Turkey begins ground offensive against Syria Kurds following US withdrawal

Robert Edwards

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkey launched an offensive against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria on Wednesday evening. Civilians have been forced to flee as Turkish airstrikes and artillery rain down on towns and villages close to the Syria-Turkey border.

The international community has condemned the move. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will hold an emergency session at 14.00 (GMT) on Thursday in response to the Turkish attack on Kurdish forces  in northeast Syria.  

Airstrikes and shelling began at 4pm local time on Wednesday before the ground offensive got underway around 10.30pm, according to Turkish state media. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the start of his long-threatened military offensive against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria, nicknamed Operation Peace Spring. 

“The Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Syrian National Army, just launched #OperationPeaceSpring against PKK/YPG and Daesh terrorists in northern Syria,” Erdogan tweeted.

The Turkish president stressed the operation is designed to target the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and would not undermine efforts to defeat remnants of the Islamic State (ISIS), also known as Daesh. 

“Our mission is to prevent the creation of a terror corridor across our southern border, and to bring peace to the area,” Erdogan added. 

Turkey views the YPG, which forms the backbone of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The PKK has fought a decades-long guerrilla war with the Turkish state for greater cultural and political rights for Kurds in Turkey.

According to Rudaw’s reporter in Qamishlo, Turkish artillery is pounding the village of Se Grka east of the Kurdish-held city. Amuda has also come under bombardment.

“We are fleeing the Turkish bombardment. What else shall we do?” one resident of Ras al-Ain told Rudaw, calling on the international community to help.

“We have no place to go.”


AFP's correspondent at the scene and the YPG affiliated ANHA news agency said explosions have been heard in the border area of Ras al-Ain. “Turkish warplanes have started to carry out airstrikes on civilian areas. There is a huge panic among people of the region,” SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said in a tweet. 

The SDF said two civilians have been killed and two more injured by Turkish airstrikes on the village of Misharrafa, west of Ras al-Ain.

Four more were wounded in Tirbespiye (al-Qahtaniyah), east of Qamishli, Bali tweeted, and an Assyrian man killed in Qamishlo. 

“Ground attack by Turkish forces has been repelled by SDF fighters” in the Tal Abyad region, SDF spokesman Bali said on Twitter around 11.30pm local time.  

 


The Kurdish-led force said Turkish airstrikes had reached 50 kilometers into its territory from the Turkish border and that 16 SDF positions had been targeted. 

Bali said Kobane is also now coming under heavy shelling.

According to Syrian Civil War Map, which tracks the conflict, the SDF has retaliated by shelling Turkish-backed Syrian proxies in Jarabulus and the Turkish town Karkamis.

In a statement, the Turkish Defense Ministry said the operation began at 16:00 local time in order to “ensure the security of borders, prevent the establishment of a terror corridor in the south of our borders, neutralize the terrorist organizations and terrorists that threaten our national security, especially Daesh, PKK/KCK/PYD-YPG, and to provide appropriate conditions for the return of displaced Syrians to their homes and land”.

The ministry said in a tweet it had “informed” the US, Russia, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, NATO, and the UN about the operation in advance. Damascus was informed via a note delivered to its consulate in Istanbul, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, according to Anadolu. 



'Stab in the back' 

US President Donald Trump greenlighted the Turkish offensive on Sunday night when he announced the withdrawal of US troops stationed in the border area between Syria and Turkey.

The autonomous Kurdish administration saw the US presence as a guarantee against Turkish attack. The SDF’s top commander Mazloum Kobani Abdi called the move a “stab in the back”. 

Defending his decision in a series of tweets on Wednesday morning (Washington time), Trump said fighting had been “going on for hundreds of years” between different groups in the region and that the “USA should never have been in Middle East”.

“Turkey MUST take over captured ISIS fighters that Europe refused to have returned. The stupid endless wars, for us, are ending!” Trump said.


“GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY!” he added in bold caps. 

Trump issued a new statement on Wednesday afternoon (Washington time) insisting the administration does not support the Turkish offensive and pledging to hold Turkey to account if it commits human rights violations or fails to contain the ISIS threat. 

