The Real Target of Turkey’s Syrian Operation Is the Kurds, Not ISIS
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The Kurdish takeover in Manbij and their stated intention to further encroach on ISIS territory raised the stakes for Ankara, which understood that if it doesn’t act now it may find a new Kurdish entity on its border.
“We will cleanse the area of all the terrorists,” declared Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on the eve of the Turkish invasion of Syrian territory near the city of Jarablus. But the Turkish definition of terrorists does not relates solely to Islamic State operatives or Al-Qaida; it also includes, perhaps primarily, the Kurdish rebels in Syrian territory that are considered a threat to Turkey.
Herein lies the paradox of the Turkish military operation. Ostensibly it is a reprisal operation for the mortar fire from Syrian territory early this week and the suicide attack that killed 54 people at a wedding in Gaziantep, only a few dozen kilometers from the battle site. But the Islamic State had committed large attacks before without drawing a Turkish invasion of Syria. The main reason for the incursion was to launch a military plan that had already been drawn up to prevent the Kurds from creating territorial contiguity for themselves.
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