© REUTERS/StringerTurkish military armored vehicles, which took part in an operation inside Syria, are pictured near the Mursitpinar border crossing in the southeastern town of Suruc, Sanliurfa province, February 23, 2015.
Though it is extremely difficult to get a clear sense of the state of the fighting between the Turkish military and the Kurds in northern Syria in the hotly contested district of Afrin, the growing impression is of a Turkish military offensive which has become bogged down.
This has been a constantly recurring feature of Turkish military operations in Syria over the last two years. Though they invariably begin with confident predictions of rapid victory, in practice they quickly run into the sand as the Turkish military and its Jihadi allies struggle to overcome the resistance of the seasoned fighters of ISIS and of the Kurdish militia the YPG.
The reason for these failures was discussed by me in an
article published by The Duran on 19th February 2017 in which I discussed the succession of defeats inflicted on the Turkish military by ISIS over the course of the battle for the strategically important Syrian town of Al-Bab.
The Turkish force that is besieging Al-Bab is comparatively small. It is also unbalanced, with barely any Turkish infantry to support the tanks, and with such Turkish infantry as is there consisting mainly of Special Forces, who are few in number and who are not generally used to support tanks.
The reason for this is that for domestic political reasons President Erdogan's government is unwilling to send Turkish infantry into Syria. Turkish infantry units are generally manned by conscripts, and President Erdogan does not want to face the public opposition he might provoke if he sent young Turkish conscripts to Syria to fight the hardened veterans of ISIS and the Kurdish YPG.
The result however is that the Turkish military besieging Al-Bab has to rely for infantry support on the Jihadi fighters of the so-called 'Free Syrian Army', who have proved consistently unable to stand up in a fight against any one of their enemies, be they the Syrian army, ISIS or the YPG.
Pictures which have appeared of the Turkish forces which have been sent to Afrin suggest that
the same pattern is repeating itself, with the forces looking excessively tank heavy and over reliant for infantry support on Turkey's local Jihadi allies who have repeatedly shown themselves incapable of standing up in actual fighting against either ISIS or the YPG.
Comment: Most likely true. But even then, if NOT true, the US would still deny it. To admit it would probably put the US on a war footing with Turkey, and very few Americans want that.
See also: Kurds call for help from Assad - Afrin crisis winding down?