Turkey offers U. S. joint action in Syria

TURKEY - In Brief 30 May 2016 by Atilla Yesilada

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We had just predicted a very hot summer for Turkey, when a scorching weather front started spreading from Syria. First, Syrian Defense Forces led by PKK-affiliated Kurdish militia called YPG has been advancing towards ISIS’ capital Raqqa with several news items in the Turkish press claiming that it also intends to capture the gateway town of Manbij, which is used as terrorist training center by the fundamentalist terror organization. After capturing Manbij, it would a short step for YPG and allied forces to sweep away the remnants of the ISIS militants in the Azez-Cerablus-Manbij triangle to link the Kobane canton in the East with Afrin in the West, thus encircling Turkey’s Syrian border and granting PKK a much deeper and broader geography to reinvigorate its waning insurgency at home. Secondly, despite hectic attempts by pro-Turkish Free Syrian Army brigades, ISIS columns have reached the outskirts of two key towns, namely Marea and Azez, which are their supply bases, and also used to aid rebels in the Aleppo City. Desperate to defend her border from these two forces, pro-government daily SABH reports that: “At the end of the Least-Developed Countries Summit in Antalya, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu spoke to journalists late on Sunday and criticized the U.S. for cooperating with the Syrian PKK affiliate the Democratic Union Party (PYD). He said that a joint military action between Turkey and the U.S. could help defeat DAESH in Syria by allowing an easy advance on Raqqa, which is DAESH's capital in Syria. Çavuşoğlu said: "[W]e could join forces with [the U.S.] since we have Special Forces and they do as well”. Presumably, Turkish special forces, coupled with Americ...