Turkish tanks and 'Free Syrian Army' allies attack Kurds

Times:
Turkish troops with thousands of allied fighters from the Free Syrian Army launched a long-awaited ground offensive against the Kurdish-controlled region of Afrin yesterday, sending in tanks and shelling what had been the last city in Syria to not be bombed.

Both Turkish and Kurdish sources reported the start of what Ankara is calling Operation Olive Branch, which it says is necessary to clear its border of “terrorists” and to liberate the self-governing region from its “repressive” rulers. However, the assault was criticised around the world. The United States and Russia urged restraint on President Erdogan of Turkey while a group of western academics, supportive of the left-wing Kurdish movement that runs Afrin, published an open letter of condemnation.

The two sides gave differing accounts of the outcome of the early skirmishes. Turkey’s allies, former brigades of the Free Syrian Army, said they had captured four villages and strategic hilltops in the north and west of the region. Turkish media showed columns of tanks on the move.

The YPG, the Syrian Kurdish militia that runs Afrin and is affiliated with the PKK, a guerrilla movement based in Turkey, denied that its lines had been breached. “There were attempts to penetrate the front lines but our forces have repelled them,” Mustafa Bali, the YPG spokesman, said.

In a sign of the convoluted politics of the battle, Mr Bali was previously spokesman in Raqqa for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the YPG-led coalition fighting Islamic State and supported by the United States, Turkey’s Nato ally. The US has described the SDF as “our best allies on the ground in the fight against Isis”.

Mr Bali said the YPG had destroyed two Turkish tanks, adding that six civilians and three fighters had been killed in the fighting and the Turkish aerial bombardment that preceded it on Saturday. “Fierce clashes are taking place,” he said. The Afrin offensive is yet another twist in Syria’s ever more complex seven-year war. Ankara, which has been fighting a vicious war against a PKK insurgency in southeastern Turkey for more than three decades, says it cannot allow the group’s Syrian affiliate to establish what is effectively an autonomous state along the border.
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There is much more.

The area where about 2,000 US troops are located appears to be a no-go zone for the Turks at this point.  Erdogan appears to be acting on his paranoia about the Kurds.  He is an ethnic and religious bigot who easily ranks as the worst ally in NATO.  Since a coup attempt, he has gotten even more paranoid and has jailed thousands of ethnic Turks too. 

If the attacks persist, the US should supply the Kurds with anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft weapons.  Erdogan's paranoia may be making the case for an independent Kurdistan.  The Kurds were a much better ally against ISIS than Turkey.

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