"Turkish Forces Have Reached The Outskirts Of ..." Topic

…The Syrian Town Of Afrin.

"Turkish forces have reached the outskirts of the town of Afrin after a weeks-long campaign against a Kurdish militia in northwest Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitoring group said on Saturday.

Turkey and allied Syrian rebel groups it supports are advancing on the town from the east under intense bombardment, the Britain-based Observatory said.

Ankara launched its offensive in the Afrin region on its border in January, aiming to drive out the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which it sees as an extension of the PKK group that has fought a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey.

During the campaign it has managed to gain control over all the Afrin region's border areas with Turkey, including several small towns and a large number of villages…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Maybe Turkey misses all that ISIS oil almost as much as they hate the Kurds:

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If that's the case, then Turkey won't stop there.

Dan

Agree!

Amicalement
Armand

Turkey won't be leaving those parts of Syria it claims belong to ethnic Turks. Erdogan will say it's for their protection from Kurds or some other boogeymen.

And just wait until Russia gets tired of it, like next time Turkey shoots down a few Russian pilots or if Turkey happens to "accidentally" hit and kill Russian troops on the ground, and then Turkey demands that NATO help them out:

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There are way too many pieces on the ground with overlapping zones in Northern Syria (Assad, Russians, Russian "contractors", Al-Nusra/Al-Qaeda, the numerous "Free Syria" factions, the Kurds, Turkey, Syrian Turks, Iranians, an unknown number of Afghans fighting mostly for Iran, the scattered ISIS fighters, US "advisors", US "contractors", CIA's other little assets, etc, etc) for this not to turn out badly and not end up getting all the big guns fighting each other directly and openly. And in that environment Turkey just keeps pushing the envelope.

Dan

Starting to feel a bit like the Balkans (the devolution of Yugoslavia through the 90s) all over again.