Turkey invades Northern Syria and attacks US abandoned Kurdish allies: Civilians flee N.Syrian border towns attacked by Turkish warplanes, and artillery offensive

Reuters reports that Turkey launched a military operation against Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria today Wednesday 10/9/2019  just days after U.S. troops pulled back from the area, with warplanes and artillery striking militia positions in several towns in the border region.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, announcing the start of the action, said the aim was to eliminate what he called a “terror corridor” on Turkey’s southern border, but European countries immediately called on Ankara to halt the operation.

Thousands of people fled the Syrian town of Ras al Ain towards Hasaka province, held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The Turkish air strikes had killed two civilians and wounded two others, the SDF said.

Turkey’s lira slid 0.5%, breakingthrough what traders called a key support level of 5.85 against the dollar to its weakest level since August.

World powers fear the action could open a new chapter in Syria’s eight-year-old war and worsen regional turmoil. Ankara has said it intends to create a “safe zone” in order to return millions of refugees to Syrian soil.

"It is certainly going to be a bloody conflict," Kurdish political analyst Mutlu Civroglu said from Washington, D.C., noting that while the SDF is led by Syrian Kurds, it includes a wide range of ethnic groups. "The Arabs, the Syrian Christians, Yazidis, they are in no way going to accept a Turkish military presence in their region."

EU-Digest

NATO: The U.S. and Turkey: Past the Point of No Return? - by Svantee Cornell

.US.-Turkish relations have deteriorated for some time. But until recently, no one would have thought that the American and Turkish militaries, closely allied since the 1950s, could end up confronting each other directly. Yet in northern Syria today, that is no longer unthinkable.

In mid-January, to forestall U.S. intentions to build a “Border Security Force” composed mainly of Syrian Kurdish fighters, Turkey launched a military operation in the Kurdish-controlled Afrin enclave in northwestern Syria. On January 24, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed his determination to move beyond Afrin into other parts of northern Syria, mentioning specifically the town of Manbij, where U.S. forces are deployed alongside Kurdish YPG troops. Turkish officials warned the United States to sever its ties to the Kurdish forces, which Turkey considers a terrorist group. This led President Donald Trump to tell Erdoğan to “avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces.”

The collision course Ankara and Washington are on is making any notion of a Turkish-American alliance increasingly hollow. If a point of no return is to be avoided, both sides will have to rethink their priorities, and begin to build trust. That process can begin with an honest appraisal of how we got to this point, with America and Turkey on the verge of coming to blows.

In the United States, much of the blame has naturally been laid at the feet of Erdoğan, the headstrong and authoritarian Turkish President. To American eyes, it is easy to see how Erdoğan’s growing intolerance of dissent goes hand in hand with an increasingly adventurist foreign policy that directly challenges American interests. Yet while Erdogan is part of the problem, its full scope goes far beyond a single individual. The real story of the past several years is how the Syrian and Kurdish issues have interacted with Turkish domestic politics to pull Ankara and Washington apart.

Read more: The U.S. and Turkey: Past the Point of No Return? - The American Interest

Syria - Turkish Invasion: Turkey and Russia run rings around Trump - by Jennifer Rubin

While the United States has been absorbed with a government shutdown and a debate about President Trump’s mental stability, Turkey — a NATO partner — has invaded Syria and is attacking our Kurdish allies, who have assisted greatly in the war against the Islamic State.

The Associated Press reports: Turkey’s air and ground offensive against Kurds in northwestern Syria has distracted from international efforts to finish off the Islamic State group and has disrupted humanitarian relief work, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday.

Mattis raised the matter in an exchange with reporters after unrelated meetings in the Indonesia capital with senior government officials. He made clear that while the U.S. sympathizes with Turkey’s concerns about border security, Washington wants the Turks to minimize their military action inside Syria.

Read more: Turkey and Russia run rings around Trump - The Washington Post

Turkey invades Syria to stop formation of a PKK supported Kurdish state on their borders - with ground forces entering Syria′s Kurdish-held Afrin district

Turkish forces crossed the border into Syria's Afrin district on Sunday, January 21, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has said.

At a news conference in Istanbul, he said Turkey's military aimed to create a security zone some 30 kilometers (18 miles) inside the war-ravaged country.

The state-run Anadolu news agency also reported the arrival of Turkish forces in the enclave as part of an operation codenamed Olive Branch, adding that airstrikes and artillery shelling that targeted the area, which began on Saturday, were continuing.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped the offensive would be completed in "a very short time."

Read more: Turkey′s ground forces enter Syria′s Kurdish-held Afrin: State media | News | DW | 21.01.2018

Ukraine: With Military Moves Seen in Ukraine, Obama Warns Russia - by D. M. Herzenhorn, M. Lander and A. Smale

Ukraine’s fragile new government accused Russia of trying to provoke a military conflict by invading the Crimea region on Friday, while in Washington President Obama issued a stern warning to the Kremlin about respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty, in an effort to preclude a full-scale military escalation.

American officials did not directly confirm a series of public statements by senior Ukrainian officials, including the acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, that Russian troops were being deployed to Crimea, where Russia has a major naval base, in violation of the two countries’ agreements there.

Mr. Obama, however, cited “reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine,” and he said, “Any violation of Ukrainian sovereignty would be deeply destabilizing.”

“There will be costs,” Mr. Obama said in a hastily arranged statement from the White House.

The pointed warning came after a day in which military analysts struggled to understand a series of unusual events in Crimea, including a mobilization of armored personnel carriers with Russian markings on the roads of the region’s capital, Simferopol, and a deployment of well-armed masked gunmen at Crimea’s two main airports. 

Note EU-Digest: This situation should be a clear indication to all the member states of the European Union that they should be making haste in coming to an agreement on a European Energy Pact in order to strengthen the arsenal of potential economic sanctions they could muster against Russia in case they are needed.

Read more: With Military Moves Seen in Ukraine, Obama Warns Russia - NYTimes.com