The fuse may be lit on a major new crisis in war-torn Syria, as Turkish forces and their local allies push deeper into Syrian territory and threaten Manbij, a city where U.S. troops are deployed.
The Turkish government continued its crackdown on criticism of “Operation Olive Branch,” Turkey’s invasion of Syria to attack Kurdish positions, by arresting 474 people for “promoting” the Kurdistan Workers’ Party of Turkey (PKK) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) of Syria.
Contents: Israel’s F-16 warplane shot down in aftermath of downing Iranian drone; Turkish helicopter shot down in Afrin, days after Russian warplane downed in Idlib; With defeat of ISIS, war escalates, and Syria becomes more fragmented and chaotic
Saturday morning’s violent clashes along the Israeli-Syria border between Israel on the one hand and Iran and Syrian regime forces on the other occurred against the backdrop of multiplying acts of war and violence between a seemingly endless roster of combatants.
U.S. Lt. Gen. Paul E. Funk assured reporters on a visit to Manbij, Syria, that American forces would not leave the northern city even if Turkish forces attack it. Asked about concerns that Turkey would come into direct conflict with U.S. troops, Funk said, “it’s not in my job description to worry, my job is to fight.”
The U.S.-led coalition and its Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies repelled an attack by troops loyal to the Russian and Iranian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad, killing more than 100 of the Syrian government fighters in Deir ez-Zor province.
A former British soldier who travelled to Syria to fight against Islamic State terrorists has been charged with terror offences.
Syrian Kurds have demanded the Turkish government be held responsible for a video surfacing showing Turkish-allied Free Syrian Army (FSA) combatants mutilating the body of a female Kurdish anti-jihadist fighter, stepping on her breasts, and taking selfies with her.
Turkey’s “Operation Olive Branch” military incursion into Syria has been conducted in concert with the Free Syrian Army, which has helped Turkish forces take control of several villages in the Afrin region.
WASHINGTON, DC — Russia urged Syrian Kurds to “hand over” the Afrin region to Moscow-backed dictator Bashar al-Assad “one day” before the ongoing Turkish assault on the territory, confirmed an official of the self-declared autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Syria.
The Middle Eastern outlet Kurdistan 24 interviewed Kurdish civilians in Afrin, northern Syria, who had taken to hiding in local caves from what the outlet called “heavy bombardment” of civilian areas by the Turkish military.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs revealed on Tuesday that an estimated 15,000 civilians have fled Afrin, northern Syria, after the Turkish government launched an invasion of that city against the U.S.-allied Kurdish forces there.
President Donald Trump emphasized the importance of eradicating the Islamic State from the face of the earth during his first State of the Union address Tuesday night, taking credit for the group losing nearly 100 percent of its territory in Iraq and Syria.
Contents: Russia’s Syria peace talks in Sochi dissolve into farce as Lavrov gets heckled; Russia sidelines the failed United Nations Syria peace process; War continues in full force, with Syria and Turkey killing ‘terrorists’
Ismail Kahraman, Speaker for Turkey’s National Assembly, described his country’s military incursion against the Syrian Kurds as a “jihad” over the weekend. Meanwhile, the Turkish government’s crackdown on criticism of the operation continued with over 300 new arrests.
U.S. Central Command chief General Joseph Votel confirmed on Sunday that America has no intention of withdrawing from Manbij, northern Syria, despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowing an invasion of the city following an attack on Afrin, to Manbij’s west.
BEIRUT — Syria’s antiquities department and a war monitor on Sunday said a 3,000-year-old temple has been damaged in Turkish air strikes on a Kurdish militia in the country’s north.
A Pentagon spokesperson deemed “Operation Olive Branch,” Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria to combat the U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish militia there, a “distraction” but ultimately “not a crisis” between the two NATO member countries in comments Thursday.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that his forces are prepared to push all the way across Syria to the Iraqi border in their campaign against Syrian Kurdish forces, fueling fears that Turkey’s incursion will trigger a new refugee wave, and could end in a confrontation with the U.S. military.
