In Erdogan’s quest to keep the Kurds from establishing their own state in Northern Syria, he’s now invading the Syrian city of Afrin (just north of Aleppo) to drive out the Kurds. However Syria just warned that they will shoot down any Turkish jet that carries out attacks in Syria:
HAARETZ – Syria said on Thursday its air defense would shoot down any Turkish jets that carry out attacks within Syria, a stark warning as tensions soar over apparent preparations by the Turkish military to invade a northern Syrian Kurdish enclave.
From Damascus, Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad said a military incursion into Syria’s Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin would be “no picnic” for Turkey.
Any such operation would be considered an “aggressive act,” Mekdad said.
Turkey regards the Syrian Kurdish militia that controls Afrin and other areas along its frontier as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency within its borders and wants to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish corridor along the frontier.
In Afrin, residents took to the streets to protest Turkey’s threats, according to photos published by the Kurdish news agency Hawar. They waved flags of the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, and also banners of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkey considers a terrorist organization.
Mekdad, the Syrian deputy foreign minister, told reporters in Damascus that Syria’s air force has been restored to its former might after seven years of civil war and was “ready to destroy Turkish air targets in the skies of the Syrian Arab Republic.”
Here is a video of Turkish tanks arriving at the Syrian border in preparation to invade Afrin:
This isn’t the first Syrian city in which Turkey has sent troops to drive out the Kurds. I’ve been reading for the last year how they’ve invaded Al-Bab and other areas in Northern Syria, just across the border. They also plan to invade Idlib as well.
In fact Erdogan is now claiming that it is his right to take control of these areas in Northern Syria because of some ‘National Pact’ that was created back in 1920, before the secular state of Turkey was born:
Erdogan noted…that areas intended to create a “terrorist” ring in Northern Syria are all located within the ‘National Pact’ of Turkey, which the country’s parliament made in 1920 and gives it, as local authorities, the right to participate in the determination of areas outside its geographic boundaries, such as Aleppo and Mosul and Kirkuk and some territories of Greece and Bulgaria.
If Syria starts shooting down Turkish war planes, then we could end up seeing a war between Turkey and Syria, which could finally be the reason Erdogan needs to take out Assad once and for all.