The coffin was so small the Turkish flag could wrap around it twice.
At the funeral of nine-month-old Syrian Mohammed Omar Shaar in the border town of Akçakale on Friday, hundreds of people turned out to mourn the baby’s death, and to vent their anger at the growing human cost of Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring, aimed at Kurdish forces over the border.
“Damn the PKK,” the mourners chanted in reference to the Kurdish insurgent group in Turkey that Ankara says is linked to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the target of the three-day old assault.
The offensive, triggered by Donald Trump’s announcement he would withdraw US troops from parts of Syria controlled by the SDF, is aimed at creating a 20-mile (32km) safe zone on Turkey’s border, but it is widely feared it may have opened a new front in Syria’s eight-year-old war.
The PKK are not the only subject of the town’s anger. As the civilian death toll reached nine on Friday, many were asking why the government did not evacuate the border area in advance of the operation – and why western support for the SDF, which spearheaded the ground fight against Islamic State with US help – is so strong.
A neighbour of baby Mohammed held a piece of the mortar shell that landed on the building in his hand. This was Europe and the US’s fault, he said.
Akçakale’s streets were empty on Friday after most of the town’s 225,000 population fled the SDF’s fierce counterattack the day before. Those who were left appeared to be mostly Syrian residents of the town, far less scared by the mortar and rocket fire. A few streets in the Yeni Mahallesi neighbourhood were splashed with dried blood where a mortar had fallen next to a shop, killing two.
The neighbour refused to give his name and then called the police to report the presence of foreigners. “You people betrayed Turkey, even though it’s a part of Nato. You lie about the terrorists. And this is what happens.”
The sentiment is running both ways: the US defence secretary, Mark Esper, told his Turkish counterpart in a phonecall late on Thursday that the incursion “risks serious consequences” for Turkey, puts places the US troops left in Syria at risk and could lead to the re-emergence of Islamic State.
And during a visit to Cyprus, the EU council president, Donald Tusk, delivered a sharp rebuke to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s threat to send the country’s 3.6 million refugees to Europe. “Turkey must understand that our main concern is that their actions [in Syria] may lead to another humanitarian catastrophe, which would be unacceptable,” Tusk said.
Despite the international opposition, Operation Peace Spring shows no sign of holding back. At least 70,000 people had been displaced by the Turkish attack on the border towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, Kurdish officials said.
Turkish jets relayed back and forth over the border while artillery fire from a military base on the outskirts of Akçakale pounded SDF positions inside the two contested towns at regular intervals, black smoke rising above them.
Raafat Juniad, spokesperson for the third division of the Syrian National Army, an umbrella of Syrian rebels fighting alongside the Turkish army, said over the phone from his position outside the east of Tal Abyad that their forces had almost succeeded in completely cutting off the town. Fifteen villages are also now under Turkish control.
Who is in control in north-eastern Syria?
The region makes up more than a quarter of the country and is the largest area outside the control of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. It is controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which comprises militia groups representing a range of ethnicities, though its backbone is Kurdish. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has announced an invasion of territory with the intention of forcing the SDF out of at least a 20-mile “safe zone” below its border.
How did the SDF come to control the region?
Before the SDF was formed in 2015, the Kurds had created their own militias who mobilised during the Syrian civil war to defend Kurdish cities and villages and carve out what they hoped would eventually at least become a semi-autonomous province.
In late 2014, the Kurds were struggling to fend off an Islamic State siege of Kobani, a major city under their control. With US support, including arms and airstrikes, the Kurds managed to beat back Isis and went on to win a string of victories against the radical militant group. Along the way the fighters absorbed non-Kurdish groups, changed their name to the SDF and grew to include 60,000 soldiers.
Why does Turkey oppose the Kurds?
For years, Turkey has watched the growing ties between the US and SDF with alarm. Significant numbers of the Kurds in the SDF were also members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) that has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for more than 35 years in which as many as 40,000 people have died. The PKK initially called for independence and now demands greater autonomy for Kurds inside Turkey.
Turkey claims the PKK has continued to wage war on the Turkish state, even as it has assisted in the fight against Isis. The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US, the UK, Nato and others and this has proved awkward for the US and its allies, who have chosen to downplay the SDF’s links to the PKK, preferring to focus on their shared objective of defeating Isis.
What are Turkey’s objectives on its southern border?
Turkey aims firstly to push the SDF away from its border, creating a 20-mile (32km) buffer zone that would have been jointly patrolled by Turkish and US troops until Trump’s recent announcement that American soldiers would withdraw from the region.
Erdoğan has also said he would seek to relocate more than 1 million Syrian refugees in this “safe zone”, both removing them from his country (where their presence has started to create a backlash) and complicating the demographic mix in what he fears could become an autonomous Kurdish state on his border.
How would a Turkish incursion impact on Isis and stability of the wider Middle East?
Nearly 11,000 Isis fighters, including almost 2,000 foreigners, and tens of thousands of their wives and children, are being held in detention camps and hastily fortified prisons across north-eastern Syria.
The SDF has been pleading for international assistance in dealing with these prisoners, who countries including the US, UK and Australia have been reluctant to take back – in some cases cancelling the citizenship of prisoners.
SDF leaders have warned they cannot guarantee the security of these prisoners if they are forced to redeploy their forces to the frontlines of a war against Turkey. They also fear Isis could use the chaos of war to mount attacks to free their fighters or reclaim territory.
“Civilians were told by the PKK that we were coming to kill them but we are ready to secure them if they would like to return to their homes,” he said. The Syrian fighters have lost a total of seven men to date, and the Turkish defence ministry said on Friday one soldier had been killed.
As the death toll grows, there are increasing calls for sanctions against Turkey in both the US and the EU. Any such move would greatly weaken Turkey’s already flailing economy, but the few Turks left in Akçakale dismissed the possibility.
“Sanctions will not damage Turkey. We are a great country,” said 61-year-old Mohammed Turkulu, the former neighbourhood administrator in Yeni Mahallesi, as he and friends watched events over the border wall 100 metres away.
“We will defend ourselves no matter the cost. If they give me a gun I will go straight into Syria myself.”
• Additional reporting by Hussein Akkoush
