By Theodore Shoebat
According to a Kurdish official the Assad government made a deal with Kurdish forces to defend Afrin against Turkey, although Turkey has said that this is not true/ Erdogan has declared that there will be great consequences for Syria if they decide to side with the Kurds. According to one report from Reuters:
Turkey warned on Monday it would confront Syrian government forces if they entered Syria’s northwestern Afrin region to help the Kurdish YPG militia repel a Turkish offensive.
Turkey began its Afrin operation with allied Syrian rebels last month against the YPG, which Ankara sees as a threat along its border with links to the Kurdish PKK insurgency at home.
Ankara’s onslaught has further scrambled the matrix of rivalries and alliances in northern Syria among Kurdish forces, the Syrian government, insurgent factions, Turkey, Iran, the United States and Russia.
Monday’s comments by Turkey’s president and two of his ministers came after a senior Kurdish official said on Sunday that a deal had been struck for the Syrian army to go into Afrin soon to help fight the assault.
But YPG spokesman Nouri Mahmoud denied on Monday reaching such an agreement with the Damascus government.
Syrian state media said in the morning that pro-government militia would enter Afrin “within hours” but by sunset there were no signs of a deployment there. Turkey also said the report that Syrian troops were entering the region was “not true”.
“If (the Syrian army) comes in to defend the YPG, then nothing and nobody can stop Turkish soldiers,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in Jordan. Turkey would have no issue with Syrian troops entering Afrin if they did so to “cleanse” it of the Kurdish fighters, he added.
President Tayyip Erdogan later said in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Damascus would face consequences if it struck a deal with the YPG and said the Afrin operation would continue, CNN Turk reported.