Fears to reality: SDF says Turkey used ISIS to invade northern Syria

Mohammed Abdul Ghaffar

Despite international warnings to TurkishPresident Recep Tayyip Erdogan that ISIS operatives may escape from Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) prisons, he ordered Turkish forces to launch Operation Peace Spring in northern Syria on October 9.

International fears of an ISIS revival have turned into reality, contributing to the elimination of the efforts of the SDF and the international coalition, both who succeeded in defeating the terrorist organization in the Battle of Baghouz in March 2019.

Fears turn out to be facts

SDF commander Mazloum Abdi announced that his forces have official documents proving that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) regime led by Erdogan depended on ISIS terrorists during Operation Peace Spring.

“Recep Tayyip Erdogan extorts the world through a group of imprisoned terrorists belonging to ISIS. We have documents confirming Turkey depended on them in its invasion of northern Syria,” Abdi posted on his Twitter account on Saturday, November 16, adding, “In order to thwart their plans and to show the truth to the world, an international tribunal must be held in northern Syria to identify the atrocities committed by ISIS.”

Demographic change

Ankara is using terrorists from ISIS, which has long been funded and sponsored by the Turkish state, with the aim of bringing about a complete demographic change in northern Syria that serves Ankara’s interests and contributes to its plans of expansion at the expense of the Syrian state.

This was confirmed by the SDF spokesman, who tweeted that “Turkey is planning a demographic change in favor of Turkmen nationalism in northern Syria, ” the SDF spokesperson said in a tweet via his official Twitter account. “It is wrong to think that Turkey will accommodate the Arabs in place of the Kurds in this region. They will abandon everybody to provide housing for the Chinese-Turkmen Uyghurs.”

October’s Operation Peace Spring was not the first of its kind for the Turkish regime in northern Syria, where Ankara launched two previous operations, the first under the name of the Euphrates Shield in 2016 and the second named Olive Branch in 2018, both of which bear the overt objective of President Erdogan’s announcement desiring to remove the SDF and other terrorist organizations in Turkey from his country’s borders.

But this operation is different from its predecessors in that it comes at a time when ISIS members remain in the jails of the Syrian Democratic Forces after years of war, which makes implementing it threaten the release of thousands of ISIS detainees from these prisons, especially in the area of ​​Qamishli, which has already happened.

The United Nations demanded in an official statement on November 4 the need to stop the Turkish regime’s proposals that are aimed at resettling the families of mercenaries and terrorists in northern Syria, under the pretext of establishing a safe zone for the return of Syrians, according to the German news agency.

In its statement, the United Nations stressed the need to form a fact-finding committee to identify the nature of Turkish practices in northern Syria and to identify the mechanisms of Ankara’s support for ISIS terrorists, who are used to achieve Turkey’s objectives in this region.

Political researcher Abdul Hamid Tawfiq said in press statements that Erdogan seeks to implement his project aimed at the occupation of Syrian territory under false pretexts and by using all methods, including ISIS terrorists sponsored by Ankara for a long time now.

Tawfiq added that Erdogan also has plans in the educational and cultural dimensions to change the demography of Syria through Turkish universities such as Gaziantep and the integration of the Turkish language into the Syrian curriculum, which confirms the falsity of the Turkish president’s claims about respecting the independence and sovereignty of Damascus.