Turkey will confront Syrian forces if they enter Afrin to help YPG: FM Cavusoglu

Turkish foreign ministry says it will confront any Syrian pro-government forces entering in the Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin to protect the US-backed People's Protection Units (YPG), as Damascus reportedly intends to send pro-government forces to the flashpoint region to join forces with the Kurds against Turkish troops.

Mevlut Cavusoglu’s remarks on Monday came a month after Ankara waged the “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s Afrin region to eliminate the “terrorist” YPG group, which is considered by the Turkish government as the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The latter has been fighting for an autonomous region inside Turkey since 1984.  

“If the regime [in Damascus] is entering there to cleanse the PKK and PYD, then there are no problems,” he said, referring to the Kurdistan Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is considered as the YPG’s political wing.

“However, if it comes in to defend the YPG, then nothing and nobody can stop us or Turkish soldiers,” Cavusoglu’s further told a press conference during a visit to the Jordanian capital Amman.

His comments came a few hours after Syria's official SANA news agency reported that government-backed “popular forces will arrive in Afrin in the next few hours to support the steadfastness of its people in confronting the aggression which Turkish regime forces have launched on the region.”

PressTV-Syria sends forces to Afrin amid Turkish siege: TV

Syria's state television says government-backed forces will soon enter the northern region of Afrin, which has been under Turkish attacks for a month now.

The report came a day after a senior Syrian Kurdish official said that Kurdish authorities and the Syrian government had allegedly struck a deal for the Syrian army to enter Afrin in a bid to end the Turkish offensive in the northern region.

The developments come a few weeks after Kurdish authorities in the Afrin district appealed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad to send troops and help defend them against the Turkish incursion in line with protecting Syria’s sovereignty.

On late Saturday, the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed anti-Damascus militant group, announced that that it had, for the first time, carried out a special cross-border operation against a gathering of Turkish troops and their allied Syrian factions in Kirikhan, a district in Turkey's southern Hatay province. The YPG forms the largest part of the US-backed SDF coalition.

PressTV-Syria Kurds claim cross-border attack on Turkish forces

The US-backed SDF militants have claimed for the first time that they carried out a cross-border attack on Turkish troops.

On Sunday, the Turkish General Staff said in a statement that a total of 1,614 militants had been “neutralized” since the start of Operation Olive Branch in Afrin. Turkish authorities use the word “neutralized” in their statements to imply that the militants in question either surrendered or were killed or captured. 

It added that a total of 674 “terrorist targets” had also been destroyed in airstrikes since the start of the operation.

The Syrian government has given a degree of authority to the Kurdish regions to run their own affairs in the face of a foreign-backed militancy. The US, however, has used the vacuum to establish a foothold in those regions with the help of militants.

Assad has described US-sponsored Kurdish armed elements as “traitors” to the nation but has also denounced Turkish incursions as an act of aggression.

Operation Olive Branch in Afrin region is Turkey's second major military intervention in Syria during the unprecedented foreign-backed militancy that broke out in 2011.

In August 2016, Turkey began a unilateral military intervention in northern Syria, code-named Operation Euphrates Shield, sending tanks and warplanes across the border. Ankara claimed that its military campaign was aimed at pushing the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group from Turkey's border with Syria and stopping the advance of Kurdish forces, who were themselves fighting Daesh. 

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