutralisation” operation against the Kurdish YPG, saying they’d killed at least 20 of its members.
The incident happened as Turkey sent convoys into the area, and started hammering YPG forces near the border with airstrikes.This was NE of Aleppo.
Nominally Turkish operations are meant to prop-up Turkish-aligned rebels, though in practice their involvement in Syria is more or less entirely determined to limit Kurdish nationalism.
Ditz, in your pro-PKK writings, have you ever considered that Turkey may have a point? Yes, “YPG” in Syria, but all the leaders are PKK leaders from Turkey. They are ethnically cleansing Arab villages. The ones they leave, they impoverish by redirecting power lines and water around them. They burn Syria’s wheat fields as a form of terrorism, so yes, they are terrorists, which you put in mock quotes.
They occupy Syria’s northern water supplies. ISIS eagerly handed over the oil to them when Syria’s military approached, so the Kurds now occupy the oil with Washington’s help.
In Turkey they kill forest workers with explosives. So again, they are terrorists. They kidnap businessmen and force the families to pay ransom. They threaten businesses to pay, and punish them with car bombs if they refuse.
The YPG and PKK force Kurdish children to become child soldiers. They are Marxists who hold lectures about Marx and Mao, which they also made sure American soldiers stationed among them have to attend.
When the U.S., Iraq, Iran-trained militias and Syrians took back Mosul, the Kurds opened their part of the line to let ISIS escape into Syria. They repeatedly allowed ISIS to cross through their territory to attack the Syrian military. They were on al-Qaeda’s side in Aleppo, and only switched sides when Russia turned the tide.
The media won’t tell the stories about what those soldiers witnessed. One has noted how the Kurds would constantly steal from them. A Kurd would walk up to an American to grab a pair of sunglasses or a scarf or whatever he wanted, say “comrade?” and quickly snatch it away. How they must laugh at the Americans who are forced to serve them.
They disarmed the Christian Yazidis, then left them in the dead of night without telling them that ISIS was approaching. ISIS came and killed the men and old women, and enslaved and raped the young women. Then the Kurds moved back in to take the land. Washington’s allies. No different from when they helped the Turks way back in slaughtering the Christian Armenians, taking their homes and all their belongings, and keeping the young women and girls as sex slaves. This was when they stopped being nomads. Since then they’ve repeatedly demanded that any land where they settle belongs to them.
Why wouldn’t Turkey fight against PKK/YPG? Why wouldn’t Syria? They draw up maps with one third of Syria as their territory, named “Kurdistan”. They want to be the second Israel in the region, closely allied with Washington to fight its targets from the territory they take and cleanse. Unlike Iran and Syria, the Marxist Kurds are perfectly fine with seeing the Palestinians lose their land, and never say a word about that.
Unfortunately, Erdogan is too blinded with his “Islamist/Ottoman” feelings to realize that Syria should be his ally against the same Kurds–not his enemy. He continues to steal land from Syria and support Islamist terrorists, which weakens Syria and helps the Kurds. He is the reincarnation of Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Russia is in a catch-22–too pre-occupied and needs the Bosphorus Strait. It’s a terrible situation for all the people in the area, including the Kurds themselves. The Kurds’ leadership will pay for their sins one day.