Cyprus-Forum.com

[Tim Drayton]

Rumours of Turkish military intervention in Syria are not new, but there is a report in a newspaper close to Turkey’s ruling party that Turkey will send troops into Syria. Following negotiations with the USA, Syria and Iran, the plan apparently is to send 18,000 soldiers to as far as 28-33 km inside Syrian territory along a 110 km stretch of the border with Syria from Karkamış to Öncüpınar. The aim will be to secure the border, and not all of this force will necessarily enter at the same time but will be stationed close by ready to intervene.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/turk ... ecek_.html

[Tim Drayton]

DAESH is reported to have dug ditches 4 metres deep and 2½ metres wide around all of the villages close to the Turkish border under its control.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/duny ... ziyor.html

[PS - Just trying to assist by passing on a piece of news reported in Turkish, a language that most people here do not read, and, since I have quoted the source, it is not plagiarism.]

[Tim Drayton]

DAESH are digging ditches and laying mines along the border with Turkey in places under their occupation.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/duny ... _yana.html

[Lordo]

About time they brought a bit of peace in that area.

[Tim Drayton]

The main stated aim at the moment is just to secure the border.

[Get Real!]

The aim will be to secure the border,

That's just a lame excuse that nobody’s buying. The real motive is to counter the advancing Kurds in case they join up with those in E.Turkey.

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-advanc ... ase-2015-6
http://www.syriahr.com/en/2015/04/the-k ... -in-syria/
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog ... over-kurds

[Tim Drayton]

Yes, as Rojava consolidates along its border, Turkey perceives this to be a threat.

[Tim Drayton]

According to a Turkish newspaper affiliated with the PKK, officials from self-proclaimed Rojava have said that, while they wish for peaceful relations with Turkey, they will respond to any attack on its territory.

http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/haber/13779 ... l-edilemez

It seems that something new is brewing up. Maybe it will be a storm in a teacup.

[Tim Drayton]

The Daily Telegraph’s assessment of Turkey’s motives (with Erdoğan still acting as dictator despite the recent electoral defeat!):

The buffer zone would kill several birds with one stone. As well has allowing Turkey to establish refugee camps not on its soil but under its protection, it would prevent the two current zones of Kurdish control — from Kobane to the Iraq border in the east, and Afrin in the west — from joining up.

The Turkish establishment is hostile to the YPG, as an offshoot of the PKK guerrilla group which has fought for autonomy in south-eastern Turkey for four decades.

The zone would also allow Turkey more easily to control the flow of weapons and fighters into Syria, something that critics say it has not done well enough, encouraging the rise of Isil.

Changing the rules of engagement would give Turkey a pretext for intervention. The Assad regime has been driven back and has been careful to present no threat that would justify an attack, but Isil is attacking FSA forces supported by Turkey on the border.

“Isil, along with other armed groups that have the potential to jeopardise Turkey’s security, will be included as threats to Turkey in the amended rules and the Turkish armed forces could launch an operation against Isil once it approaches its borders,” the pro-Erdogan Sabah newspaper reported.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... Syria.html

[Tim Drayton]

Tukey’s secularist opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper has published information it says was provided by a senior state official. Here is my translation of part of this article:

The top ranking official who passed on information about Ankara’s latest position in the interests of “providing clarification” as to the debates over “intervention in Syria” stressed that “every kind of measure as needed for Turkey’s national security” would be taken “when the time for it came.”

The official, describing the YPG, in comparison to ISIL, as a “rational player that can be talked to,” said that “channels with the YPG are open and messages are going and coming,” and made the following assessment:

“The relationship between the YPG and Turkey depends on the YPG’s attitude. If the YPG says that the practices of ethnic cleansing and conquest that are said and appear to have been carried out here were just part of the fight against DAESH, in other words ‘We put up our flag because we took down theirs; we have no intention of Kurdifying Tal Abyad,’ there is no issue. But, if they are intent on something like Kurdification, there is an issue. If the fuse of Kurdish-Arab conflict fires up along the Turkish border, this fire will also burn Turkey.”

Looking at the government, the turning point that has led to a marked change in the up-to-now ‘mild’ attitude towards ISIL is also beginning to become apparent: a fresh and potent threat of migration that will be unleashed on Turkey as the result of a potential attack by ISIL, which the Damascus regime has told “we have abandoned north of Aleppo.”

The development that has alarmed Ankara was the holding of a meeting in Hasakah following the fall of Idlib. The date of the meeting was 28 May. Between ISIL and ‘people’ from the Syrian regime. The ‘regime officials’ told ISIL, “If you conduct operations here, we will give you support from the air, too.”

In point of fact, the Damascus regime is known to have given air support to ISIL up until now in other places also. So, this is not a first. However, the region indicated this time is very close to us (close to the Öncüpınar and Cilvegözü border points).

It encompasses a population of four million souls. And so Ankara, calculating that this regime-backed potential ISIL attack will cause a massive and potent wave of migration, is mobilising the other coalition partners. To this end, it is reported that the USA has conducted an air campaign against ISIL. (But, let us note that the take off point was not the İncirlik Base.)

On the other hand, there has not been any artillery fire from Turkey, either, in connection with this development. But, when these circumstances are set out, the word “yet” comes into play.

The officials, recalling that measures had been taken on various planes (military, administrative, legal) with regard to national security on Turkey’s border for a long time, reiterate that every kind of measure will be taken when the time for it comes.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/duny ... yakar.html