The Turkish president repeated these points while announcing another military operation into Syria.
Erdogan: Turkey will ‘cleanse’ Syrian towns of terrorists
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week announced « a new phase » of military operations to create a 19-mile « safe zone » into Syria « to cleanse Tal Rifaat and Manbij of terrorists. »
And he may not stop there, adding that « we will do the same to other regions step by step. »
Syrian Kurdish groups aligned with the United States, which Turkey considers terrorists, operate in both towns.
« Though the president has mentioned Ankara’s plans to form a safe zone alongside the Syrian border before, this is the first time he has explicitly included Manbij and Tal Rifaat in Turkey’s new operation and openly stated Ankara’s intention to expand to other regions », writes Nazlan Ertan. « The Turkish president is putting an old plan back on the table amid what he considers more favorable conditions with the war in Ukraine and Turkey’s veto power over the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO. »
So far, the US-led coalition has seen little troop movement on the Turkish side that would indicate an imminent incursion, two sources briefed on the matter told Jared Szuba for Al-Monitor’s Security Briefing newsletter. There is still speculation that Turkey may be holding off until after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visits Turkey on June 8, and likely won’t launch an operation, if it eventually decides to do so, until after the NATO summit on June 28. NATO bids by Sweden, Finland linked to changes on Kurds
Although the Biden administration may be seeking to keep down the temperature in its response to Erdogan’s hard line, the Turkish president is not letting up on his position. To the contrary. Speaking to Justice and Development Party leaders on June 1, Erdogan dug in his opposition to NATO bids by Sweden and Finland until they « act accordingly » with respect to Turkey’s concerns. He said that on the same day the Swedish and Finnish delegations were in Turkey for negotiations, « the Swedish state TV aired an interview with Salih Muslim [co-chairman of the Syrian Democratic Union, PYD]. What kind of sincerity is that? Those, who play with letters and try to conceal and legitimize the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] by changing its name into PYD, YPG [People’s Protection Units] or other acronyms are fooling themselves, not us.
