{"id":30612,"date":"2018-02-07T10:43:40","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T15:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30612"},"modified":"2018-02-07T10:43:40","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T15:43:40","slug":"turkeys-offensive-in-syria-the-us-falls-into-a-trap-of-its-own-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30612","title":{"rendered":"Turkey\u2019s Offensive in Syria: the US Falls into a Trap of Its Own Making"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Turkey\u2019s<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s Offensive in Syria: the US Falls into a Trap of Its Own Making<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

In the heat of the battle for Afrin, Turkey has\u00a0warn<\/a>ed<\/a>\u00a0it will go farther<\/a>\u00a0to establish control over vast swathes of land in northern Syria. The offensive \u00a0is supposed to take<\/a>\u00a0Turkish forces as far as Syria\u2019s border with Iraq. On Jan. 28, Ankara\u00a0called on<\/a>\u00a0Washington to withdraw its military from Manbij (100 km from Afrin) before it launches an operation to clear that area of Kurdish militias. It\u2019s important to note that the US had provoked Turkey\u2019s action by\u00a0announcing\u00a0<\/a>its\u00a0decision\u00a0to set up a new\u00a0border\u00a0<\/a>security\u00a0<\/a>force in the areas under Kurdish control.\u00a0<\/a>So Washington has created this situation all by itself \u2013 a trap of its own making. Having sown the wind, it reaps the whirlwind.<\/p>\n

A push to the east will potentially force a confrontation between Turkish troops and the US-led\u00a0Syrian Democratic Forces<\/a>\u00a0(SDF). The Kurdish combat units in Afrin missed their opportunity to avoid a worst-case scenario.<\/p>\n

Some Pro-Kurdish sources\u00a0say<\/a>\u00a0Russia had betrayed the Afrin Kurds by pulling its peacekeepers out before the Turkish attack began. This is a very misleading statement. Let\u2019s look at the facts. Moscow believes all regions west of the Euphrates should be under the control of the regular Syrian army, because these areas belong to Syria \u2013 a territorially cohesive country with a legitimate government. Russia had asked the Kurds in Afrin to interact with Damascus and allow its regular army into the area. They refused. Moscow is still ready to act as a mediator to broker talks on autonomy within Syria. So far that initiative has been rejected. The Kurds have preferred the US as their protector. Now they are on their own. They’ve made their bed, now they must lie in it.”.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey\u2019s Offensive in Syria: the US Falls into a Trap of Its Own Making In the heat of the battle for Afrin, Turkey has\u00a0warned\u00a0it will go farther\u00a0to establish control over vast swathes of land in northern Syria. The offensive \u00a0is supposed to take\u00a0Turkish forces as far as Syria\u2019s border with Iraq. On Jan. 28, Ankara\u00a0called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[442,16490,694,8203,776,818,827,865],"class_list":["post-30612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-iraq","tag-peter-korzun","tag-russia","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-syria","tag-turkey","tag-united-states","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30613,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30612\/revisions\/30613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}