What's spoiling Turkey's anti-terror operations abroad?

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The rising pessimistic mood is deepening Iraqi officials' furrowed brows, as Baghdad has condemned the violation of its sovereignty and civilian deaths in the airstrikes conducted by Turkey's military to combat Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorist group.

So, will actions against PKK become an excuse for Turkey's silent invasion?

Backup partners

U.S. President Donald Trump's December 19 decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, where Turkey would police the north of the country, consented Turkey to an increasingly higher status and influence in Syrian affairs.

U.S. President Donald Trump (R) extends his hand for a handshake with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C.. May 16, 2017. /VCG Photo

Speaking at a briefing at the State Department on Monday, U.S. envoy for Syria James Jeffrey stressed his country's commitment to working with Turkey in accordance with a safe zone of some length along the Turkish border where there would be no Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) forces because Turkey feels very nervous about the YPG and their ties to the PKK.

For Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan believed Turkey's future, on a large scale, depends on how the Syrian issue will be resolved while speaking at a rally in the Black Sea province of Ordu earlier this month.

Russia, Turkey prefer 'hand in hand approach'

He confirmed a long-promised military incursion into northern Syria against the presence of the YPG group there, which Ankara assumes as the Syrian branch of the illegal PKK.

Russia also gave a hand to coordinate with Turkey as their buffer zone initiative shows that the relationship between these two regional powers is developing and both have vested interests in each other's' stability, according to Martin Jay, a journalist based in Beirutis.

A Syrian rebel-fighter from the National Liberation Front (NLF) takes a position in a trench armed with an automatic rifle on a hill in the area of Al-Eis in the southwest of Aleppo province, October 7, 2018. /VCG Photo

After talking with Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reaffirmed his country's stance to cooperate with Turkey continually under new conditions with a view to finally rooting out terrorist threats in Syria.

Turkey's ambitions

On the other hand, Turkey has not hidden its growing ambition to revive the dominance that the Ottoman Empire enjoyed over much of the Islamic world, Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told Bloomberg.

At a recent rally, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu declared Turkey is not only just Turkey but also Damascus, Aleppo, Kirkuk, Jerusalem, Palestine, Mecca, and Medina.

Turkish Muslim men hold placards and chant slogans during a protest against a Syrian military operation in the rebel-held Idlib province of northwest Syrian in front of the Fatih mosque in Istanbul, September 7, 2018. /VCG Photo

Former U.S. officials involved in counterterrorism campaigns in the region said they have seen Turkish government maps showing their spheres of influence extending into Saudi Arabia and down to Basra, Iraq.

In order to establish himself as leader of the Muslim world, Erdogan has sought to win over Muslims in other countries, said senior Indian journalist Jagdish N. Singh, as the Turkish president made an emotional appeal to Muslims abroad when he told a gathering celebrating his party's victory on June 12, 2011.

(Cover: A pro-Kurd protester takes part in a demonstration in support of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in Strasbourg, France, February 16, 2019./VCG Photo)