Damage from the Turkish invasion of Syria spreads quickly

The Turkish invasion of Syria is a seriously bad development with potentially far-reaching implications, none of them likely to be especially good for ordinary people in the area in the immediate future.

Bel Trew reports for The Independent (Syrian regime troops enter Kurdish territory after deal aimed at pushing back Turkish offensive as US signals full withdrawal 10/14/2019):

Syrian government forces have entered several towns in the Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria for the first time in five years, as they advance on Turkish forces in the country, after striking a deal with the Kurds to halt Ankara’s offensive.

According to Syria’s state news agency, SANA, regime troops moved into Kurdish-held Tabqa town in Raqqa province, once home to the capital of the Isis caliphate.

Much attention has rightly been focused on Trump's cynical abandonment of the Kurds, who just a week ago were still US allies.

But part of the risk of US involvement in Syria was that there was a risk of military clashes between the US and its NATO ally Turkey.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan has been distancing his country from NATO in various ways, including controversial purchases of Russian weapons. (Tim Lister, Turkey bought Russian S-400 missiles designed to down NATO planes. For the US, that's a problem CNN 07/13/2019)

Susanne Güsten provides this background information ("Pfiler unter Stress" Internationale Politik Sept/Okt 2019; translation from the German original is mine), of which the Cheney-Bush Administration's misbegotten Iraq War is a significant part:

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, little changed [in the relationship between NATO and Turkey]. It was only when Erdogan's AKP party came to power 17 years ago that a fundamental reassessment began. A first sticking point was the then US administration's plans for a war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Turkey, which quite rightly feared a catastrophe for the entire region, refused to follow the US and refused to allowed American troops be be stationed [in Turkey] for the attack. In these years, a growing distrust of Turkey developed in the US, and a new foreign policy self-image developed in Ankara, which was radically different from the traditional self-view of [Turkey as] the "aircraft carrier" [for the US].

The driving force behind Turkey's change of course was Erdogan's foreign policy adviser, the later foreign minister and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. He defined Turkey as an independent regional power with its own interests, which may well differ from those of the West. Especially in Syria, the Turkish-American contrasts sharpened more and more. Washington supports the Kurdish militia YPG and its political parent organization, the PYD, the main U.S. partners in the fight against the so-called Islamic State. Turkey is hostile to the YPG and the PYD because they are the Syrian operatives of the terrorist organization PKK. For the US, however, the fight against the Islamic State was more important than the Turkish government's threat scenarios. [my emphasis]

That was, of course, written before Trump greenlighted the current Turkish invasion and apparent ethnic cleansing against the Kurds.

Aljazeera provides this reverse chronology of the Turkish invasion, Turkey's military operation in Syria: All the latest updates.