News / Interviews

Turkey’s military incursion into Syria, Iraq illegal: Activist

Sunday, 02 October 2016 4:26 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 02 October 2016 4:28 PM ]

Turkish soldiers stand in a Turkish army tank driving back to Turkey from the Syrian-Turkish border town of Jarabulus on September 2, 2016 in the Turkish-Syrian border town of Karkamis. (Photo by AFP)

Mimi al-Laham, a Syrian activist and political commentator, says Turkey’s military incursions into Syria and Iraq under the guise of fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorists are illegal.

“The fact that the Turkish parliament extended the mandate does not make the incursion into Iraq and Syria legal. They are both still a violation of international law and the UN Charter. Both Iraq and Syria have not allowed Turkey to do this,” Laham told Press TV.

Turkish lawmakers have almost overwhelmingly approved extension by another year of Ankara’s cross-border military incursions into Syria and Iraq.

Ankara claims that these operations are aimed at curbing the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group, and to further strengthen pro-Turkey militants fighting against these two groups in Iraq and Syria.

The activist also mentioned the United States and its NATO allies are “exploiting” the growth of the Daesh terrorist group for their own agenda.

“In the US’s position, they want to create a Kurdish state in northeast Syria and ISIS (Daesh) is providing the perfect reason to do so. They want to install their bases and they want to take the oil which is also in the northeast of Syria,” she said.

“For the Turkish government, they want to of course overthrow the Syrian government, they want to take Aleppo and also they want to prevent the Kurdish state that the US wants to install and this current incursion into Syria is for those reasons, to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state and to try to allow the al-Qaeda terrorists to continue their insurgency in Aleppo,” she added.

Laham further argued the United States has given the green light to Turkey’s military incursion into Syria despite the fact it opposes its agenda to create a Kurdish state.

“I think they [the Americans] cannot say no to Turkey because Turkey basically has influence over most of the insurgent terrorist groups inside Syria and the US cannot do without that influence right now especially when trying to have some sort of diplomacy and influence in Syria with Russia and of course Turkey is a member of NATO,” she stated.

Turkey has been hitting Kurdish positions in northern Syria in the recent past without acquiring a permission from the government in Damascus. Turkey has also been pounding Kurds in Iraq, which is also unhappy with the Turkish military operations on its soil.

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