“The hour of reckoning has come! The bastards will be held accountable for their treacherous attacks”wrote, early Sunday, November 20, the Turkish Ministry of Defense on his official Twitter accountshowing the photo of a plane taking off for a night operation without specifying the location.
For their part, the Kurdish forces accused the Turkish army of having bombarded several regions under their control in northern Syria on Saturday evening. The raids come days after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Washington-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) dismissed Ankara’s accusations of responsibility and denied any link to the bombing. Istanbul on November 13, which left six dead and 81 injured.
According to the FDS, Turkey carried out these airstrikes on areas under its control in the provinces of Aleppo (north) and Hassaké (northeast), in particular against the city of Kobané, near the Turkish border. “Kobane, the city that defeated the Islamic State, is the target of bombardments by the air force of the Turkish occupation”announced Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the SDF.
“Aggressive and barbaric” bombardments
More than twenty strikes were carried out by the Turkish army in the two provinces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an NGO based in London and which has an extensive network of sources in Syria. The shelling killed at least six members of the FDS and six pro-regime soldiers, according to the OSDH.
For their part, the Kurdish forces have not announced any losses in their ranks. But Mr. Shami confirmed that the Turkish bombardments targeted sites belonging to the Syrian government forces in the provinces of Raqqa and Hassaké (north-east) and Aleppo (north), causing deaths and injuries. SDF Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi also criticized shelling “aggressive and barbaric”.
“The Turkish bombardment of our areas threatens the entire region. This bombardment serves no party. We are doing everything to avoid a major disaster. If war breaks out, everyone will be affected”he tweeted.
Establish a safe zone
After the murderous attack of November 13 in the busy shopping street of Istiklal in Istanbul, the Turkish authorities immediately suspected the PKK and the YPG (People’s Protection Units), a Kurdish militia active in Syria, accused by Turkey to be affiliated with the PKK. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu had specifically accused the latter, who control most of northeastern Syria, of being responsible for the attack, believing “that the order for the attack was given from Kobané”.
According to the Turkish authorities, it was a young woman of Syrian nationality who planted the bomb and who declared, after her arrest, that she had acted “by order of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party”.
The FDS, supported by Washington, have denied any link with the attack. The US State Department said on Friday it feared “a possible military action by Turkey”advising its nationals not to travel to northern Syria and Iraq.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has regularly expressed since May his intention to conduct a military operation in northeastern Syria, which hosts bases of Kurdish fighters, in order to establish a security zone 30 km wide along from its southern border. The PKK and the YPG are considered terrorist movements by Ankara.
But if Turkey’s Western allies also view the PKK as “terrorist”the YPG were supported by the United States and France, particularly in the fight against the jihadists of the Islamic State group, which they drove out of Kobané in a battle that remained famous in 2015.