Al Jazeera :
For months now Turkey’s leadership has promised to carry out a new military operation against Kurdish forces in northern Syria. But Ankara has found itself having to tiptoe around the presence of US and Russian forces there, confronting a Gordian knot that is likely to dampen its ambitions and delay any large scale offensive, analysts say.
“An operation is inevitable, but the timing will depend on diplomacy, rather than the military aspects in the area,” Omer Ozkizilcik, a researcher at the Ankara-based Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, told Al Jazeera.
Any Turkish action in the area, Ozkizilcik says, would likely draw a reaction from Russia, the United States, or both, who have a military presence in the areas Ankara would like to take from Kurdish forces. Northern Syria is now a patchwork of sometimes overlapping military presences, and three Turkish incursions into the area have only further complicated what was already a well-choreographed dance that balanced Russian and American forces with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ISIL (ISIS), and Kurdish autonomous regions.
Turkey entered Syria in 2016 with thousands of troops and fighters from the Free Syrian Army, backed by armed drones and artillery, pushing out ISIL and Kurdish forces from the border town of Azaz to Jarablus in the east, on the bank of Euphrates River.
“The attacks show the YPG has adopted a strategy of disrupting areas of the Syrian Interim Government, and to crease chaos and disorder there,” Ozkizilcik said. “For long Turkey has argued the YPG is a terror organisation because of its links to the PKK, but these car bombs also show the actions of the YPG itself prove it is a terror organisation, and thus a legitimate target for a Turkish military operation.”
In 2018, Turkey and Turkish-backed Syrian fighters launched another operation, this time against Kurdish positions west of Azaz, taking control of the district of Afrin.
