Having struck a deal with Russia that deferred a regime offensive on Idlib, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has again set his sights on Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria. In Sept. 23 speeches at gatherings organized by Turkish-American groups in New York, where he is attending the UN General Assembly summit, Erdogan raised the specter of a Turkish military intervention on the eastern side of the Euphrates River, where US-backed Kurds hold sway. “We will increase the number of secure zones inside Syria in the coming period, encompassing the east of the Euphrates,” he said in one speech. Then, referring to earlier Turkish operations in the region, he told another gathering that Turkey “will take steps similar to the Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch operations in the east of the Euphrates as well."

The first area in Turkish crosshairs appears to be Tell Abyad, which lies between the Kurdish-dominated Jazeera and Kobani cantons. Another relatively easy target for Turkey is Ras al-Ayn, a region to the east of Tell Abyad that was the scene of clashes between the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian rebels sneaking via Turkey’s border town of Ceylanpinar after the Kurds took control of the area in July 2012.

In Tell Abyad, the Arab population is relatively larger than the Kurds, while in Ras al-Ayn the two ethnic groups are roughly equal. In September 2012, Tell Abyad was seized by Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, the Tawhid Brigade and al-Furqan Brigades, but following a rift between the al-Qaeda-linked groups, it fell into the hands of the Islamic State in January 2014. When the YPG and its Arab allies ousted IS from Tell Abyad the following year, Turkey accused the Kurds of ethnic cleansing in Arab and Turkmen villages. A disputed report by Amnesty International included similar claims.

Later, when Ankara sought to dissuade Washington from collaborating with the YPG in the liberation of Raqqa, its alternative plan involved 10,000 fighters from the Free Syrian Army marching on Raqqa with Turkish military support on a route from Tell Abyad via Ayn Issa to Raqqa. The plan was meant to halt US support for the Kurds, but also to allow the Turkish military to cut the connection between the Kobani and Jazeera cantons.