Turkey: Campaign against YPG in Afrin will be swift

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Turkey shelled targets in northern Syria on Monday and said its three-day-old operation against Kurdish YPG fighters who control the Afrin region would be completed swiftly.

Turkish forces and their Syrian rebel allies began their push to clear YPG fighters from the northwestern enclave on Saturday, opening a new front in Syria's civil war despite calls for restraint from the US, which has armed the YPG.

YPG spokesman Birusk Hasaka said clashes between Kurdish and Turkey-backed forces persisted on the third day of the operation. He said Turkish shelling had hit civilian areas in the northeast of the Afrin region.

A Turkish-backed Syrian rebel fighter looks through the scope of a rocket launcher at a monitoring point near the Syrian village of Qilah, in the southwestern edge of the Afrin region close to the border with Turkey, January 22, 2018. /VCG Photo

Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist organization with ties to Kurdish militant separatists within Turkey, and it has been infuriated by US support for the fighters. Washington, which is backing the YPG in the battle against ISIL in Syria, said on Sunday it was concerned about the situation.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to crush the YPG in Afrin and then target the Kurdish-held town of Manbij to the east, part of a much larger swath of northern Syria controlled by YPG-dominated forces.

That raises the prospect of protracted conflict between Turkey and its allied Free Syrian Army factions on one side and on the other the Kurdish YPG, part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

A Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighter takes a selfie as fighters walk through Syria in front of Turkish troops near the Syrian border at Hassa, Hatay Province, January 22, 2018. /VCG Photo

But Mehmet Simsek, Turkey's deputy prime minister who oversees economic affairs in the government, played down the potential for a damaging and drawn-out military campaign.

"Our investors should be at ease, the impact will be limited, the operation will be brief and it will reduce the terror risk to Turkey in the period ahead," Simsek said at a ceremony in Ankara.

Syrian Kurds: Turkish operation 'clear' support for ISIL

The Kurdish force in northern Syria on Monday said Turkey's operation against it in Afrin amounted to supporting ISIL and urged its Western allies to act.

"This barbaric attack... is clear support to the Daesh terrorist organization," said the SDF, using an Arabic acronym for the jihadist group.

SDF spokesman Keno Gabriel (2nd R, front) reads a statement during a press conference in the northern Syrian village of Ain Issa, January 22, 2018. /VCG Photo

Turkey fears the prospect of a powerful Kurdish statelet taking root on its border, while the Kurds and other parties in the region have long accused Ankara of having abetted and supported the rise of ISIL, which swept across the region in 2014 and established a proto-state straddling Syria and Iraq.

The SDF, with backing from a US-led coalition's air power and special forces, led the battle that saw the jihadists lose their de facto capital of Raqa three months ago.

The Kurdish-led force now feels it is being poorly rewarded and, on the day the UN Security Council was due to discuss Turkey's Afrin offensive, urged the coalition to show support.

Fighters from a new border security force under the command of the SDF during a graduation ceremony in Hasaka, northeastern Syria, January 20, 2018. /VCG Photo

"The international coalition, our partner in the fight against terrorism with whom we jointly conducted honorable battles... knows full well this Turkish intervention comes to make final victory hollow," the SDF said in a statement.

The statement was read by SDF spokesman Keno Gabriel during a press conference in the northern Syrian town of Ain Issa. "For this reason, the coalition is urged to take its responsibilities towards our forces and our people in Afrin," he said.

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Source(s): AFP ,Reuters