Turkey is making serious moves into Syria now, as it has just trained and graduated a large ‘police force’ and is deploying them into Jarablus. According to Jenna Moussa on Twitter, they are chanting “Long Live Turkey” as well as “Long Live Erdogan”. You’ll also hear them say ‘Allahu Akbar’ quite a number of times as well.
Türkiye'de eğitim gören Suriyeli polis güçleri, Fırat Kalkanı Harekatı ile kurtulan bölgelerde görev yapacak. pic.twitter.com/lX7kITEegG
— Yeni Şafak (@yenisafak) January 22, 2017
Abdullah Bozkurt, who writes for the Turkish Minute, says they are Syrian refugees and that Erdogan plans to train at least 5,000 of them and turn them into his Turkish police force in Syria:
#Turkey plans to train 5,000 Syrians as police to deploy them in regions it controls in #Syria. Candidates are drawn from refugees.
— Abdullah Bozkurt (@abdbozkurt) January 23, 2017
They even have a logo with the Turkish word ‘POLIS’ at the top:
#Turkification of #Syria
logo of the new police in Jarabulus trained by #Turkey. Notice turkish transl. of police in big letters at the top pic.twitter.com/xfU9wyjK2G— RK (@Rez_741) January 23, 2017
And one more:
Police Force trained by #Turkey (Approx 500 of them) to replace #FSA in #Jarabulus , #FSA will be moved to Al-Bab front .#Syria https://t.co/eAFQWCEWIb
— volkan erguven (@volkanerguven) January 21, 2017
Let’s be honest here. This isn’t really a police force, it’s is a Turkish military force that is being used to occupy and hold Syrian territories that Erdogan now controls.
If Erdogan indeed plans to deploy 5,000 of these ‘police forces’, then it sounds like Turkey is moving toward a takeover of Syria at some point in the future. And after years of a civil war in Syria, I don’t think we’ll see Assad fighting Erdogan over these territories, at least for now. If Assad did, then Erdogan would have the excuse he needs to invade Syria further and go to war with Assad.