Tabnak - As the US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria are advancing against the ISIS in some of the key strategic areas, Turkey’s increasingly confrontational approach toward the Kurds is making the situation more and more complicated.
In a recent development, US-backed Kurdish forces gained control over 80 percent of Syria's Tabqa town after a week of fighting with the ISIS terrorist group, a UK-based monitoring group said.
The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) entered the town from the south on April 24 as part of an offensive to capture Raqqah, the terrorist group’s stronghold in the Arab country.
The US-backed forces have steadily advanced north, laying siege on three neighboring districts on the bank of the Euphrates River.
This is while Kurdish advances in Syria are facing more and more with Ankara’s objection. Aljazeera reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said Ankara was "seriously saddened" by footage showing US military vehicles operating close to the border with Syrian Kurdish fighters, threatening further military action against a group Turkey sees as "terrorists".
His comments came amid rising tensions over the weekend along the border, with both Ankara and Washington moving armored vehicles to the area.
Turkish forces last week carried out deadly air strikes on military positions belonging to the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), angering the US and sparking days of border clashes with the Kurdish fighters.
At the same time and in the aftermath of Ankara’s strike, it is reported that the US forces have begun patrolling part of the Turkey-Syria border. "The patrols’ purpose is to discourage escalation and violence between two of our most trusted (counter-ISIS) partners and reinforce the US commitment to both Turkey and the SDF in their fight against ISIS,” a statement from the U.S.-led joint command said. "We ask both of our partners to focus their efforts on ISIS. ISIS poses the greatest threat to peace and stability in the region, and indeed the entire world.”
The SDF, which is dominated by elements of the YPG, has been effective, with US-led coalition support, in clearing ISIS out of large parts of northeastern Syria, and until this latest flare up of tensions, was gearing up for the final offensive against the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa on the Euphrates River. That effort may now be on hold as this complicated web of alliances begins to fray.
In an analytical report on this issue Al-Monitor suggests that The United States is now out on a limb as Turkey, a NATO ally, is almost daring the United States to continue its reliance on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose most effective fighters are drawn primarily from the YPG, in the long-anticipated military campaign to expel IS from Raqqa.
The reports adds however that in partnering with the YPG, the Pentagon is not intentionally picking sides in Turkey’s seemingly endless conflict with the PKK, which both Washington and Ankara consider a terrorist organization.
Nonetheless, there is actually no doubt that the recent moves by Turkey in terms of its military confrontation with a US-backed force in Syria could further complicates the situation on the ground in the war-torn country and make the final common goal, i.e. defeating ISIS even a harder task to fulfil.