“This morning, Turkey, a NATO member, invaded Syria. The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea. There are no American soldiers in the area,” Trump said in a statement seen by Rudaw. 

“From the first day I entered the political arena, I made it clear that I did not want to fight these endless, senseless wars—especially those that don’t benefit the United States.”

“Turkey has committed to protecting civilians, protecting religious minorities, including Christians, and ensuring no humanitarian crisis takes place—and we will hold them to this commitment.”

“In addition, Turkey is now responsible for ensuring all ISIS fighters being held captive remain in prison and that ISIS does not reconstitute in any way, shape, or form. We expect Turkey to abide by all of its commitments, and we continue to monitor the situation closely,” Trump added. 



Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from northeast Syria, told his Twitter followers to “pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump Administration”. 

“This move ensures the reemergence of ISIS,” Graham warned, vowing to lead the effort in Congress “to make Erdogan pay a heavy price”.

“I urge President Trump to change course while there is still time by going back to the safe zone concept that was working,” he added.

Graham said he and Democrat Chris Van Hollen will introduce legislation designed to impose far-reaching sanctions on NATO ally Turkey.

The sanctions would freeze all US assets of Turkey's political leadership and impose sanctions on entities that do business with Turkey's military or with oil and gas companies that service its armed forces, AFP reports. 


“While the Administration refuses to act against Turkey, I expect strong bipartisan support,” Graham said on Twitter.

Mass displacement 

The new offensive raises the prospect of further mass displacement in a region already battered by Syria’s eight-year civil war and the battle to defeat ISIS.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said the offensive could “immediately displace at least 300,000 people and disrupt lifesaving humanitarian services”. 


“The IRC is deeply concerned about the lives and livelihoods of the 2 million civilians in northeastern Syria, who have already survived ISIS brutality and multiple displacements.”

It urged the international community to “consider the humanitarian consequences” to help “avoid any further unnecessary suffering of a beleaguered civilian population”.

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), which shares a strategic border with the Kurdish-majority region of northern Syria known as Rojava, already hosts roughly 225,000 Syrian Kurds fleeing the civil war, poverty, conscription, and Turkish threats.



The offensive raises serious fears about the fate of Al-Hol, an SDF-controlled camp containing the families of ISIS militants, including hundreds of foreigners. Several makeshift prisons also hold ISIS captives, which the SDF warn could be turned loose amid the chaos. 


Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN secretary-general, told a press conference in New York on Wednesday that the UN supports “peaceful dialogue and “condemns military incursion”. 

Haq urged Turkey to abide by international humanitarian law.

In a statement on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on “all parties to exercise maximum restraint”.

“Civilians and civilian infrastructure need to be protected at all times and that sustained, unimpeded and safe humanitarian access to civilians in need must be guaranteed in order to allow the United Nations and its humanitarian partners to continue to carry out their critical work in northern Syria,” Guterres added.

The UN is also concerned the Turkish offensive could lead to a repeat of the looting, violence, and ethnic cleansing waged against the Kurdish population of Afrin when Turkey and its Syrian Arab proxies launched Operation Olive Branch in January-March 2018. 



Condemnation 

Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission President, has urged Turkey to halt its operation. 

“I call on Turkey as well as on the other actors to act with restraint and to stop operations already, as we are speaking, underway,” told EU lawmakers on Wednesday, according to AP. 
 
“If the Turkish plan involves the creation of a so-called safe zone, don’t expect the European Union to pay for any of it.” 


Germany’s foreign minister is condemning Turkey’s offensive in northern Syria and called on Ankara to end the military action, saying it threatened 

Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, said the operation threatens to create “a further humanitarian catastrophe and further displacement of persons”.

“We condemn the Turkish offensive in the northeast of Syria in the strongest possible terms,” Maas said in a statement Wednesday.


NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, who will meet Turkish leaders in Istanbul on Friday, told a press conference in Rome on Wednesday “it is important to avoid actions that may further destabilize the region, escalate tensions and cause more human suffering”.

He urged Turkey to act with “restraint” and for any action to be “proportionate”, AP reports. 


Iraqi President Barham Salih called the Turkish offensive “a grave escalation” that will “cause untold humanitarian suffering [and] empower terrorist groups”. 

This is a developing story…