Turkish artillery targets Syrian Kurdish group in Aleppo
Turkey fired artillery over the border into the Aleppo province in northern Syria on Saturday. They targeted areas which the Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) recently, with Russian air support, advanced into.
Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned the YPG, in a clear reference to Turkey's ongoing bombing campaign against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), that, "We can if necessary take the same measures in Syria as we took in Iraq and Qandil."
AFP cited a source in the YPG which said the areas shelled by the Turks include the former Syrian airbase of Menagh. Which had been under the control of an opposition-group since August 2013 but was seized by the YPG in their advance eastward of the Kurdish canton of Afrin this week.
Turkey has long opposed the YPG advancing in northwestern Syria. That 60-mile stretch of border, the so-called Jarablus-Azaz line, is one of the few parts of the Syrian border not closed off to other groups (many of them Islamists) coming into Syria from Turkey by the Kurds. Turkey has long declared a YPG entry into that area to be its "red-line" in Syria.
Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned the YPG, in a clear reference to Turkey's ongoing bombing campaign against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), that, "We can if necessary take the same measures in Syria as we took in Iraq and Qandil."
AFP cited a source in the YPG which said the areas shelled by the Turks include the former Syrian airbase of Menagh. Which had been under the control of an opposition-group since August 2013 but was seized by the YPG in their advance eastward of the Kurdish canton of Afrin this week.
Turkey has long opposed the YPG advancing in northwestern Syria. That 60-mile stretch of border, the so-called Jarablus-Azaz line, is one of the few parts of the Syrian border not closed off to other groups (many of them Islamists) coming into Syria from Turkey by the Kurds. Turkey has long declared a YPG entry into that area to be its "red-line" in Syria.