Non-Ingent, Commander Of The Syrian Kurdish Forces Ready To Intermediate Turkey's Land Attack

SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi. (Wikimedia Commons/VOA/Zana Omer)

JAKARTA - Kurdish troops in northeastern Syria said they were ready to face Turkey's new attack, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his troops were ready to carry out ground attacks.

Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Kurdi Mazloum Abdi told AP as reported November 23, his troops have been preparing for another attack since Turkey took control of the northeast in 2019.

"We believe that we have reached a level where we can thwart any new attacks," Abdi said, citing The National News.

He said there would be intense fighting in the event of Ankara's invasion.

Turkey will, step by step, build up a so-called "safe zone" in the northeast, President Erdogan said on Wednesday, a day after he said Ankara would send ground troops to the region "as soon as possible".

It will be the fourth major military strike carried out in Syria since 2016.

In 2019, Turkey established a "security corridor" in northeastern Syria in 2019, displacing more than 300,000 people in what it said was an operation against the SDF, a major US ally in the fight against ISIS.

Ankara himself said the group was a threat to its national security, planning to re-imulate in Turkey the Syrian refugees from the area it conquered.

It also holds Afrin in the northwest, near Aleppo. Kurdish authorities accuse Turkey and its power to commit human rights violations in territory under its control.

Turkey will expand its corridors to include Tel Rifaat, Manbij and Kobani, Erdogan told his AKP party, referring to areas currently under Kurdish control which he described as "sources of the problem".

"We are continuing air operations and will attack terrorists from the ground at the most appropriate time for us," he said in parliament.

Turkey has been attacking various locations in northeastern Syria in recent days, targeting areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces led by Kurdish, which are claimed to be branches of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). This has hit key infrastructure, including oil and gas fields.

It hit a Kurdish position inside a Russian military base on Wednesday, a Kurdish official told AFP, killing one Kurdish fighter and injuring three others. Moscow has asked Turkey to avoid a full-scale invasion, the news agency reported.

Turkey claims that the PKK, which has waged insurgency against the Turkish government for decades, is behind the bombing that killed six people in Istanbul this month.

President Erdogan has promised a crackdown following the attack, which authorities say is planned in the city of Kobani, Syria's Kurdish.