“The Turkish Army forces and allied rebels in Syria captured the town of al-Bab on Thursday after a deal with ISIS to withdraw”
Called it.
What happens next is more unpredictable. The Kurds won’t take any orders from the Turks. If attacked, especially in Afrin, they will fight, unless restrained by the US. Even if they do fight though, they likely won’t have the effective anti-tank weapons that ISIS has, and they won’t get US air support against the Turks, so it would be lopsided. It is possible that the US will make the Kurds abandon Manbij and withdraw East of the Euphrates River though, which was our earlier position under Obama.
But the US (or perhaps Russians) might be able to restrain the Turks from going any further as well.
Yes, you called it.
In light of the great performance of the SDF (Kurds) and the terrible performance of the Turk Army with external Terrorists, Erdogan probably did not have much choice.
Only other option was simply withdraw, which he would not do, due to the upcoming referendum.
Now the negotiation of the “deal” with ISIS? Some of Erdogan’s terrorists were already allied with ISIS.
And Erdogan was also allied with ISIS early on.
Like Obama, he did not really want to end ISIS.
Trump does and will.
Erdogan’s past actions have already damaged him greatly in EU and on world stage. Everybody knows what he is doing and what his ambitions are. Probably Saudi money behind him.
And he likes the Oil Play. He would love an excuse (or even without an excuse) to grab some.
I hope Trump & Putin can act like adults and tamp down Erdogan’s zeal for bloodying the Kurds. He thinks he is already King, but he may be surprised.