Thread: Why is Turkey bombing Ain Issa?

In the last days the Turkish army started heavy artillery shelling of Ain Issa. This is not a coincidence but it is rather indicating what Turkey aims to do, especially as long as they have the possibilities they have during ... /1

... the last weeks of the Trump administration. As we have all seen in October 2019, Trump is not only economically but politically a strong supporter of Erdogan and his doings in Syria. The question is: Why is Erdogan specifically targeting this small town in Syria? /2
Ain Issa is in the southwest of the so called "Safe Zone" that Erdogan and his Jihadist Proxies of the SNA took over in fall 2019. The town is directly on the M4 highway, which is marked in green. Therefore the city and the highway are key for the rest of the AANES. /3
What many assume now is that Erdogan wants to take over this city and this part of the M4 highway to cut off the Northwestern parts of AANES from the rest of Rojava, especially the cities of Manbij and Kobani that Erdogan sees as a massive threat to Turkey. /4
To clear the whole border region between Turkey and Syria from Kurdish forces is not an assumption but an openly articulated goal of Erdogan. He even went as far as to say that Kurds aren't suited for this area thereby openly suggesting ethnic cleansing to be justified. /5
What is key to understand here is that these border areas from Afrin over Kobani to Girespi, Serekaniye and Cizire region are not only traditional regions of settlements of Kurds, but also were the place where Kurdish refugees from the 1920s uprisings against Turkey fled to. /6
Todays Kurds living there are often the heirs of that massive population change that Turkey attempted to do in its early founding years, therefore this is nothing but an ethnic cleansing of those who survived ethnic cleansing. /7
Cutting of Manbij & Kobani from the rest of AANES will have massive repercussions, it will lead to yet another humanitarian catastrophe & it will bring the Syrian civil war yet another step further away from a resolution. International powers just "leaving" is not an option. /8
The shelling of Ain Issa therefore is an indication that Erdogan again tries to push his military advance, after he hasn't seen opposition to his advances in Libya, the eastern Mediterranean & Artsakh & quite frankly seeing the EU's silence gives him every reason to think so. /9
With the economic situation in Turkey further deteriorating, his cabinet deconstructing itself and internal opposition growing, war against the fundamental "enemies" of Turkey (Kurds and Armenians) is his last chance to win public support - and he will do that. /10
And a quick note to the US lefties saying peace will come when the US-troops leave: Yes, we all would wish peace was that simple to achieve but it isn't like this and stirring shit up in the Middle East for decades can not be made undone by just withdrawing troops. a)
We have Russia, we have Turkey, we have Iran, we have all kinds of imperial and hegemonial powers in this conflict. The image of the "imperial enemy" has strongly changed in the last 30 years and your analysis of imperialism can therefore use an update. b)
Seeing how many leftists support a blind US-withdrawal and completely disregarding the realities on the ground PLUS the massive repercussions this withdrawal brought with itself last year just shows yet again how dehumanized the periphery is for ppl like you. c)
War is a path dependency and peace is nothing that you can achieve by just eliminating one party of the war among 8 or 9. Therefore before you share lukewarm analyses of the region, do some research or just let it go. d)
https://t.co/W88m59UiZu

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