HERE WE GO: Pro-Assad fighters have entered Afrin to fight Turkey… [UPDATE: Fighting has BEGUN]

According to the AP, Syrian state TV now shows pro-Assad fighters entering the city of Afrin to fight against Turkey, who has been trying to decimate the Kurds there since the end of January:

Pro-government Syrian fighters have started entering the northern Kurdish enclave of Afrin where Turkish troops have been on the offensive for a month.

Syrian state TV showed about 20 vehicles with heavy machineguns mounted on them entering Afrin from the nearby village of Nubul.

Scores of gunmen were on the vehicles waving Syrian flags and chanting pro-government slogans.

There was no immediate comment about the deployment from Kurdish officials.

Tuesday’s deployment came a day after Turkey warned the Syrian government against entering the Kurdish-controlled enclave where a major Turkish military offensive is underway, saying it would hit back at the troops if their goal is to protect the Kurdish fighters.

The deployment came hours after Turkish media reported that Turkish troops and allied Syrian opposition forces have linked a swathe of land in the Afrin enclave to the Turkish-held Syrian city of Azaz.

This is interesting because a few weeks ago, when Assad threatened to shoot down Turkish planes that flew into Syria, Turkey ran to Russia to complain and Assad never followed through with his threat.

Now that Assad is sending militias to fight Turkey, will Turkey once again turn to Russia for help? Or has Russia already given Assad his blessing? And what does this mean for relations between Russia, Turkey and Iran, who are planning a summit on Syria in April?

It’s also worth pointing out that before these forces arrived, Erdogan just said this morning that Afrin will be besieged soon, meaning he’s almost done there:

The city center of Afrin in northwestern Syria will be encircled in the upcoming days, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, as Operation Olive Branch has recently extended into its second month.

Addressing the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) weekly parliamentary group meeting as its chairman, Erdoğan said that even though it seems as though the operation is moving slowly, the city will be besieged in the upcoming days.

“It might seem like it moves slowly but we did not go there to annihilate everything that comes our way. We have gone in to turn it into a livable and secure area. … It takes time for some preparations to be made. The encircling of central Afrin will take place in the upcoming days,” Erdoğan said.

These pro-Assad militias aren’t going to make Erdogan very happy, as they will surely slow down his progress in Afrin. I wonder if he’ll bomb these militias from the air or if he’ll fight them on the ground. Surely, if he bombs them from the air, Assad will finally move to shoot down his planes?

This could give Erdogan the excuse he needs to finish take Assad out. I ran across this article from 2016 where Erdogan actually admits he entered Syria for the sole purpose to take out Assad:

“Why did we enter? We do not have an eye on Syrian soil. The issue is to provide lands to their real owners. That is to say we are there for the establishment of justice. We entered there to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror. [We didn’t enter] for any other reason,” the president said.

This was just a few months after his initial incursion into Syria in August of 2016, when he been operation Euphrates Shield.

Now, well over a year later, Assad is finally taking on Turkey, even though it’s not a direct confrontation yet considering that he’s using militias instead of his true army.

And I suspect this will get a lot messier in the coming weeks…

 
UPDATE: The fighting has begun:

A spokesman for the main Syrian Kurdish militia says government forces have started entering the northern enclave of Afrin to deploy along the border with Turkey and help defend it against advancing Turkish troops.

Tuesday’s comments by Nouri Mahmoud, spokesman for the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, came nearly an hour after pro-government Syrian fighters began entering the Afrin region from the nearby government-held village of Nubul.

Shortly after the fighters entered, Turkish troops started shelling the area forcing journalists to flee according to Syrian state TV.

He said the YPG had invited the government to enter the region to participate in defending Afrin and the border against Turkey’s “unjust invasion.”

Mahmoud added in a statement that the Syrian government sent some fighters starting Tuesday.