Reprinted from Sputnik
For at least two years, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been pushing to set up "safe zones" in northern Syria. This week, as Turkish tanks, warplanes and special forces commandeered Syrian territory, the Ankara government seems at last to be fulfilling this objective.
Not only that, but the Turkish president managed to get Washington on board, while appearing to circumnavigate any obstacles that Russia or its Syrian ally might have been expected to mount in opposition to such an unprecedented intervention.
US warplanes provided air cover as Ankara-backed Syrian militants took over the border town of Jarablus from Daesh. US Vice President Joe Biden in Ankara on the first day of the assault vowed Washington's full support to Operation Euphrates Shield.
Erdogan said that the operation had a two-prong aim of "cleansing" the border area of Daesh terrorists as well as pushing anti-Daesh Kurdish fighters back east across the Euphrates to their stronghold in northeastern Syria.
The Kurdish militia mainly comprising the People's Protection Units (YPG), also referred to as Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have up to now been supported by Washington. American patronage seemed to be in doubt this week, as Biden issued a stern warning that US support would be terminated if the Kurds did not retreat eastwards.
Russia and the Syrian government in Damascus were not passively watching the unfolding events. The Russian foreign ministry stated that it was "very concerned" by Turkey's military escalation. The Syrian authorities went further and condemned the cross-border deployment was a "flagrant violation of sovereignty."
Russia and Syria have every right to be alarmed. Despite Erdogan's rhetoric claiming that the retaking of Jarablus was "to defeat terrorists" and "to protect the territorial integrity of Syria," the inescapable fact is that Turkish forces with US support have installed their proxy militants in control of a Syrian town and surrounding territory.
Turkey says that it wants to establish a "safe zone" along the Syrian side of the border stretching 100 kilometers and 30 kilometers deep. It is not clear if the Turkish military will stay on Syrian territory to enforce this zone. They might withdraw and designate the task to Ankara-backed Syrian militants comprising the so-called Free Syrian Army and Turkmen fighters.
These militants are supposedly in opposition to Daesh jihadists, but their primary objective is to wage war against the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad and his foreign allies -- Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
The carving out this week of a safe zone around Jarablus by Turkish and American military has to also be coupled with the declaration by the Pentagon last week warning that its warplanes would shoot down any Syrian or Russian aircraft approaching the more easterly town of Hasakah, where US special forces are said to be fielded.
Taken together, this is tantamount to the setting up of two US, Turkish-controlled "safe zones" over the past week. That is a dramatic development in the nearly six-year Syrian conflict, whereby foreign forces are now actively commandeering swathes of Syria's territory without any legal mandate.
One may well ask: how did it come to this? Where Turkish and American military -- both NATO members -- are conducting combat operations on the ground and in the air on Syrian territory. And moreover these foreign forces are assigning what are in effect no-go areas to the Syrian government and its Russian allies.
A Reuters report gives this context to the US-Turkish operation: "A Turkish official said the ground incursion had been in the works for more than two years but had been delayed by US reservations, resistance from some Turkish commanders, and a stand-off with Russia which had made air cover impossible."
The stand-off with Russia refers to the deadly shooting down of a Russian warplane last November by Turkish F-16s over Syrian territory. Due to Moscow's anger over that "stab in the back," as President Putin called it at the time, Turkish warplanes had not dared enter Syrian territory since then.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
2
