The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Turkey steps up attacks on Kurdish fighters in Syria
Push complicates allies’ battle against Islamic State.
BEIRUT — Turkey escalated its offensive Thursday against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, pounding them with airstrikes and artillery and complicating the battle against the Islamic State group by Ankara and Washington, both NATO allies.
In the fight for Aleppo, meanwhile, the Syrian military used a lull in violence to urge residents and rebels to evacuate the besieged opposition-held part of the city.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said as many as 200 members of the Kurdish-led forces were killed in Syria’s Aleppo province by the Turkish bombing and shelling.
A senior commander with the main Syria Kurdish militia confirmed the Turkish attack on his forces but disputed the casualty toll, saying that no more than 10 fighters were killed.
As in Iraq, where Kurdish fighters are at the forefront of the offensive to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State group, Kurdish forces in Syria also have been battling Islamic State and made significant territorial gains. That has dismayed Turkey, which is dealing with a homegrown Kurdish insurgency and trying to prevent an expansion of Kurdish influence in neighboring Syria.
Kurdish commander Mahmoud Barkhadan of the People’s Protection Units accused Turkey of aiding the Islamic State by turning the fight into a Turkish-Kurdish battle.
“We are fighting Daesh. Why are they striking at us?” he asked, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
Turkish artillery also hit near Afrin, a Kurdish enclave in northwestern Syria, he said, adding that his forces have not retreated but that Turkey’s actions allowed Islamic State fighters to wage a counteroffensive.
A U.S. defense official in Washington said the Syrian Kurdish fighters targeted by Turkish airstrikes Wednesday are not among the Kurdish groups that U.S. forces are advising and assisting, so there were no U.S. troops with them when they came under attack.
The official said, however, that since the Kurds who were targeted are affiliated with U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, the Turkish attacks were problematic and have angered the U.S.-backed Kurds. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
In August, Turkey sent troops and tanks into northern Syria to help opposition forces drive the Islamic State away from Turkish-Syrian border areas and to curb the Syrian Kurdish forces’ territorial expansion.
Ilham Ahmed, a senior Syrian Kurdish official, said the Turkish attack was an aggression on her people’s aspiration for self-administration in a contiguous territory in the north as well as a threat to the U.S-led anti-terrorism fight there.
The Turkish moves threatens a possible campaign against Islamic State in the group’s de-facto capital of Raqqa in eastern Syria, Ahmed said. Kurdish forces are the main partner in such a fight, but Ankara has said it is ready to act without Kurdish participation.
Ahmed said Turkey is taking advantage of U.S. attention being focused on its presidential election to push back against the Kurds and advance in northern Syria.
Washington is “asked to put a stop and take a clear and direct position regarding this Turkish aggression. Otherwise, the project of combatting terrorism may be delayed or totally fail in Syria,” she said, speaking from Sulaimaniyah, Iraq.