Turkish jets bomb Kurdish militias in Syria
Erdogan vows to ‘annihilate terror corridor up to Iraqi border’
ISTANBUL — Turkish jets bombed the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin on Saturday as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey vowed to crush Kurdish militant forces across northern Syria to remove what he said was a terrorist threat.
The Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that jets bombed more than 100 targets, including an air base, in the first day of air operations against Kurdish militias. Fighters of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army also crossed the border into the enclave and engaged Kurdish militants, the agency reported.
Erdogan has pressed ahead with the offensive despite warnings from the United States that it would further destabilize war-torn Syria. Syria and Russia expressed milder objections. ‘We do not care’
The Turkish president said “no one can say a word” about the operation.
“Beginning from the west, step by step, we will annihilate the terror corridor up to the Iraqi border,” Erdogan told a local congress of his Justice and Development Party in the city of Kutahya on Saturday.
“No one can say a word,” he went on. “Whatever happens, we do not care anymore at all. Now we only care about what happens on the ground.”
Soon after the president spoke, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced that the offensive had started, at 5 p.m. Saturday. The operation, named “Olive Branch,” aims to eliminate terrorists and establish security along Turkey’s border with Syria and to save “friends and brothers” from the terrorists’ oppression, the ministry said in a statement.
Bekir Bozdag, deputy prime minister of Turkey, said on Twitter that Turkey would respect Syria’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, and would pull out of the region once the target was achieved.
He added that the military campaign was not against the Syrian government or its people but against terrorist organizations. He named the Kurdish YPG and PKK groups, as well as the Islamic State, as the targeted organizations.
“The only target of the operation is the terrorist groups and the terrorists as well as their barracks, shelters, positions, weapons, vehicles and equipment,” he said. “Civilians are never targeted. Every kind of planning has been done to avoid any damage to civilians.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed concern at the assault and called for restraint. The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that it was withdrawing its troops and military police from the enclave to avoid any conflict.
In a later statement Russia blamed the United States for the clashes.
“Provocative actions by the U.S., aimed at isolating regions with predominantly Kurdish population, were the main factors that contributed to the development of a crisis in this part of Syria,” the statement read. Civilians fearful
Yet despite Russian reservations, it appears there was high level communication between Turkey and Russia on the operation. The chief of staff of Turkey’s army, Hulusi Akar, who is commanding the operation, visited Moscow on Thursday with the head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, Hakan Fidan.
And despite its expression of concern, Russia cooperated on deconfliction efforts by allowing Turkish jets into Syrian airspace and by removing its troops form Afrin, Turkish analysts said.
The Turkish army said Saturday evening that 72 fighter jets had returned safely to their bases.
The general command of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the mainly Syrian Kurdish rebel force that has led the U.S.-backed fight against the Islamic State, appealed to Turkey to cease its operation in Afrin, calling it an unjustifiable aggression against the Syrian people that would undermine the fight against the Islamic State.
“If attacked, we will have no choice but to defend ourselves and our people,” the command said in a statement, “but we state in front of the world that we harbor no hostile intent towards Turkey.”
Syrians in the region expressed alarm, as the aerial bombardment hit outlying villages along the Turkish border.
Civilians were fearful and were leaving Afrin and the villages along the border, a resident of Afrin said. He asked that his name be withheld from publication out of concern for his safety.
A lawmaker in Syria’s parliament expressed concern that Turkey was looking to create strife among Syrians by using Arab members of the rebel Free Syrian Army to fight Syrian Kurds.