US officials suspect Turkey plotting Syria invasion
Turkey looks prepared to invade Syria to fight US-allied Kurdish groups in the northeast of the country that it considers terrorists, just days after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad
The Wall Street Journal reported on December 16th that senior US officials had told them that Turkey and its allied milita are building up forces along the border with Syria.
The force include militia and Turkish commandos and artillery stationed near Kobani, a Kurdish-majority city, and one of the officials warned a cross-border operation by Turkey could be imminent.
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This would be Tukey’s fourth operation against such groups in Syria, following operations Euphrates shield, olive branch and peace spring beginning in 2016, 2018 and 2019 respectively, and the build-up appears similar to Turkish military moves before that 2019 invasion.
The group Turkey is targeting, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, is a coalition of armed groups which includes the YPG. Turkey says the YPG is the Syrian wing of the PKK, a Kurdish group in Turkey designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US and the EU.
SDF official Ilham Ahmed told president-elect Donald Trump on December 16th that a Turkish military operation appeared likely, urging him to press Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to try and convince him not to invade.
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The goal of Turkey is to “establish de facto control over our land before you take office, forcing you to engage with them as rulers of our territory,” Ahmed wrote to Trump in a letter viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“If Turkey proceeds with its invasion, the consequences will be catastrophic…. from across the border, we can already see Turkish forces amassing, and our civilians live under the constant fear of imminent death and destruction,” Ahmed wrote to Trump.
Trump described the ousting of Assad as an ‘unfriendly takeover’ by Turkey in a press conference this week.
In 2019, at the start of Turkey’s ‘operation peace spring’ in northern Syria, Trump partially withdrew US forces out of the region, prompting some criticism and allegations that he had greenlit an offensive by Turkey.
US-brokered ceasefire talks between the SDF and Turkish-backed groups in Kobani collapsed on December 16th without an agreement, according to a spokesperson from the SDF, and they say the group is now seeing seeing “significant military buildups” east and west of the city.
The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera, The Guardian
