Turkey’s invasion has thrown a once-stable corner of Syria into chaos
Less than a week after America removed its troops, a Kurdish-run fief has collapsedOct 14th 2019ABU DHABIALL OF IT was foreseeable: the death and displacement, the atrocities, the flight of jihadists and the return of a brutal regime. But it has happened more quickly than almost anyone predicted. In the days since Turkey invaded north-east Syria on October 9th, scores of people have been killed and more than 100,000 displaced. A brief Syrian Kurdish experiment in self-rule has come to a crashing halt. Their entity, known as Rojava, is now a carcass to be picked over by the Turks and the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator. Hundreds of Islamic State (IS) supporters, once held by the Kurds, have escaped into the desert scrub.Small though it may seem, President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw some 100 troops from north-east Syria has reshaped the Levant. It cleared the way for a long-threatened Turkish invasion meant to dislodge the Kurdish-led militia in control of the region. Turkey views the group, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as a mortal foe because of its ties to the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought a long insurgency against the Turkish state.Choose us for news analysis that respects your time and intelligenceSubscribe to The EconomistWe filter out the noise of the daily news cycle and analyse the trends that matterWe give you rigorous, deeply researched and fact-checked journalism. That’s why Americans named us their most trusted news source in 2017Available wherever you are—in print, digital and, uniquely, in audio, fully narrated by professional broadcastersThis website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard‘s standards of credibility and transparency.ORContinue reading this articleRegister with an email address