Primer: Today as this is posted, the United States has an estimate 900 troops in Syria sharing bases with the Syrian Defense Force located in the Hassekeh and Raqqa provinces.
Erdogan does not seem to care, one NATO member country to another….
Turkey wants full control of key regions in Syria….sounds much like much like the selected oblasts in Ukraine that Russia works to control. Could it be that Iran is out of money and tired of Syria and has moved on to embellish their relationship with Moscow?
Turkey’s impending invasion of northern Syria likely results from “political reasons” rather than a national security need, and it remains unclear how officials will declare “mission success,” experts told Fox News Digital.
“This is a politically motivated military incursion rather than a sort of, you know, tactically sound or, you know, strategically oriented ambition,” Sinan Ciddi, an expert on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. “The timing of this operation will have been much closer to the upcoming Turkish presidential election, so they can reap maximum political benefit out of it.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week ordered a series of airstrikes against Kurdish militias in northern Syria and vowed to order a land invasion of the territory as tensions surrounding border disputes peaked.
The Pentagon urged Turkey to stand down on its plan to invade Syria as U.S. officials warned that the operation could endanger U.S. troops in the country.
A spokesperson for the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., told Fox News Digital that officials have “time and again pointed out threats against our national security, posed by the PKK/YPG terrorist network in Syria and Iraq.”
“We have always called for unequivocal and genuine solidarity in the face of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” the spokesperson said. “Notwithstanding, the terrorist organization continued its attacks, recently targeting innocent civilians in the heart of Istanbul.”
The spokesman pointed to Turkey’s commitment to help fight DAESH – the Arabic name for ISIS – and is “the only NATO ally that has put boots on the ground and fought DAESH chest-to-chest since the outset,” even though U.S. officials have warned that the invasion could lead to the release of detained ISIS members.
Sinam Sherkany Mohamad, the representative of the Syrian Democratic Council mission in the U.S., said that democratic forces – located in northern and eastern Syria – remain prepared for the invasion but “hope it will not happen.”
“We don’t want war, we don’t want to create another conflict zone in the region,” Mohamad said. “We already, as Syria, suffered a lot [in] 12 years from the Syrian crisis, so we don’t want to create another conflict zone or a war in the region that is not in the interest of anyone, neither the United States nor Syrian nor Turkey.”
“We hope that the international community and the main powers, like Russia and the United States, could stop us from [facing] any ground invasion in the coming [days and weeks],” she added.
Mohamad praised the U.S. efforts to pressure Turkey to prevent the invasion from happening, echoing concerns for U.S. troop safety, and she urged U.S. officials to consider sanctions against Turkey should Erdogan authorize the invasion.
“There are many mechanisms that the U.S. administration can do to prevent Turkey from this ground invasion,” she said, stressing that any invasion would result in a “humanitarian catastrophe” with millions of displaced people.
Police carry a dead body of one of six civilians – three women, one teenager girl and two men who were found in Bucha, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Apr. 5, 2022. Ukraine’s president plans to address the U.N.’s most powerful body after even more grisly evidence emerged of civilian massacres in areas that Russian forces recently left. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – A police officer stands next to six unidentified charred bodies lying on the ground at a residential area in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Ukraine’s president plans to address the U.N.’s most powerful body after even more grisly evidence emerged of civilian massacres in areas that Russian forces recently left. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Workers carry the body of people found dead to a cemetery in Bucha, outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Ukraine’s president told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that the Russian military must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes, accusing invading troops of the worst atrocities since World War II. He stressed that Bucha was only one place and there are more with similar horrors. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
