Erdogan Speaks

At news conference today Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan confirmed that his goal is the total control of the Turkish-Syrian border:

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey’s incursion into Syria will stretch from Kobani in the west to Hasaka in the east, going some 30 km (19 miles) into Syrian territory, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, and the town of Ras al Ain was already under Turkish control.

Addressing a news conference in Istanbul, Erdogan said the Turkish-led forces had also besieged the Syrian border town of Tel Abyad, west of Ras al Ain, in its fight against the YPG Kurdish militia, which Ankara says is a terrorist organization. 

“We focused first on the 120-km (75-mile) area between Ras al Ain and Tel Abyad. Thus we will divide the 480-km terrorist corridor down the middle,” Erdogan said.

“Then we will take control of Hasaka on the one side and Ain al Arab (Kobani) on the other and complete the operation,” he said, referring to towns either side of the current focus of operations. “We will go down to a depth of around 30-35 km, in line with the safe zone map which we declared previously."

[snip]

The Turkey-led forces have so far seized control of 109 square km (42 square miles), territory including 17 villages around Tel Abyad and four villages around Ras Al Ain, Erdogan said.

Every indication is that things are going to get increasingly ugly because at this point no power is stepping in to curb the Turkey's campaign against the Kurds. Germany's making pro forma demands that Turkey halt its invasion, while the U.S. abandons more bases to remove its forces from the line of fire. Unless the YPG is capable of more fight-back than it has shown to date, its looks like it is going to unfold exactly as Erdogan outlines.