Free Republic

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Wednesday the beginning of a military operation in northeastern Syria, days after President Donald Trump pulled U.S. troops out of the region. "The Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Syrian National Army, just launched #OperationPeaceSpring," Erdogan wrote Wednesday in a tweet. "Our mission is to prevent the creation of a terror corridor across our southern border, and to bring peace to the area." Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said Turkish warplanes started carrying out airstrikes on civilian targets Wednesday. "There is a huge panic among people of the...

VIDEO: 6 minutes After the Islamist AKP party cruised to defeat in last weekend’s parliamentary elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government announced the border would be closed to Syrians fleeing ISIS as “there is no longer a humanitarian tragedy,” in the words of Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş. Kurtulmuş further claimed Wednesday that people were “fleeing strikes by coalition forces and the progress of Kurdish fighters in the region.” He laid blame not on the Islamic State but on the anti-ISIS coalition for driving Syrian refugees into Turkey with “reasonless and meaningless” airstrikes. More than 13,000 Syrian refugees fled across...