Turkey takes over Syria’s Afrin town

Istanbul, March 18

Turkish forces and their Syrian rebel allies swept into the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin on Sunday, raising their flags in the town centre and declaring full control after an eight-week campaign to drive out Kurdish YPG forces.

A spokesman for the rebel fighters said they entered Afrin before dawn, meeting no resistance. A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said pockets of YPG fighters were defying orders to withdraw, but Turkish forces were in control.

The fight for Afrin, a once stable pocket of northwest Syria, has opened a new front in Syria’s multi-sided civil war and highlighted the ever greater role of foreign powers in the seven-year-old conflict.

Ankara says Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters are an extension of a militant group waging an insurgency inside Turkey, and vowed to crush what it described as a “terror corridor” of YPG-controlled territory along Turkey’s southern border with Syria.

It launched its campaign eight weeks ago and threatened to extend the offensive to another Kurdish-controlled region further east where US forces are stationed alongside the YPG, Washington’s ally against Islamic State in Syria.

“Afrin city centre is under control as of 8:30 this morning,” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told a rally commemorating the World War One Gallipoli campaign, adding that Turkish and Free Syrian Army flags had been raised in the town centre.

“Most of the terrorists have fled with tails between their legs. Our forces and members of the Free Syrian Army are cleaning the remains and the traps they left behind,” Erdogan said. “In the centre of Afrin, symbols of trust and stability are waving instead of rags of terrorists.”

A Whatsapp group run by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces said Turkish and Syrian rebel troops tore down a statue in Afrin, in what it called a “blatant violation of Kurdish people’s culture and history”.

Turkey’s armed forces said troops were combing the streets for bombs. The army, posted a video it said was filmed in the centre of Afrin, showing a tank stationed under a balcony draped in the Turkish flag, with an FSA banner being waved.  — Reuters