Erdogan threatens fresh military campaign in Syria
The Kurdish-held town of Tell Rifaat stands out as the focal point of a potential new crisis in northern Syria as Turkey threatens another military offensive amid discords with Russia and the United States.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has raised the specter of a new Turkish military campaign against Kurdish forces in northern Syria following the killing of two Turkish special force police in a rocket attack on a Turkish convoy in the region.
“We have run out of patience regarding certain areas in Syria that have been the source of terrorist attacks on our country. We are determined to eliminate the threats originating from those areas,” Erdogan said Oct. 11, referring to Kurdish-held Tell Rifaat, which lies to the south of Marea, where the attack took place the day before.
The state-run Anatolia news agency named 11 villages around Tell Rifaat where, it said, “the terrorists” had deployed heavy weapons such as multiple rocket launchers and TOW, Katyusha and Grad missiles and were using them to “frequently strike Azaz, al-Bab, Marea and Afrin.”
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu charged that Russia and the United States held responsibility for the attacks as well, vowing that Turkey “will do whatever it takes to cleanse the terrorists.”
