Turks in Syria clash

Kurds entrench

REYHANLI, Oct 8, (Agencies): Turkish troops on Sunday exchanged fire with Syria-based jihadists as Ankara massed military vehicles on the frontier ahead of an expected incursion to oust al-Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate from Idlib province.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the operation by pro-Ankara Syrian rebel forces backed by the Turkish army, whose launch he announced the day before, was “having no problem” and continuing “in a calm way”.

Most of the northwestern region is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group led by al-Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate, which ousted more moderate rebels in recent months.

Turkey has massed special forces and military hardware including tanks on the border but the operation has yet to begin in earnest, monitors and sources on the ground said.

But Turkish forces fired seven mortars over the border with the aim of easing the passage of the pro-Ankara Syrian forces, the Dogan news agency reported.

Turkish forces have also been seen removing parts of the security wall Ankara has built on the border so that military vehicles can pass through into Syria.

Pro-government media said that the operation was now into its “second day”. Erdogan had said the day earlier Turkish forces were not yet operating in Syria although the allied Syrian forces were.

On Sunday morning, HTS jihadists opened fire on Turkish forces removing part of a wall along the border between Turkey and Idlib, witnesses and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

Turkish armoured vehicles and troops were waiting on the border, from where smoke could be seen from the mortar fire, an AFP photographer said.

Television images showed locals in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli in Hatay province cheering as more armoured vehicles were driven through the town overnight.

Ankara wants to oust the HTS from Idlib in order to create a de-escalation zone into which it can send military monitors to implement a ceasefire.

Turkey, along with Syrian regime allies Russia and Iran, earlier this year agreed a deal to implement four such ceasefire zones in Syria as a prelude to talks on a peace deal.

The zone encompassing Idlib is the last one to go into effect, and its implementation has been held up by fierce opposition from HTS.

On Saturday, the group warned “treacherous factions that stand by the side of the Russian occupier” should only enter the area if they want “their mothers to be bereaved, their children to be orphaned, their wives to be widowed”.

Turkey earlier this year wrapped up its half year Euphrates Shield operation against jihadists and Kurdish militia in Aleppo province that involved both the Turkish army and Syrian rebels.

The Hurriyet daily said the pro-Ankara forces involved in this operation, which Turkey calls the Free Syrian Army (FSA), would be the same as in Euphrates Shield.

“Since summer, Turkey has been reorganising those rebels and pulling them into a new politico-military structure that is supposed to be more cohesive,” said Aron Lund, fellow with The Century Foundation think tank.

Hope

Adnan Hassan, a Syrian Kurd, finally has hope for himself and his people.

Two years ago, Islamic State militants nearly wiped out his hometown, Kobani, along Syria’s border with Turkey and killed 10 members of his family. Now with the militants driven out and going down in defeat, a new university is opening in the town, and Hassan will be its professor for Kurdish language and literature. It is the first university in the self-administered Kurdish areas, and the first in Syria to teach Kurdish.

The future of his people, Syria’s largest ethnic minority long ostracized by the government, could not look better, he said.

“We are living a dream and we are waiting for this dream to come true.”

Across the border, Iraq’s Kurds have sparked a major confrontation with their neighbors and Baghdad by holding a referendum for outright independence. Syria’s Kurds, meanwhile, are making major advances toward their own, less ambitious goal: winning recognition for the self-rule they seized during Syria’s war. They say their aspirations for a federal system in Syria may now find more international and domestic support, and they are positioned as a player Damascus must reckon with in any final resolution of the conflict.

Perhaps more importantly, they have land. Backed by the US in the fight against IS, Kurdish forces control nearly 25 percent of Syria. They hold most of the northern border with Turkey and have expanded into non-Kurdish, Arab-dominated areas. The Americans have set up bases there to provide battlefield support for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, as well as

the training and advising of security forces and the new civilian administrations in liberated areas.

The Kurds have also maintained close ties with Russia and are confident they can fend off Turkey, which is vehemently opposed to a Kurdish entity on its border.

The ruling Kurdish Democratic Union Party, the PYD, heads a de facto self-rule administration in the Kurdish-majority region of northern Syria known as Rojava. As part of their efforts to promote a federal system, they elected new local councils late last month. By early 2018, they hope to elect their first regional parliament, representative of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and Turkmen.

“In Rojava, we have a federal project. In (Iraqi) Kurdistan, it is the long awaited state. The two complement one another in realizing the Kurds’ aspiration for a dignified life,” Hassan said.

It is a remarkable turnaround. Syria’s Kurds were about 10 percent of the pre-war population of 23 million, but Damascus had long suppressed any expression of their identity in the majority Arab nation.