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Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring: Concerns over ethnic cleansing and Syria’s territorial integrity

SHAFAQNA | By Leila Yazdani : Turkey has threatened for years to attack Kurdish forces in Syria, but the operation appears to have been set into motion just days ago, when Donald Trump unexpectedly gave Turkey the green light to launch an offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces .

Erdogan’s promised Turkish military operation in northeast Syria has begun, as confirmed by regional media and video footage. On Monday night Turkish fighter jets commenced bombing the Semelka Border Crossing in far northeast Syria on the border with Iraq. Turkish jets destroyed YPG/PKK targets 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) deep east of the Euphrates River in northern Syria as part of Operation Peace Spring, aa reported.

BNL Breaking News tweeted: “Reports of Turkish airstrikes on the Kurdish-controlled Semelka border crossing between Syria and Iraq, comes just hours after US withdraws troops from Syria and ‘allowed Turkish invasion'”. Moreover, Russian state media outlet Sputnik tweeted that Turkish Air Forces struck a Kurdish base in Hasakah, Syria.

Turkey’s Defense Ministry said that Turkish Security Forces will never tolerate the creation of a terror corridor at our borders.

The White House said on Sunday that President Trump had given his endorsement for a Turkish military operation. The decision, apparently taken without consultation with, or knowledge of, US diplomats dealing with Syria, or the UK and France, the US’s main international partners in the country.

Trump had spoken with Turkish President by phone and then issued a statement saying Ankara would go ahead with a “long-planned” operation in northern Syria , dothaneagle reported.

The move marks a major shift in US foreign policy and effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack US-backed Kurdish forces, cnn told.

Trump said that it was too costly to keep supporting US-allied Kurdish-led forces in the region fighting the ISIS and, it is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory.

Fears of chaos in refugee camps and Kurdish-controlled prisons packed with battle-hardened jihadists were sparked as President Trump’s surprise decision to allow Turkey to take control in northern Syria threatened to destabilise the area.

But Trump’s move was seen by critics as an abandonment of Kurdish forces which had been the key ally in the fight against the Islamic State group.

Graham, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, described the move as “a disaster in the making” that would be “a stain on America’s honour for abandoning the Kurds”. Republican Senator Mitt Romney called the withdrawal ‘a betrayal’ that facilitates a jihadist resurgence. Trump’s former UN envoy Nikki Haley, also criticised the withdrawal, according  to twnews.

Joshua Landis, a Syrian analyst from the University of Oklahoma, said “The trouble is Trump knows very little about the long history between the Kurds and Turkey”.

The area inhabited by Kurdish people straddles Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia and the area currently controlled by the Kurds crosses over Iraq and Syria. Turkey fears an independent Kurdish state would threaten its security. Turkey considers the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is waging an insurgency within Turkey.

The US and Turkey came to an agreement in August to create a “safe zone” in northern Syria. Ankara says the planned safe zone could allow up to 2 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey to return. Although international observers say such a move would amount to demographic engineering. Turkish presidency spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said on Monday that Turkey has “no interest in occupation or changing demographics.”

The EU and the UN warned of a repeat of ethnic cleansing last seen during the Bosnian civil war at Srebrenica, when Bosnian Serb troops slaughtered 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, in a phone call that Tehran is opposed to Turkey’s operation in Syria.

“Zarif voiced opposition to military action” and “urged respect for Syria’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty”.

Zarif told Cavusoglu the Adana agreement was “the best approach for Syria and Turkey and for addressing their concerns”. Ankara and Damascus signed the agreement in 1998 to ease tensions after Turkey threatened Syria with military action if it did not expel Turkish-Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan from its soil. Moreover, Russia said Syria’s territorial integrity must be preserved, hours after the US announcement.

For Ankara, this is not the first operation of its kind telegraph told. It has previously launched two cross-border offensives against ISIS in 2016 and the YPG in 2018, with the support of Syrian rebels.

A top Kurdish official says the Kurdish forces controlling northern Syria may open talks with Damascus and Russia, after the United States announced it was withdrawing troops from the area in the wake of Ankara’s looming military operation against Kurdish militants from the People’s Protection Units, presstv reported. A senior Syrian government official, in return, said Damascus is ready to welcome Syria’s Kurds back into the fold after Washington left them to face Turkish military threats alone.

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