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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday, that Turkish military would capture the northern Syrian town of Afrin by the evening according to AFP.
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“We have got a little closer to Afrin. I hope that Afrin will, God willing, have completely fallen by the evening,” said Erdogan.
But soon after media reported the remarks, an anonymous Turkish high official clarified Erdogan's words, saying that the sentence “I hope that Afrin will have completely fallen by the evening” meant “the encirclement will have been completed by the evening.”
Despite the contradicts in both declarations the Turkish military and its allies the Free Syrian Army and some Islamist militias still haven't entered the city, and ultimately taking it over from the People's Protection Units (YPG) could only take place in the long term.
"It sounds like Erdogan is daydreaming when he says Afrin will fall tonight," said Redur Khalil, a YPG senior official.
It's estimated that about 350,000 people live in the Kurdish city of Afrin, including internally displaced refugees coming from other war-torn areas of Syria to a region that was relatively safe until recently.
Internally displaced people walk with their belongings in the town of Inab, eastern Afrin, Syria March 14, 2018. Photo | Reuters
Erdogan promised a humanitarian evacuation corridor to let Afrin's population leave the city before the start of a broader scale attack, but many are refusing to go and even decided to stay and defend their land.
The YPG claims Turkey's objective is to change the demography of the region and clear it from Kurdish presence.
“The Turkish State is involved in fascist practices by the massacre and displacement of our people in recently invaded areas. In spite of that, our people have expressed their devotion for their land and history,” said a YPG press release.
They also claimed the Turkish strategy includes installing Turkic militias and their families coming from Atme, Azaz, Turkey, and Iraq in the Shiye and Jindires region, with the aim of changing their ethnic composition.
The “Olive Branch” Turkish military operation started on January 20 with the aim of ousting the YPG, a Kurdish militia that controls most of northern Syria under the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) umbrella organization, which is integrated by leftists Arab, Armenian, Syrian, Kurdish and other ethnic minorities' militias.
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The Turkish government considers the YPG to be the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency in south-east Turkey in search for respect of Kurdish culture and autonomy in the region.
The YPG was a crucial element in the fight against the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria and has received military assistance from many of the involved parts in the Syrian Civil War, mainly from the United States.
However, the United States has said they have no interest in Afrin, and that their relationship with the YPG and other militias from the SDF is only in areas where the fight against the IS is still ongoing.
The Turkish military claims they have killed about 3,400 “terrorists” since the start of the operation and that no civilians have been targeted, but the YPG and other independent groups deny this.
The United Kingdom Based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports 215 civilians killed in Afrin, including Kurds, Arabs, and Armenians, by Turkish aerial, rocket and artillery shelling, as well as executions since January 20. It also reports the deaths of 406 members of the YPG and SDF and 81 from Syria's national army.
Despite these reports, the Turkish military has made no mention of civilian casualties and claims that only "terrorists and shelters, gun emplacements, weapons, tools and equipment belonging to them have been targeted during the operation.”
The Turkish government has also threatened to invade the Manbij region after the first phase of the operation and attack Kurdish military positions in northern Iraq.
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