ISTANBUL, Turkey —
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday threatened to launch
a ground operation into Syria after cross-border air strikes on Kurdish
positions and deadly fire on Turkey.
اضافة اعلان
“There is no
question that this operation be limited to only an aerial operation,” Erdogan
told reporters on a flight home from Qatar after attending the opening of the
World Cup.
The Turkish
leader has threatened a new military operation into northern Syria since May.
Overnight, Turkey
hit dozens of targets in northern
Syria as well as northern Iraq, a week after
an Istanbul bomb attack killed six people and which Ankara blamed on the
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Kurdish groups
and authorities have denied responsibility for the November 13 bombing, which
also wounded 81 people, and which revived bitter memories of a wave of attacks
in Turkey between 2015 and 2017.
Rocket fire from
Syrian territory on Monday killed at least three people, including a child, in
Turkey’s border town of Karkamis, said Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu.
Soylu vowed a
“strong response”.
“Competent
authorities, our defence ministry and chief of staff will together decide the level
of force that should be used by our ground forces,” Erdogan said.
“We have already
warned that we will make those who violate our territory pay.”
Funerals
Turkey’s raids, mainly targeting positions held by
Kurdish forces in
northern and northeastern Syria, killed at least 35 people and wounded 70
others, according to the British-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights.
Ankara said the
targeted Kurdish bases were being used to launch “terrorist” attacks on Turkish
soil.
On Monday,
thousands of people gathered to bury 11 people who died in Al-Malikiyah in
Syria’s far northeast, including a journalist working for a Kurdish news
agency, with the caskets draped in red-white-and-green Kurdish flags.
“We urge the
world, all those who care about human rights and the great powers” to press
Turkey to stop its strikes that “target us with planes and drones”, a mourner
named Shaaban, 58, told AFP during the funerals.
In Berlin, the
German foreign ministry urged Turkey to “react proportionally and to respect
international law”, adding that “civilians at all times must be protected”.
The observatory
said Kurdish fighters and Syrian soldiers bore the brunt of the casualties
during the attacks in the areas of Raqqa and Hassake in the northeast and
Aleppo in the north.
The Kurdish-led
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), among those attacked, said Turkey launched new
air strikes on Monday.
The strikes also
targeted PKK bases in mountainous northern Iraq and bases of the Kurdish
People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria, the Turkish defense ministry said.
The PKK has waged
a bloody insurgency for decades and is designated a terror group by Ankara and
its Western allies.
‘70 planes and
drones’
Ankara considers the YPG to be a PKK-affiliated terror group.
Erdogan said “70
planes and drones” that “penetrated 140km into northern Iraq and 20km into
northern Syria” carried out the weekend strikes.
An SDF
spokesperson told AFP that Turkish airplanes launched fresh strikes on Monday
near Ayh Al-Arab (Kobani). The observatory confirmed the strikes. The SDF said
that aposition held by Syrian government forces was hit.
On Monday, there
were artillery exchanges between Turkish forces backed by Syrian proxies and
the SDF, according to an AFP correspondent.
Erdogan said he
had had “no discussion” with either US President Joe Biden or Russian President
Vladimir Putin “on the subject of the operation.”
Turkey’s latest
military push could create problems for its complex relations with its Western
allies — particularly the US, which has relied mostly on Syrian Kurdish militia
forces in its fight against Daesh.
Turkey has often
accused Washington of supplying Kurdish forces with weapons.
Russia for its
part backs pro-Damascus militias in the region.
Between 2016 and
2019, Turkey launched three large-scale operations in northern Syria against
Kurdish groups.
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