A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), an U.S.-allied militia currently under attack by the Turkish military, claimed on Friday that the group’s fighters had successfully thwarted all attacks against them in “Operation Olive Branch.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Sunday speech on the Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces in Afrin, Syria has gotten plenty of international attention, but a curiously underreported passage found the Islamist president railing against the Kurds as “collaborators in a postmodern crusade that our region is exposed to.”
Turkish government sources told the newspaper Hurriyet on Thursday that the White House readout of a call between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan “does not accurately reflect” the conversation and that its contents were “not true.”
Turkey is a sovereign nation and the U.S. isn’t going to get into an argument with it. But apparently, Washington isn’t going to stop Ankara from falling off a cliff, either.
Turkey’s military General Staff claimed on Tuesday that its “Operation Olive Branch,” an invasion of Afrin in northern Syria, killed “at least 260” Kurdish and Islamic State terrorists. The United States and its Syrian Kurdish allies have both denied there being a significant ISIS presence in that area.
Turkish media have confirmed that Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Paris on Tuesday as U.S. envoys arrive in Ankara to discuss the “struggle against terrorism,” a salient topic as Turkey continues its military invasion of Syrian Kurdish territories on its border.
Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria called for a mass military mobilization on Monday as the Turkish incursion into Afrin continued, with artillery strikes expanding to other nearby cities.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Sunday afternoon the beginning of a major military offensive, bizarrely dubbed “Operation Olive Branch,” against America’s battlefield allies in Syria, the Kurdish YPG militia.
An official with Iraq’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) told reporters this week that the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga may deploy to Syria to fight the Turkish military if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists on “Operation Olive Branch,” the Turkish name for that nation’s invasion of Syria.
Contents: Turkey begins its air and ground invasion of Syria’s Afrin; China lies about ‘indisputable sovereignty’ in new confrontation in South China Sea; Summary of major Generational Dynamics predictions
Turkish ground troops entered Syria on Sunday to push an offensive against Kurdish militia as rocket fire hit a border town in apparent retaliation.
Contents: Turkey’s troops mass on border, preparing to invade northern Syria; Collapse of the Russian ‘peace process’; The growing conflagration in northwest Syria
Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli affirmed that the Turkish military would cross into Syrian territory and attack U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in that country on Friday, a move that may trigger direct clashes between Turkey and the Bashar al-Assad regime.
The pro-government Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak reported on Thursday that Syrian Kurdish fighters and Turkish soldiers traded “harassment” and “artillery fire” on the border of the two countries, a sign that the two sides may resort to openly attacking each other as tensions soar in the region.
International humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders reports that over six weeks after its official liberation, the former Islamic State capital of Raqqa in Syria is still littered with booby traps, land mines, and discarded munitions. Forty-nine patients with blast injuries have been treated at the group’s clinic in Raqqa in just the past ten days.
U.S.-allied fighters in Syria have begun the arduous work of documenting the devastation in Raqqa, the former Islamic State “capital” that the jihadist group has left in near-total destruction.
Contents: Turkey announces major military operation in Syria’s Idlib province; Turkey’s success in Idlib is far from certain
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday denounced the indictments in the United States of 19 people, among them 15 Turkish security officials, calling them “scandalous.”
Contents: Turkey threatens the Kurds in Afrin, Syria, with Operation Euphrates Sword; Turkey’s assault on Afrin may jeopardize the battle in Raqqa
The U.S. Central Command reported on Wednesday that units of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have penetrated the Rafiqah Wall in Raqqa, a landmark barrier surrounding the Islamic State’s most heavily defended positions in the city that once served as the capital of their terror state.
The Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) have warned that consistent threats from Turkey, which claims to also be fighting the Islamic State in Syria, “have reached the level of a declaration of war,” threatening to derail the ISIS fight just as the YPG have surrounded its “capital,” Raqqa.
