(This paper attempts to research the political and geopolitical factors surrounding the battle of Afrin, the Turkish objectives behind the operation and therefore the Great Russian role in it, and therefore the stakes of the Kurdish forces while facing the Turkish attack, ending with the region falling under direct Turkish occupation. The conflict between the interior and external parties, including people who appear on one front, as they appear allied sometimes and competing at other times.This paper is predicated on the author's detailed and diligent follow-up of the event, albeit it's from the surface , and in fact it doesn't claim the validity of the estimates received with the problem of field verification within the circumstances of war. ) "olive branch process"
Under this name that's completely opposite to the olive branch’s significance in heritage and culture as a logo of peace and safety, the Turkish army, along side 25,000 Syrian armed opposition fighters backed by Ankara, launched a huge campaign against the Syrian Kurdish region of Afrin, northwest of Aleppo, on the 20 th of January 2018, in In violation of law of nations , by attacking the territory of another country, without authorization from the official authorities, under allegations of a threat to its national security from the Kurdish forces present in Afrin. The Turkish government didn't provide any evidence and tangible evidence about the very fact that there are any threats, because the YPG committed itself to not pose an immediate or indirect threat to the neighboring Turkish lands over the past years by a central decision of the units' leadership. It showed restraint despite the repeated Turkish provocations for the units to reply to them, including facilitating the passage or turning a blind eye to thousands of jihadists who crossed its borders, and who pose the best security threat to the population within the regions of northern Syria. and therefore the threats of armed groups dominated by the jihadist nature of the Brotherhood, which are mostly supported by Turkey. Thus, it had been a secure and stable area where tens of thousands of individuals fleeing the hell of violence within the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib took refuge, and it's estimated that the amount of individuals displaced thereto is approximately 400,000.
Turkish motives The Turkish government aspires, supported an expansionist perspective within the region, supported a loose historical imagination and security excuses, to regulate large areas of northern Syria and Iraq, especially the Kurdish ones, to fight the Kurdish resurgence inside or outside Turkey, as they claim. Afrin region is gaining special importance to Turkey thanks to its proximity to the Iskenderun Brigade (bordering Afrin from the west by the Plain of the Depth of the brigade), which is of great importance and occupied by Turkey in 1939 during the French mandate over Syria and with the complicity of the French authorities. The Kurdish component constitutes an majority within the region by quite 95% consistent with the estimates of the many residents of the region and researchers. The Kurds. The region is characterized by its difficult mountainous terrain, which doubled Turkish phobia about things of this region.
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The Turkish media published many materials about this part and it had been amplified supported perceptions claiming that there's a Kurdish state forming which it'll have a sea outlet on the Mediterranean through the Syrian coast, or through the “Turkish” port of Iskenderun on the Mediterranean and aspires to sell oil directly through this port. October 2017, Turkish President Erdogan clearly stated: “We will never allow a terrorist corridor that begins in Afrin and extends to the Mediterranean.” (Note that there's a distance of about 150 km separating Afrin from the Syrian coast, within the center of it's Idlib Governorate and therefore the northern countryside of Latakia, which is barren of residents. Kurds).
And I believe that the argument of the Kurdish Protection Units ’association with the PKK and raising pictures of its detained leader in Turkey, Abdullah Ocalan, or the Kurdish Protection Units’s control of Arab and mixed-majority areas in northern Syria after its liberation from the“ Islamic State - ISIS ”and the violations it committed, isn't Only a secondary motive, contrary to what the Turkish government promotes. If the region was under the administration of the other Kurdish force and with a Kurdish character, Turkey would follow an equivalent policy in order that the Autonomous Administration in northern Syria wouldn't become a accomplished fact and recognized within the upcoming political settlement in Syria, as within the case of the Iraqi Kurdistan Federation, which was established without Turkey's will, and was forced to affect it subsequently. consistent with this political and constitutional reality in Iraq.
The dream of dominating northern Syria isn't a reaction to the events that occurred in northern Syria. (Establishing a Kurdish Autonomous Administration, or the presumed link between the YPG and therefore the PKK) not only, but has been at the core of Turkish policy since the first days of the crisis in Syria and during a proactive way. In his book "The Rafidain Express" published in 2012 (translated by the late Abdul Qadir Abd al-Layi) also as in an interview with the BBC on April 19, 2017, Genghis Chander narrates, a veteran Turkish journalist and one among the closest advisors to the late Turkish President Turgut Ozal, that fortnight before the beginning of the Daraa events in Syria, he was a part of a media delegation on the private plane of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on March 27, 2011 after a visit to Iraq (Baghdad and Erbil). Chander took the initiative to ask Erdogan about things in Syria. Erdogan asked journalists to place their pens in their pockets, close the audio recorders, and not take his speech. After talking about the depth of his personal and family friendship with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family, Erdogan said that “Syria isn't only Syria… on behalf of me it means Aleppo, and Aleppo means Hatay (Antakya) and Enteb, the 2 Turkish cities on the Syrian border, and Syria also means Qamishli, and it's not necessary to mention . What does Qamishli mean? And Qamishli isn't Qamishli alone ... it's tons of other things. (He was pertaining to the Kurdish issue and its effects on the Turkish interior). He added that a wave of immigration from Syria to Turkey can't be allowed, as happened in northern Iraq after 1991. We must establish our first lines of defense outside our lands and not inside our lands, alluding to the imposition of a buffer zone inside the Syrian territories. Chander adds in his interview, who is conversant in the corridors of Turkish politics and will not be shocked, that Erdogan's speech at that early time within the events of Syria, that is, only twelve days after the spark of Daraa, was a bomb for him!
In addition to the present Kurdish dimension, which constituted a basic pretext for the Turkish attack, goals and objectives associated with the Syrian crisis generally and therefore the seizure of strong Turkish influence in wounded Syria, especially within the northern regions and therefore the Aleppo region and its vicinity, by strengthening the influence of armed Islamic groups, especially those affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood network that disguises behind many names. Within the political frameworks, armed factions, and even some human rights and relief bodies and organizations in Syria that enjoy unlimited Turkish-Qatari support. additionally to the above, the Turkish government's pursuit of goals associated with internal affairs that we aren't getting to address now.