These include taking control of Kobane, in the hands of the Syrian Kurds. The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, intends to revive the nationalist feeling of the electorate, one year from the presidential election.
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Turkey is about to launch a new military operation in northern Syria. Announced a few days earlier by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the plans for a cross -border incursion were endorsed on Thursday, May 26, by the Security Council, made up of civil and military leaders.
No date has been given but the press release published at the end of the meeting leaves no doubt. “The existing and new operations to be carried out aim to rid our southern borders of the terrorist threat.”
Existing operations are those that the Turkish army currently leads to northern Iraq in order to dislodge the Kurdistan workers’ party (PKK, autonomist, prohibited in Turkey), against which Ankara has been at war for forty year. Those “to lead” will have as the theater the north of Syria. They will aim to hunt the Syrian Kurdish fighters YPG supported by the United States but considered as “terrorists” by Turkey.
President Erdogan said it, “we must finish what has been started”, namely to prolong the “security zone”, thirty kilometers deep, conquered by the Turkish army and its Syrian auxilia Previous interventions (2016, 2018, 2019).
Three incursions in Syria since 2016
It is a question of taking control of the earth band which remains, 458 kilometers long between the region of Afrin, conquered by the Turks in 2018, and the city of Kamisli, in the east, where the ‘Russian army has an air base.
At the heart of this strip of land is the city of Kobané, reconquer of high struggle in 2014 by the Syrian Kurdish fighters YPG after being besieged by the Islamic State (IS) organization. Ten days ago, a Turkish military post had undergone an attack on the mortar launched since Kobane, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry, which had ordered reprisals after the death of a soldier.
By launching his army to assault the territories held by the Syrian Kurdish fighters, Mr. Erdogan hoped for benefits. He intends to rekindle the nationalist feeling of the electorate and at the same time replay his declining popularity about a year of a crucial deadline, the presidential election scheduled for June 2023, which he does not approach in favorite.
Already used for electoral purposes in the past, military operations in northern Syria have been able to strengthen its aura. The Turkish army has led three incursions in northern Syria since 2016, mainly directed against Kurdish combatants of the United States.
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