Turkey and its allied militias are reported to be building up their forces near the Syrian border and are expected to launch a major invasion against Kurdish-controlled areas of the country soon.
The Wall Street Journal is the source of the information, citing senior US officials. According to the newspaper’s sources, the forces include militia fighters as well as Turkish commandos and a large number of artillery pieces.
Preparations are taking place near Kobani on Syria’s northern border with Turkey – a town that today has a Kurdish majority, and according to the sources, Washington is currently focusing on trying to persuade the Turkish leadership to hold off on the military operation.
Ilham Ahmed, who works for the Civil Administration of the Syrian Kurds, has also sent a letter to US President-elect Donald Trump, appealing to him to prevent a Turkish attack.
“From across the border, we can already see Turkish forces amassing, and our civilians live under the constant fear of imminent death and destruction“, Mr. Ahmed writes in the letter obtained by the WSJ.
US threatens sanctions
According to the Kurds, Erdoğan’s goal is to “establish de facto control” over the Kurdish territories before Trump takes office in January – and the aim is reportedly to force the US to cooperate with Ankara as the “ruler” of the region.
Already last week, US-backed Kurds in the country said they had been subjected to Turkish artillery and drone attacks, prompting Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to warn the Ankara leadership that the NATO member could face sanctions if it did not cease hostilities.
Since overthrowing the government of Bashar al-Assad, jihadist militants and their allies have also taken control of almost all of western Syria – and are supported in various ways by Turkey itself.
Fight for influence and new territory
In the east and north-east, however, Syria is still controlled by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces – funded in part by the United States. Turkey’s position is that the armed Kurdish groups are considered terrorists.
There are estimated to be between 1.6 and 2.5 million Kurds living in Syria – mainly in autonomous regions in the north of the country. The Kurdistan region, which includes parts of Iraq, Iraq, Syria, Armenia and Turkey, is home to around 35 million Kurds, and Kurdish nationalist groups are striving to establish an independent nation state in the region.
As previously reported by The Nordic Times, the fall of Assad seems to have led to various actors quickly trying to seize territory and strengthen their influence in the region. One clear example is Israel, which recently captured new land beyond the Golan Heights area that it has illegally occupied since 1967 – on the grounds that it wants to prevent potential hostilities and terrorist threats against the Jewish state.
