Turkey strikes Kurdish forces in Syria
Turkish air force unitstargeted Syrian-Kurdish sites near Tal Abyad, a Syrian-Turkish border crossing in northern Syria.
TALABYAD, Syrian Kurdistan (K24) – On Sunday, Turkish air force unitstargeted Syrian-Kurdish sites near Tal Abyad, a Syrian-Turkish border crossing in northern Syria.
Sources amongst the Kurdish security forces in Tal Abyad told a K24 reporter that Turkish air forces had bombarded sites of the Syrian-Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) with heavy weapons on Sunday morning in the village of Alyabisa, near Tal Abyad town, with no casualties reported.
Idris Nassan, Foreign Affairs Minister of Kobane Canton in Syrian-Kurdistan, told K24 on Sunday, "It's not the first time Turkey has attacked our territories, and the purpose of bombardment is creating confusion and limiting the development of the democratic process in Rojava [Syrian-Kurdistan]."
"Another message of Turkish air strikes on Rojava is a response to the liberation of Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates, which Turkey considers a red line," Nassan said, referring to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's statement last month that Turkey would not look positively on Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hostile to Ankara moving to the west of the Euphrates.
Nassan further explained that Davutoglu, along with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, harbors the fear that any movement west of the river might allow the Kurds to link their self-declared cantons, or territories, in northern Syria and create an autonomous Kurdish state along the Turkish border.
The YPG forces also said in a statement released on January 1, 2016, "The Turkish Army during 2015, for 22 times, targeted our forces’ security positions utilizing heavy weaponry."
It is noteworthy to point out that Turkey has already launched raids on Kurdish bases in Syria after YPG forces liberated Tal Abyad and Kobane in 2015.
On October 26, 2015, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a television interview that Ankara carried out two strikes on the Kurdish YPG group as a warning to the fighters against expanding their control into parts of Syria that Turkish officials hope will serve as a safe zone for returning refugees.