Afrin, a small piece of Syria abutting Turkey’s Hatay and Kilis provinces, is known for its olives and pomegranates as well as its stubbornly resistant Kurdish population. This land where Kurds have been living for a thousand years is now Turkey’s primary target, but not because it poses a threat to Turkey’s borders. While Atme, Azaz and Jarablus were scenes of violent clashes, Afrin had remained calm.

Today, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and National Intelligence Service are focusing on Afrin because of the local population's strong support for imprisoned Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Ocalan. Afrin had been under occasional artillery harassment by the TSK and its local allies in the Free Syrian Army and is now under pressure from the south. The TSK set up a command center on Sheikh Bereket Hill overlooking Afrin, followed by new bases at Salve, Daret Izza and on Seman Mountain.

“The operation at Idlib is mostly done with. Now, as I said earlier, we could suddenly come one night,” Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Oct. 24 at the Justice and Development Party's parliamentary meeting.

According to pro-government Turkish news reports, the TSK will launch its Afrin operation from Azaz and Seman. Its objective is to take control of an 80-mile (130-kilometer) stretch from Azaz to Daret Izza and Deir Ballut. The reports claim that if the TSK succeeds in Afrin, it will carve out a corridor from Harem, Serakip, Sermin, Jisr ash-Shughour, Khirbet Al-Joz and Turkmen Mountain all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.