Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the rostrum at the United Nations General Assembly and delivered a colorful address full of theatrics and accompanied with maps. In his speech, he contested the legitimacy of Israel’s frontiers and also disclosed Turkey’s project to create a safe zone in northeastern Syria that would seemingly resolve, in a radical way, the problem of Syrian refugees.

Erdogan sounded consistent with his previous statements regarding the creation of a Turkish-controlled safe zone about 20 miles (32 kilometers) deep that would extend parallel to Turkey’s border with Syria for about 480-490 kilometers (some 300 miles). 

However, there was also a new element: extension of a Turkish-controlled safe zone southward to near Deir ez-Zor, going far beyond the proposed 20-mile depth that already had become an issue of contention between Ankara and Washington. Before disclosing this objective of establishing an expanded safe zone in northeastern — and now also in eastern — Syria, he mentioned his repeated target of eliminating the governance of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the area. Ankara considers the SDF to be a threat to Turkey's national security; Turkey sees the People's Protection Units (YPG), which leads the SDF, as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

“The third important issue is the elimination of the PKK-YPG terrorist structure in the east of the Euphrates, which occupies a quarter of Syria and tries to legitimize itself under the name of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces. We will not be able to find a permanent solution to the issue of Syria if we fail to deal with all terrorist organizations in this country from the same distance,” Erdogan said.