No one should be surprised that Turkey is taking preemptive action to thwart the development of an existential security threat along its southern border, and despite the public statements by Russian and Syrian officials, it’s very likely that Ankara did, in fact, coordinate its operation with both of them beforehand, albeit to differing degrees. Turkey…
The US is trying to prevent the fighting in Afrin between Turkish forces and Syrian Kurds spreading east into the main Kurdish enclave in Syria where US troops are based. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to drive the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters not just from Afrin, but from Manbij, a strategic…
The Syrian civil war is far from over, and the participants aren’t shy to apply the quid pro quo principle to the ongoing fighting. In 2016, Turkey was allowed to take control of Syria’s northern Aleppo province and the city of al-Bab in exchange for turning eastern Aleppo over to the troops of Syrian President…
Turkey is hoping for a quick victory in Afrin, but its soldiers and allied Syrian militiamen are facing counter-attacks by Kurdish forces on villages close to the border. The Kurds are reported to be readying reinforcements to join the battle from their bases in north east Syria where they have thousands of troops who until…
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been left flailing as Washington desperately struggles to avoid being shut out of Syria by its own allies – following a crisis it helped provoke just days ago. For all the backpedaling and reframing the US officials are now doing, the chronology of the volte-face from Afrin to…
It has happened. After almost a year of threatening to invade the Kurdish-held Afrin pocket in north-western Syria Erdogan has invaded for real. Attacking forces have already taken a number of villages on the Turkish-Syrian border. In one place they have advanced 5 kilometers into Syria. Turkish military already poured over the Syrian border in…
