ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – As Kurdish rebels in northern Syria rack up wins against the Islamic State group, Turkish media is abuzz with talk of a long-debated military intervention to push the Islamic militants back from the Turkish border – a move that will also outflank any Kurdish attempts to create a state along Turkey’s southern frontier.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to chair a National Security Council meeting Monday, only days after he vowed to prevent the Kurds from establishing a state in Syria.
Pro-government newspapers are rife with purported proposals, ranging from loosening the rules of engagement to give Turkish troops a freer hand to fire into Syria, to a tanks-and-troops invasion aimed at occupying a 110-kilometer (70-mile) long, 33-kilometer (20-mile) wide buffer zone.
The burst of tough talk has analysts “scratching their heads about what to make of all of this,” Aaron Stein, an associate fellow at the London-based RUSI think tank, said in a Twitter message.
In a telephone interview, Stein said the new talk of action was due in part to dramatic Kurdish gains in Syria, where rebels have scored a series of victories against Islamic State, most notably in the border town of Tal Abyad. That key transit point is not far from the IS’s Syrian power base of Raqqa.