Syria: US Boots on Ground risks Conflict with Turkey, not Russia
▻http://www.juancole.com/2015/10/ground-conflict-turkey.html
The conflict these US actions generate is with Turkey, a NATO ally of the US which lies just north of Syria. Turkey is deeply afraid of the Syrian Kurds’ YPG militia, which Ankara sees as a branch of the radical PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) guerrilla group with which the Turkish government has been fighting since the 1970s, considering it a separatist terrorist group.
The Syrian Kurds’ YPG has been so effective against ISIL that US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is clearly in love with them and wants to support them with a couple of special ops platoons and better air support.
But on Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey had bombed the Kurdish YPG fighters twice. He said that they had tried to move west of Kobane in a quest to unite the three Kurdish enclaves of northern Syria along the Turkish border, which, Davutoglu said, would not be allowed.
It is possible that the public announcement that US troops would embed with the YPG was in part intended to warn Turkey against further bombing of latter.
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The US troops will be substantially east of Kobane, but in any case the only external power involved in Syria that might inadvertently bomb US troops is Turkey, not Russia.
