{"id":20437,"date":"2018-10-30T18:24:50","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T18:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20437"},"modified":"2018-10-30T18:24:50","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T18:24:50","slug":"turkey-says-plans-complete-for-assault-on-kurdish-militia-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20437","title":{"rendered":"Turkey says \u2018plans complete\u2019 for assault on Kurdish militia in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1396486\/middle-east\" readability=\"49\">\n<p>\nAnkara: Turkey has completed preparations for a new operation in northern Syria to \u201cdestroy\u201d a US-backed Kurdish militia that Ankara considers to be a terrorist group, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday.<br \/>The Kurdish People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG) militia holds territory east of the Euphrates River, where Turkey has repeatedly threatened to launch an fresh offensive.<br \/>\u201cWe are going to destroy the terrorist structure in the east of the Euphrates. We have completed our preparations, plans, programs regarding this issue,\u201d Erdogan told lawmakers from his ruling party in parliament.<br \/>Erdogan appeared to indirectly confirm Turkish state media reports that the Turkish military fired artillery shells at YPG positions east of the Euphrates in the Kobani region of northern Syria on Sunday. The YPG has held the area since 2015.<br \/>\u201cIn fact, in the past few days, we have begun real interventions against the terror organization,\u201d Erdogan said, without giving further details.<br \/>\u201cWe are going to breathe down the necks of the terror organization with comprehensive and effective operations soon. As I have always said, we can come suddenly one night.\u201d<br \/>Erdogan has previously made similar threats and on Friday gave the YPG a \u201cfinal warning.\u201d<br \/>While the YPG has worked closely with Washington against the Daesh group in Syria, causing tension between NATO allies Turkey and the US, Ankara says the militia is a \u201cterrorist offshoot\u201d of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK).<br \/>The PKK has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is blacklisted as a terror group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.<br \/>The YPG holds swathes of territory in northern and northeastern Syria.<br \/>Earlier this year, Turkish military forces backed Syrian opposition fighters to retake the western Afrin region from the YPG during a two-month air and ground offensive.<br \/>Ankara previously launched an offensive between 2016 and 2017 against Daesh on its border with Syria and to stop areas under YPG control from joining.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ankara: Turkey has completed preparations for a new operation in northern Syria to \u201cdestroy\u201d a US-backed Kurdish militia that Ankara considers to be a terrorist group, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday.The Kurdish People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG) militia holds territory east of the Euphrates River, where Turkey has repeatedly threatened to launch an fresh offensive.\u201cWe&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}