Turkey’s War With Syria’s Kurds Likely to Attract Many International Fighters

First Volunteers Already Arriving to Fight Against Turks

Jason Ditz 

Posted onJanuary 26, 2018CategoriesNewsTagsKurdistan, Syria, Turkey

A new video emerged online showing a number of international “volunteers” who have recently arrived in northwestern Syria. While Syria has been attracting foreign fighters for some time, the new arrivals have shown up with an eye toward joining the Kurds in their fight against invading Turkey.

Protesters rally against Turkey’s invasion of Afrin in Frankfurt am Main, Germany

The men talk of fighting the “Turkish fascist state,” and it’s unsurprising that this is the case. Turkey and the Kurds are, after all, both massively polarizing issues internationally, particularly across Europe.

Turkey’s Erdogan government has long styled the Kurdish YPG as terrorists on par with ISIS, but has also run afoul of most of the governments in Europe, picking diplomatic fights on a regular basis using excessively hostile rhetoric.

This new Turkish War against the Kurds could rapidly expand across 25% of Syria, and with it, there is the potential to attract another massive influx of foreign fighters, whether Turkish nationalists keen to fight the Kurds, or those who sympathize with Kurdish ambitions for autonomy and see Turkey as a major regional aggressor.

https://news.antiwar.com/2018/01/26/turkeys-war-with-syrias-kurds-likely-to-attract-many-international-fighters/