Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Turkish attack on US-backed Kurds in Syria believed imminent Operation targeting ‘terror nests’ would risk inflaming tensions between Trump administration and Ankara Turkish military trucks carry armoured vehicles towards the Syrian border near Gaziantep on Tuesday. Ankara views the Syrian Kurds as an extension of the Turkish Kurdish PKK, with whom it has fought a four decade insurgency inside its borders. The US-raised force is proposed for north-east Syria, which Ankara is not thought to be targeting for a ground attack. The Turkish fear then, and now, is that the Kurds have ambitions to establish a self-governing canton in north Syria along the entire border. The Syrian Kurds had spearheaded a US-backed campaign to oust Isis from its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, a battle that finished in the autumn.

Source: The Guardian January 16, 2018 18:22 UTC