Turkey will ‘lay siege’ to Afrin in the days ahead

PRESIDENT Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday said Turkish forces would soon besiege the town of Afrin as a cross-border offensive targeting a Kurdish militia enters its second month.

On January 20, Ankara launched an air and ground operation supporting Syrian rebels against the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the Afrin region of northern Syria.

Turkey views the YPG as a Syrian offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.

“In the coming days, swiftly, we will lay siege to the centre of the town of Afrin,” Erdogan told parliament.While some analysts say Turkey and pro-Ankara Syrian rebels have made slow advances, Erdogan defended the operation’s progress, saying it was to avoid putting the lives of both its troops and civilians needlessly “at risk”.

“We did not go there to burn it down,” he said, insisting the operation’s aim was to “create a safe and livable area” for Syrian refugees inside Turkey, who fled across the border after the conflict began in 2011 and who now number more than 3 million.

The Turkish army says 32 of its troops have been killed in the process.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, Syrian rebels and Turkish forces have taken 35 villages since the start of the operation, most of them bordering Afrin.

And Turkish security expert Abdullah Agar said troops involved in operation “Olive Branch” had captured around 300 square kilometres (120 square miles) of territory.

Over the past month, 238 Olive Branch fighters – among them both Turkish soldiers and Syrian rebels – have been killed, along with 197 YPG fighters and 94 civilians, Observatory figures show.

On the ground, Turkish fighting was now focused around the area of Arab Wiran in northeast Afrin, the Observatory said.

If captured, pro-Ankara forces would control 50 continuous kilometres of Afrin’s northern border with Turkey.

The operation is likely to be further complicated reports by the Syrian state news agency SANA that pro-government forces were due to enter Afrin to counter the Turkish offensive.

But, in what appeared to be a thinly-veiled threat to Damascus, Erdogan yesterday warned Turkey would brook no interference from outside forces.

“We will block the way of those who come to help from outside the city or the region,” he said.