UN says tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting
Heavy fighting in northeastern Syria continued for a fifth day on Sunday as the Turkish military incursion made major advances amid reports that the key border town of Ras al Ain had been captured.
The United Nations says that at least 130,000 civilians have fled their homes in areas where the fighting is taking place. Aid agencies are warning of a humanitarian crisis, saying that up to 500,000 additional people are at risk of being forced out of their homes.
A man flees Ras al Ain on October 11 with a half-hidden passenger and apparently whatever else he could load on his motorcycle. (Zhir Qadir)
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group says dozens of relatives of foreign Islamic State fighters escaped from an internment camp as Turkish-backed forces closed in. Kurdish authorities confirmed this but placed the number of escapees at close to 800, saying that Kurdish forces were stretched too thin to be able to guard the camps.
Ankara launched the cross-border military offensive against the YPG militia on Wednesday after US President Donald Trump announced he would order the withdrawal of American troops from the border region. It calls the YPG a terrorist group aligned with the militant Kurdish PKK group inside Turkey.
Ömer Özkizilcik, a Syria expert at the SETA Foundation, a think tank in Ankara, told The Media Line that the Turks had been forced to launch the military operation.
“The aim is to reestablish demographic normalcy in northeastern Syria and to enable the return of Syrian refugees,” he said.
Özkizilcik explained that Turkey has provided refuge to an estimated 3.6 million Syrians displaced by their country’s civil war, something that has placed a heavy economic burden on Ankara. He added, however, that the main reason for the offensive was to “eliminate the terror threat at Turkey’s southern border by preventing the establishment of a PKK Marxist ‘statelet.’”
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President Trump and other US officials have threatened to slap potentially painful economic sanctions on Turkey if the fighting does not stop. However, Onur Erim, president of the Dragoman Strategies think tank in Ankara, told The Media Line that threats of US sanctions were nothing new.
“Turkey has been fighting US sanctions since the Obama administration,” he explained.
On Saturday, the Arab League denounced the Turkish operation. Its secretary-general, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, described it as “a blatant violation of Syria’s sovereignty” that “could allow for the revival” of ISIS.
Turkey is also facing fierce international calls to halt the assault, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is dismissing them, saying Turkey has no intention of stopping. Kurdish officials, meanwhile, have been calling on the international community to intervene.
Erim claimed that Ankara was facing “fake news” and “disinformation” in attempting to explain its position to the world, although with all the public criticism and “undeserved attacks” from the West, there remained a tacit agreement.
“I suspect there is a deep understanding between Turkey, the US and Russia. I believe everything is taking place with the [understanding of the] Astana partners,” he said, referring to Russia and Iran, which, along with Turkey, took part in several rounds of talks in the Kazakh capital that were aimed at creating de-escalation zones in Syria and otherwise ending the civil war.
Many people, though, are blaming the US for the violence, saying that the American military presence in northeastern Syria had been the only thing preventing a Turkish assault.
A Kurdish leader in Qamishli, Syria, who spoke to The Media Line on condition of anonymity, castigated the White House decision to pull the troops away from the border, saying America “stabbed us in the back” and insisting that the Kurds have been Washington’s most loyal ally.
“It was we who defeated ISIS,” the official said. “We worked with the Americans on the promise that they’d protect us.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Kurdish YPG militia were the main allies of the US in the fight against ISIS, losing some 11,000 fighters in the nearly five-year battle. The SDF is now warning that the Turkish offensive will harm the fight against ISIS, which it says could soon be fighting on another front.
The SETA Foundation’s Özkizilcik downplayed talk of an ISIS comeback, arguing that if Turkey waited any longer, the Islamic extremist group “definitely” would have made a resurgence. He said the autonomous Kurdish government in northeastern Syria had been mistreating local Arabs who view its presence as nothing more than an “occupation.”
Iran, which is also heavily involved in Syria by supporting President Bashar al-Assad, has only mildly criticized the Turkish operation, with Tehran being a close trading partner with Ankara.
Mehdi Mahmoudi, an Iranian freelance journalist, told The Media Line that despite some pushback from Iran, Tehran is mostly ambivalent.
“Iran can’t oppose it – although it doesn’t support it,” he said. “Erdogan has described the operation as an anti-terrorist campaign, and Iran has a similar problem at its own borders.”
Ankara has not indicated when it might wrap up its offensive, but Erdogan has repeatedly said it won’t stop until the Kurdish forces withdraw to at least 20 miles from the border.
Özkizilcik surmises that “the first stage [of the fighting] will likely end around the scheduled summit in Washington.” A meeting between Erdogan and President Trump is planned for mid-November, and he feels the outcome of the summit will determine what happens next.
For now, it does not appear that the US is about to do anything.
On Sunday, President Trump tweeted: “The Kurds and Turkey have been fighting for many years. Turkey considers the PKK the worst terrorists of all. Others may want to come in and fight for one side or the other. Let them! We are monitoring the situation closely. Endless Wars!”