Erdogan and the policy of the dirty war

Erdogan does not hesitate to use methods, no matter how dirty, in order to achieve his expansionist ambitions in Rojava (western Kurdistan/north and east Syria) and Başûr Kurdistan (southern Kurdistan/northern Iraq) and to bring the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) to an end. Therefore, he works in cooperation with some regional and international parties to create events and explosions in sensitive areas, where the victims are civilians in particular, to win support of the international powers and create sedition that enables him to implement his colonial plans in the region. This was clearly visible through targeting al-Shifa’ Hospital in the city of Afrin, northwest Syria, and committing a massacre that killed dozens, most of them civilians. Before that, the martyrdom of members of the Peshmerga forces after Turkey launched a military operation in the areas of Matina and Avashin in southern Kurdistan, targeting some strongholds of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters there. At the same time, Turkish statements began to attack the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the PKK, accusing them of committing the hospital massacre, as if these officials were ready to make their statements without any evidence to base on them. Activists of the Kurdish Observatory in Afrin reported that members of the civil and military police, under orders from the Turkish intelligence, were deployed in al-Shifa Hospital in Afrin and its surroundings, and prevented media staff and activists present in the city from covering the first moments of the massacre, as the bombing was from areas in the north of Aleppo governorate, where pro-Iranian and Syrian regime militias are deployed.

Official of the SDF Media Office confirmed that the mercenaries of Turkey had warned their forces 15 minutes before committing the massacre that there would be bombing on Afrin Hospital, and that Turkey had evacuated a base next to the hospital two hours before the bombing. Many military experts also confirmed that the accuracy of targeting the hospital requires high skills and high-precision equipment that the SDF do not possess, and that Russia and the regime have a hand in them, especially since the source of the missiles was from their areas of control. Therefore, the only beneficiary of the Afrin hospital massacre is Turkey, which is trying to disengage the United States from the SDF, and there may be Turkish-Russian coordination in carrying out this massacre, as both of them, along with the regime, have many precedents in bombing hospitals and schools, which killed hundreds of civilians.

As for the incident of southern Kurdistan, primary sources indicated that the martyrdom of Peshmerga members was as a result of air raids and artillery shelling by Turkish forces on the Matin Mountains overlooking the town of Amadiyah in Dohuk Governorate, and the effects of the destruction of the car that was carrying the Peshmerga members indicated this. Also, the PKK guerilla has not yet possessed such weapons, including drones carrying guided missiles capable of tracking and destroying moving objects, and has no interest in fighting the Peshmerga forces and creating an intra-Kurdish strife while they are at war with the Turkish occupation state, in addition to the disappearance of the injured Peshmerga fighter from Dohuk Hospital after he acknowledged that the bombing of their vehicle was carried out by a missile of a Turkish plane.

In this context, Erdogan is trying to distort the image of the SDF and to exploit these events as a pressure card on the United States and France, the most prominent supporters for the SDF, in his meeting with Macron and Biden at the NATO leaders summit in Brussels. In addition, Erdogan is trying, in cooperation with Russia and the regime, to create an intra-Kurdish and a Kurdish-Arab strife and thwart the Kurdish dialogue in Syria. Therefore, these events fall within a series of Turkish intelligence and military operations that have been going on for decades and within the framework of the special war pursued by Turkey in the region, which is not new.