For over two weeks now, Turkey has been involved in an assault against the People’s Protection Units or YPG in northern Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched ‘Operation Olive Branch’ to drive the Kurdish fighters out of Syria’s Afrin district.

Turkey has long considered the YPG to be terrorists and wants to secure a 30-kilometer buffer zone along its southern border. Both France and the United States have expressed concerns about the operation which targets a group the U.S. has supported with arms, training and air support in the fight against ISIL.

CGTN’s Michal Bardavid reports.

Follow Michal Bardavid on Twitter @michal_bardavid

To discuss all of this:

• Guney Yildiz, visiting fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations 
• Giran Ozcan,  representative of the Peoples’ Democratic Party to the United States, a Kurdish pro-minority party
• Metin Gurcan, a security analyst and columnist for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse.
• Daniel Serwer, senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations 

For more:

947 militant "neutralized" since beginning of Turkey's Operation Olive Branch in Syria's Afrin region, Turkish military said pic.twitter.com/TDlbLoTwcZ

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) February 5, 2018

 

Many countries have shown support for Turkey’s military operation in Syria’s Afrin, but some said they have concerns. Here's how diplomacy has become an active front in the operation https://t.co/M0FL25YkmA pic.twitter.com/MqOQgzJBPH

— TRT World (@trtworld) February 2, 2018

 

Syrian refugees express confusion over Turkey's operation in Syria, caught between fear and hope https://t.co/blDy5ZQ4by

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) February 3, 2018