Neighboring Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), its bête noire, and regularly carries out strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq.
In a statement, the SDF claimed to have repelled “all attacks by Turkish mercenaries supported by Turkish drones and aircraft.”
When will there be elections in Syria with the new leader Ahmad al-Chareh? “It could take four years”
Pro-Turkish factions resumed their attacks against the FDS in Syria, just as a coalition of rebel groups led by radical Islamists launched an offensive on November 27 against the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, ousted from power eleven days later .
Pro-Turkish groups captured the towns of Manbij and Tal Rifaat, in the north of Aleppo province, from the SDF.
And the fighting has continued since then with heavy human tolls.
According to Mr. Abdel Rahmane, the objective of the pro-Turks is to then take the towns of Kobani and Tabaqa, then that of Raqqa and ultimately drive the FDS from the territories under their control.
The SDF controls large areas of the northeast and part of the province of Deir Ezzor (east), where the Kurds installed an autonomous administration after the withdrawal of forces from power at the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011.
Syria’s new leader, head of the radical Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmad al-Chareh, has said the SDF should be integrated into the future Syrian army.
The HTS group led the coalition of rebel groups which announced on December 8, after entering Damascus, the fall of Bashar al-Assad who fled to Moscow. This coalition controls most of Syria.
