As Turkey enters the fourth day of a military offensive into Syria, its campaign against the Kurdish-dominated enclave of Afrin has again realigned the balance of power in the region and inaugurated a new phase of crisis across the border.
Politically, it has pushed Ankara further away from Washington, as the two largest Nato armies attempt to navigate a well of mistrust that goes back years and threatens to unravel decades of close co-operation.
The roots of the Afrin crisis were planted years ago, when the uprising against Syria's strongman president Bashar Al Assad broke out. Turkey counselled Mr Al Assad to heed the demands of protesters for reforms, but when the government responded with violence instead, then prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded his ouster.
Turkey threw its lot with the Syrian opposition, and called for a more forceful response from its western allies in the United States and Europe, drawing up plans for a no-fly zone to ground the Syrian president's air force. But then US president Barack Obama was ambivalent, drawing instead a red line in which Washington would change its calculus only if the Syrian government were to use chemical weapons.
After the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack, that promise was not fulfilled. But the US did intervene in 2014 when ISIL surged into Iraq and conquered vast swathes of Syria, creating a coalition to battle the terror group. It was then that the cracks in the US-Turkey relationship widened.
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America's chosen partner on the ground was the Syrian Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and its political arm, the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Justifying its decision, Washington said the Syrian opposition fighters backed by Ankara were not organised or numerous enough to take on ISIL.
But the plan alarmed Ankara because the YPG is also the Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a designated terrorist group that had fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, and whose founder, Abdullah Ocalan, was being held in an island prison. A fragile peace process was still under way.
Despite Turkey’s misgivings, the YPG spearheaded a ground campaign backed by US air strikes against ISIL strongholds in Syria, reclaiming vast tracts of territory just across the border from Turkey amid rumblings of Kurdish aspirations for self-governance and even independence.
Amid little sympathy from its allies, who accused Turkey of fuelling the civil war in Syria by turning a blind eye towards the influx of jihadists into the country, Ankara launched operation Euphrates Shield in August 2016 to remove ISIL from key border towns, but also to limit Kurdish expansion west of the Euphrates river. It would help rebuild cities such as Jarablus and Al Bab, creating safe zones for civilians who wished to return to Syria and also installing infrastructure.
Hopes that relations would improve under Donald Trump's administration, however, were dashed when the US said last year that it would now directly arm the YPG, which led an umbrella coalition called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), ahead of a military offensive into the capital of ISIL’s self-proclaimed caliphate, Raqqa.
Turkey tempered its anger when, in a phone call between Mr Trump and Mr Erdogan, the US president pledged to end its military support of the YPG with the end of the Raqqa campaign.
But once again relations collapsed after an announcement earlier in January by US officials, who said they would train a 30,000-strong force including the YPG that would patrol Syria’s borders, to prevent the re-emergence of ISIL cells.
That was the last straw for Ankara, which accused the US of attempting to form a “terror army” and vowing to crush the YPG. The Afrin offensive was launched on Saturday, less than a week after the American plan became public.
In briefings, Turkish officials say the goals of the campaign are three-fold. The first is to create a 30-km deep safe zone from the border to prevent attacks and harassment of border posts, and potentially to house people returning to Syria. Second, its aim is to significantly weaken the YPG, which Ankara says is 8,000-10,000 strong in an enclave that is home to 600,000 civilians.
Finally, Ankara says it aims to rebuild the area in the vein of the other cities under Euphrates Shield control. But there is little indication that Turkey and its Free Syrian Army (FSA) allies will be welcomed with open arms in the majority Kurdish area. Turkish officials repeatedly say the operation is not aimed at Syria's Kurds, but at the YPG itself.
The opening salvo was a series of artillery strikes from inside the Turkish border on Afrin. Planes then bombed more than 150 targets on the first day and then a ground incursion began.
Turkey is joined in the campaign by factions of the Syrian opposition’s FSA, who accuse the YPG of separatism, displacing local Arabs, and being secretly in league with the Assad regime. But the campaign has ignited fierce debate among the opposition, who argue that Turkey is prioritising its interests over those of the opposition.
The Afrin operation comes despite Turkey being a broker of Syrian peace negotiations along with Russia and Iran. Turkey is also responsible for maintaining a ceasefire in the nearby province of Idlib but a Syrian regime offensive into the province, the last one controlled by the rebels, has been met with little real action by Turkey.
Instead, Turkish officials no longer insist on Mr Al Assad’s ouster in briefings, and foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said he had informed the Syrian government of the Afrin offensive in written correspondence, reinforcing that the threat from the Syrian Kurdish militia, rather than the president's rule, is its top priority in Syria.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
TRAP
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Saleka Shyamalan, Ariel Donaghue
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Rating: 3/5
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The specs
Engine: Dual 180kW and 300kW front and rear motors
Power: 480kW
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh359,900 ($98,000)
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Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
Directed by: RS Prasanna
Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Bhumi Pednekar
What can you do?
Document everything immediately; including dates, times, locations and witnesses
Seek professional advice from a legal expert
You can report an incident to HR or an immediate supervisor
You can use the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation’s dedicated hotline
In criminal cases, you can contact the police for additional support
Another way to earn air miles
In addition to the Emirates and Etihad programmes, there is the Air Miles Middle East card, which offers members the ability to choose any airline, has no black-out dates and no restrictions on seat availability. Air Miles is linked up to HSBC credit cards and can also be earned through retail partners such as Spinneys, Sharaf DG and The Toy Store.
An Emirates Dubai-London round-trip ticket costs 180,000 miles on the Air Miles website. But customers earn these ‘miles’ at a much faster rate than airline miles. Adidas offers two air miles per Dh1 spent. Air Miles has partnerships with websites as well, so booking.com and agoda.com offer three miles per Dh1 spent.
“If you use your HSBC credit card when shopping at our partners, you are able to earn Air Miles twice which will mean you can get that flight reward faster and for less spend,” says Paul Lacey, the managing director for Europe, Middle East and India for Aimia, which owns and operates Air Miles Middle East.
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Director: Laxman Utekar
Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna
Rating: 1/5
THE LIGHT
Director: Tom Tykwer
Starring: Tala Al Deen, Nicolette Krebitz, Lars Eidinger
Rating: 3/5
Cricket World Cup League 2
UAE squad
Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind
Fixtures
Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
Sunday, November 3 – UAE v Netherlands
Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
Saturday, November 9 – Netherlands v UAE
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