 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us NewsClick chief editor, Prabir Prakaistha. And we will be talking about Turkey's military intervention in Syria that goes by the name of Operation Olive Branch. So Prabir, what triggered this operation? Well, the immediate trigger seems to have been the American statement that they are going to raise a Syrian border force, which will be constituted of what is being called the SDF, which is really allied to the Kurdish YPG, which is the political military arm of the Kurds at the moment in Syria. So this seems to have been the initial trigger. If it is the Syrian border guard, it is not necessary it will be only in the border between Iraq and Syria, which is east of Euphrates River, which has recently been captured by the SDF and the Kurds. But it could also conceivably extend the border with Turkey, because as you know, the Kurdish regions, which are under YPG control, is also Kobanei, what they are calling the Kobalei Canton, what they are calling as Afrin Canton, and they are really referring to this as Rojava or western Kurdistan. Now this also is the border of Syria, but in this case the border is with Turkey, not with Iraq. So this seems to have been the immediate trigger that what the United States is planning is to use Kurdistan, what the Kurds have been asking for quite some time, and created on the border of Turkey and on the border between Syria and Iraq, that seems to have been the American plan. So Turkey saw that as a threat, because they have been battling what they have argued as a situation is threat of the PKK, which is again the good, it is really the main Kurdish party, which YPG is also aligned to. So let us not think the YPG is independent of the PKK. PKK is the mother party, it is in south of Turkey, and they have been in battle for what they would call as self-determination, what the Turk would call, Turks would call as secession for quite, for a number of decades now, and it under Erdogan it is broken out again. So given this situation, I think Turkey saw it as a threat that this could become a long-term threat to south of Turkey, and therefore they decided to teach quote-unquote Kurds a lesson by intervening militarily in Afrin. Afrin is really on the southern border of Turkey, and it is also isolated from the rest of the occupied, the rest of the Kurdish occupied territory. Therefore it is relatively militarily easier to control and probably intervening. Do you think it was an amateurish move by the US by ignoring its NATO allies' security needs for an exchange for illegally, as you said, illegal and unsustainable occupation of the northeast Syria? Well, northeastern, now eastern Syria. Yes, I think, you know, when we talk about United States to talk about amateur is difficult to understand, because they have been bumbling, they have done things in West Asia, which have been opposite to what their supposed aims were. So it doesn't seem to make any sense that they would do something where Turkey's direct interest would be harmed, and Turkey would take perhaps immediate action. Military action of course is something we should really oppose, because yes, Turkey might claim that they would like to stop the Kurds from doing something, but that is really the Syrian government's task. It is not Turkey's task to intervene in Afrin, but yes, I would say that Americans don't seem to know whether they are coming or going. What their policies have been in the region is a mystery to all of us. The only two things that we can see is there's a continuity in the policy. One is its allegiance to its alliance with Israel and to Saudi Arabia. On that, they don't seem to have wavered. It's hatred to Iran, which I think is a part of all of it. And the second part of it is continuation of wars in the region, which break up the countries. Though it has an adverse impact on the region, it has an adverse impact on the globe as a whole. But it seems to be the belief, probably of the Israelis as well as the Americans, that a smaller set of states which are broken up would be much easier to control. So even if they have a 10, 15, 20-year decades of battles over there and wars over there, in the end of it, if they get a fragmented West Asia with small Arab state lads, state lads broken into different identities, then what would happen is the area may be much easier for the United States to control. Of course, it forgets that the world is not going to stand still. So there are other countries who are going to come in. Iranians have a stake in the region. Russians have a stake in the region because the Satoos was the only naval base in Mediterranean. So with all of this, I don't think the American policy is going anywhere. And as you rightly said, Turkey is a NATO ally. In fact, it is the largest military force in NATO after the United States. So to get into a situation where the military intervening against a set of forces which is supposed to be under U.S. umbrella really speaks very poorly of, shall we say, American foreign policy or American interventions in the region. So what do you think will be Syria's and Russia's response to this, also putting in context the Sochi talks that will happen at the end of this month? The Sochi talks were supposed to go further than what were called the de-escalation zones. In certain areas, the forces which at the moment were fighting would pull back and each of the de-escalation zones would have some guarantor as it were that the peace would be maintained in that region. So in Idlib, which is where Afrid also is, Idlib is the place where Turkey was supposed to be a guarantor of a part of it. A part of it the Russians were giving such guarantees. Now what seems to have happened over here is that before the Turkey's military intervention took place, it seems there were talks between the Kurds and the Syrian government as well as the Russians. Russians have maintained that equation both with the Kurdish forces for a long time. Kurds have, YPG has an official embassy in Moscow. They have also maintained the relations with the even the Syrian government forces. They haven't fought till now when the Aleppo war was going on, battle was going on. The YPG was tacitly in support of the Syrian government forces. So this they have really not come as it were to major blows. They might have had skirmishes here and there but they generally tried to mitigate their battles and to see that it doesn't go out of hand. They have had some clashes but really it has not gone out of hand. This time when they asked the Kurds whether they would agree that while they could discuss what would be the autonomous autonomy they would have under the Syrian control but would they accede to be under Syrian authority and would they let the border be controlled by Syrian forces with Russian help. The Kurds seem to have turned that down. They said no. They seem to have refused it. They seem to have said no. We will look after and defence ourselves. We want an essentially independent and autonomous Kurdistan and therefore this was not welcome to them after which it's the Russia and Syrian government tacitly seems to have allowed the Turks to attack Afrin. Now we don't know what will happen if it comes to the United Nations Security Council, what position the Russians would take. The Syrian government has publicly said that the Turkish intervention is illegal and that it shouldn't it has really violated its territorial integrity. This the rates said earlier also when they marched into when Manbij was taken over by the Kurds and that then there was a possibility of linking up the Kovane Canton with the Afrin Canton. The Turks had come in over there. They are still there. The Syrian government had protested but they had tacitly allowed it to happen. Will they do the same in Afrin? Will they actually intervene at some point? Will Russians and Turkey, Russia, Turkey and Iran and Syria sit down and try and resolve the Afrin question by which Syria regains its sovereignty over or control over Afrin? All these things we'll have to do but it is true in this for the forthcoming Sochi talks. It does appear that Turkey is now more likely to align with Syria and in Idlib they are going to give the Syrian government forces a free hand except in the areas like Afrin or in the near the southern border with Turkey but they already have certain degree of control. They might allow the Syrian government force to take over the rest and withdraw the support from certain sections of the rebels who were tacitly being still supported by Turkey. So there is a real alignment going. It does appear that Turkey is shifting away from the United States as a consequence of the declaration of the United States to support militarily the Kurds in this fashion and there is a possibility that this is going to go against the Kurds in the long run. We have already seen in Iraq the Kurds lost heavily when the Barzani declared autonomous region to independence and the Iraqi forces, the government forces intervened, took over and a lot of the area which Barzani were controlling in the name of the Kurdish autonomous region. Whether similar thing would happen here we have to see because we cannot forget while Afrin is really Kurdish, while Kobane is really Kurdish there are lots of areas which the Kurds today control including southern, southeast of Syria which is really Arab. It is not really Kurdish. At the moment the Kurds are very unhappy with what has happened and we will have to see how it develops before Sochi and after. Kurds seem to have said they will not participate in the Sochi talks anymore which itself would be a disturbing development. As these issues progress will be coming back to you to discuss it and thank you for talking to us. This is all the time we have for NewsClick. Thank you for watching.