Turkey insists it won’t stay in Afrin
Turkey on Monday insisted pro-Ankara forces did not plan to remain in Afrin as occupiers after they ousted Kurdish militia from the northern Syrian city.
Syrian rebels backed by the Turkish army on Sunday drove the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) out of their former stronghold of Afrin near the Turkish frontier. But Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag, the government’s top spokesman, said there was no plan to remain in the city, even as officials warned the offensive could expand eastwards.
“We are not staying permanently in Afrin. We are not an occupier at all,” Bozdag told reporters in televised comments in Istanbul.
Turkey sees YPG as a Syrian offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, whose insurgency has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984. Most of Afrin’s 350,000 residents have fled since Turkey and the allied Syrian rebels launched an offensive.
ASSAD FILMS HIMSELF DRIVING TO GHOUTA
President Bashar al-Assad flaunted government advances in Syria’s seven-year war by filming himself driving to meet frontline soldiers near Damascus, making a video of the journey from the city centre into areas recently recaptured.
“The road is open... everything is running now in the city and in Syria,” he said in the video, describing a road that had previously been cut by sniper fire and saying it was now easier to travel around the country. The video, released overnight after a trip on Sunday, showed Assad in sunglasses at the wheel of his Honda car, speaking about the government’s increasing strength.
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