Local officials in northeastern Syria said a series of Turkish drone strikes on Wednesday caused several casualties in a Kurdish-controlled town near the Turkish border.
Unlike other attacks by Turkey in recent months, Wednesday’s attack did not target Syrian Kurdish forces. Multiple Turkish drone strikes on the northeastern Syrian town of Derik killed three members of a local Christian militia and wounded two others, local sources said.
Ankara has yet to comment on the latest attacks, but Turkey has been targeting areas under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led military coalition that has been the United States’ main partner in its fight against Islamic State group militants.
Turkish attacks have increased in recent months. Turkey views the SDF as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington. But the United States draws a distinction between the two Kurdish groups.
according to council on foreign relationsTurkey “aims to maintain a buffer zone that deprives the PKK of bases abroad and prevents the emergence of contiguous areas of Kurdish self-rule across borders, which could fuel calls for an independent state.”
The Christian group Turkey targeted on Wednesday is called Sutoro, a local security force affiliated with the Syrian Military Council, itself part of the SDF. Sutoro was founded in 2012 after the end of the Syrian civil war. It later allied with Kurdish forces to protect Christians and other communities in northeastern Syria from other armed groups.
Kurdish officials say Christian representation in the SDF is an important indicator of the diversity of northeastern Syria and its self-government.
“Our autonomous government was established in 2014, and later when the SDF was established in 2015, Christian groups were the first to join it because they saw themselves as real partners in governing and protecting this part of Syria,” Fa Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the SDF told VOA.
Christians accounted for about 10% of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million. But many of them have left the country since the conflict began in 2011, especially after the rise of Islamic extremist groups.
Experts say Christian forces in northeastern Syria have played an important role in the war against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Myles B. Caggins III, a nonresident senior fellow at the New Line Institute and a former spokesman for the global organization, said: “Syrian security forces (Sutoro) fought ISIS in 2015 and stopped Hajime. Heroism shown during massacre of Christians in Bur Valley.” Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
He told VOA that such cross-border attacks by Turkey on military targets and civilian infrastructure have caused suffering throughout northeastern Syria and weakened the ability to fight the remnants of the “Islamic State”.
“It is a tragedy that U.S. forces provide training and advice to the Syrian Military Council’s anti-ISIS forces and that an American partner has been unjustly killed,” Caggins said.
According to the Rojava Information Center, a pro-Kurdish monitoring group in Syria, Turkey has launched 76 drone attacks in the northeast this year.
Last year, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said such attacks were aimed at destroying the organizational infrastructure and revenue sources of “terrorist groups,” referring to Kurdish groups and their partners.
But Amy Austin Holmes, a research professor at George Washington University, said Syrian Christian armed groups and their Kurdish allies do not pose a threat to Turkey.
“Not only do they not pose a threat to Turkey, but they actually provide security for Turkey because they defeat ISIS and protect Turkey’s southern border from other threats,” she told VOA.
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