Washington officials are concerned Turkey is deploying some of the country’s armed forces to its southern border with the intention of invading parts of Syria, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The operation is believed to have started soon after insurgent factions overthrew Bashar al-Assad's Ba'athist regime in Damascus on December 8. U.S. observers described the repositioning as employing approaches similar to those Turkey used before launching its 2019 military campaign in northeastern Syria.
Sources told the newspaper that these maneuvers seem to be aimed at conducting an incursion into the area near the Syrian city of Kobani, which has a large Kurdish population and hosts fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).
Turkey has long associated the YPG, a key part of the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a separatist group that Ankara considers a terrorist organization and has clashed with for decades.
On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, requesting assurances his government would limit actions against U.S. allies in the region.
Since 2014, the Pentagon has supplied financial, logistical, and material assistance to the YPG to reinforce the militia’s battle against the Islamic State in the war-torn country. At present, 900 U.S. service members are stationed in several locations throughout Syria to sustain these efforts.
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