Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has delivered three key messages on the Turkish government’s Syria policy on the eve of meetings set to take place in the Russian city of Sochi between the Syrian regime and opposition groups on Jan. 29 and 30.
The balance of power in the Syrian theater ahead of the Sochi talks on Jan. 29-30 has started to take a new shape following attacks on Russia’s Hmeimim air base in Syria on Jan. 5.
In the White House readout on Jan. 24, there was an important sentence regarding United States President Donald Trump’s telephone call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkish presidential sources have not denied that sentence.
It is beyond any doubt that the U.S. military and administration knew that the People’s Protection Units (YPG), their pick as ground partner against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), had organic ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Washington officially recognizes as a terrorist group.
Soon after U.S. State Secretary Rex Tillerson said on Jan. 22 that Turkey should put a time constraint on its military operation in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asked whether the U.S. had put any time limit on its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Operation Olive Branch in Afrin will end when all terrorist elements in the region are cleared,” he added.
The Turkish military on Jan. 22 completed the third day of its operation into the northwestern Syrian region of Afrin, held by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The operation was launched due to the security threat that the YPG’s control of Afrin was deemed to pose on the Turkish border to the people of the region.
Around the middle of a press briefing by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli, who was sitting to his left, passed a note to him. Yıldırım read this note to the journalists present at the meeting: Ground troops had started to enter Syrian soil from two points as of 11:05 (08:05 GMT) on Jan. 21, almost 10 minutes before, to start the land phase of a military operation by the Turkish Armed Forces.
Surprising many opponents of the campaign, still active Syrian air defense and air forces did not intercept the Turkish military operation on the Afrin region, which officially started at 5 p.m. (14:00 GMT) on Jan. 20.
Two NATO allies, the U.S. and Turkey, which fought together during the Cold War against the Soviet Union, are now seemingly on a collision course, with heavy Russian involvement, because of a Syrian town held by a group that Ankara deems a terrorist organization.
