War rages in Turkish media in anticipation of military operation
News outlets loyal to the Turkish state and sympathetic to the Kurds are each busy framing the conflict ahead of possible Turkish military moves against Syrian Kurds.
As speculation rages over the probability of a Turkish military incursion against Kurds in Syria, the propaganda war between the sides is already in full swing.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency turned to a pair of Syrian Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG), the US-backed militia that has been fighting the Islamic State (IS) in Syria, to press the case for Turkish intervention. The fighters, who are in Turkish custody, claimed in an interview that civil administrators affiliated with the YPG in Afrin, the Syrian Kurdish enclave Turkey is threatening to invade, had ordered digging equipment from the United States. The machines were purportedly going to be used to dig tunnels from Afrin to the Turkish side of the border, thus allowing YPG fighters to infiltrate Turkey, where they would go on to plan attacks.
The pair agreed that the YPG and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is fighting for Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey, were the same. “The only thing that is different from the organization in Syria is their name,” one of them said. Anadolu reserved the biggest bombshell for last. “When the YPG/PKK or the [YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces] … launched attacks on [IS] … they used to [provide] the United States [with] coordinates,” one of the captive fighters revealed. “After giving intelligence [on their] whereabouts, those places were hit by the US on short notice.”
Pro-government dailies joined in the chest-pounding with headlines ranging from “The final countdown” to “Afrin is target, PYD in panic.” A recurring theme is the United States being the YPG’s puppet master, all part of a broader campaign to destroy and dismember its NATO ally, Turkey. The US-led coalition’s comments over the weekend about its ongoing effort to set up a 30,000-strong force of YPG fighters to protect Syria’s borders with Iraq and Turkey against terrorist infiltration haven’t helped. In Turkey’s view, the YPG are the terrorists and the United States is mentoring them.
