Speaking to the website of the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations Mahmoud Fazeli explained Turkey’s objectives behind launching ‘Operation Peace Spring’, 30 to 35 kilometers deep inside Syria, and said: “One of the goals is to destroy the Kurdish military capability in the region. The Syrian Kurds were able to obtain some of their weapons during the eight-year war in Syria, and the Turks are sensitive to this issue and do not want the Kurds to increase their military strength.”

He added that evidence suggests that Turkey is seeking to annex this region, which lies deep inside the Syrian territory, and emphasized: “This is against the international law and I even remember that the United Nations in 1992 announced that pursuing such goals independently was tantamount to ethnic and racial cleansing and voiced its opposition.”

Describing Turkey’s third goal in attacking northern Syria, Fazeli said transfer and settlement of “Islamist forces” in the region that were under the cover of Ankara in recent years is another goal of Turkey in this military action. These forces that are scattered inside Turkish territory and are used as a defense shield in certain circumstances may be deployed in the area by Turkey.

He added that various figures on Syrian refugees living in Turkey have been published, adding that some of them went to neighboring countries or even to Greece via the Mediterranean waters. Turkey’s goal is to be able to deploy a large part of these refugees mainly Syrians, to a safe zone in Syria.

He also said analysts believe Turkey’s move has some domestic consumption as well. Turkey’s ruling party tends to offset some of the internal failures, including the defeat in the election of the mayor of Istanbul and the differences within the party, with the former foreign minister and former president seeking to form a new party, and consolidate internal unity.

Fazeli said that the Turkish government had virtually no major achievements in the eight years that Syria was involved in the war, except that it had to bear a series of costs. He explained: Thousands entered Turkey and encountered their own political, social and economic problems. Turkey had to spend on them despite its unstable economic conditions. Many of them were Chechens, and even Uzbeks and Chinese, and statistics released by Europeans indicated that Islamists from these countries also entered Turkey and that Ankara may not have sufficient control over some of them.

He pointed out that Turkish military operations have created a rift in Turkish-European relations, with initial reaction being announcements by some European countries that they stop arms supply to Turkey. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Norway are the five countries that were important to Turkey and have said they will stop selling weapons to Ankara. It will also delay Turkey’s future accession to the EU for a longer time, with the issue of pressure on Turkey being raised independently at the EU foreign ministers’ meeting.

“The increase in the number of refugees will cause greater problems for the international community, not only for Syria and Turkey, but for other countries and international organizations,” the analyst said. This may even affect the migration of Kurds from this region to Europe. As one of Turkey’s neighbors, the Greeks may also be worried about the influx of more immigrants into their land and Mediterranean waters, which has been one of the major problems for the Greek government in the past eight years.

He explained: Some countries use the arrival of these refugees and immigrants for political or ethnic purposes and want to take advantage of them as political tools. Forced settlement of some of these Arabs or Turks in this safe zone may be of concern to many countries around Turkey, including Syria. There is concern that Turkey is trying to force part of the population into the region by providing them with incentive packages.

Fazeli emphasized that Syria is a country with clear borders and regional status and any military operation against it should be considered an aggression against an independent state. It is Syria itself that will solve the problems of its northern borders, and the Turkish aggression in this region is not justified.

At the same time, he did not consider the arrival of thousands of immigrants to this safe area to take long and said with this action Turkey could cause more damages, conflicts and tensions. The Syrian people and army will certainly try to get these invaders out of their country in a variety of ways. History proves that the Turkish aggression and Mr. Erdogan’s new initiative in this regard may be a new game and tactic, but it will be short-lived.

Fazeli said the European media was less concerned about the suffering of the Syrian people by displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians in violation of the ethical and human standards of the contemporary world. He added: “It must be seen that Europeans who react to human rights issues elsewhere in the world, will respond to this case immediately or not. Here European democracy is put on trial one more time.

He added that Turkey’s move could be considered some kind of ethnic genocide as Turkish artillery aim to evacuate this region of residents and deploy pro-Turkey forces that are believed to be Arabs and Turks.

Fazeli went on to assess Turkey’s achievements with this military action. There is no country in the world that will tolerate aggression and Syria will clear its land of any occupation in the long run, but whether this happens soon or late we have to wait for future developments and consultations taking place in the coming weeks to get a clear answer.

He stressed that the Turkish invasion of Syria would definitely cause instability and tension in the region and would make the situation more complicated. As a number of Arab countries in the Middle East have had negative attitudes towards Turkey and their positions have not been in Turkey’s favor in recent days, and Ankara has been isolated among them.

At the same time, he said, Turkey’s 100-year history has shown that they will not back down quickly. An example is the occupation of a part of the territory of one of their neighbors, which despite being condemned by the United Nations and decades of peace talks to withdraw Turkish troops from the area, Turkey is still in the region and has made no withdrawal. This in turn has caused a rift in the Muslim world.

Fazeli also spoke about the security implications of ISIS members fleeing their detention camps and Europe’s concern. “The return of former ISIS members to Europe has raised concerns in many of these countries. We have seen cases in countries such as Spain and some other European states that these ISIS members were arrested and sentenced to imprisonment or quarantine in view of the crimes they committed. Some of them returned to their countries. We do not know the details of how they escaped from prison, but there may be further harassment for Syria or problems for countries such as Iraq.

At the same time, he said: “The problem of ISIS seems to be of secondary importance and other issues are more important to Turkey or the Americans. Of course, there are not many ISIS forces left. Reports have surfaced that ISIS killed a number of Kurds in a heartbreaking manner and that they knew that if ISIS were released, there would be more acts of violence that we saw these days. These are Europeans’ concerns, but for Turkey and Syria the most important issue is the military occupation of an independent state.

Explaining the green light given to Turkey by the US to attack Syria, the international affairs analyst said: The geopolitical map of the world was laid out at major international summits years ago, and no one is going to change these approved boundaries. Perhaps the big mistake of the Kurds was that they always thought they could have an independent place in this region of the Middle East. But all the confrontations between Europe, the Russians and the US show that they will never be ready to create such a new independent state, the last example being the events that took place in Iraq and that the Kurdish sector was eventually forced to continue operating within the Iraqi government. There, too, America played a role, but it never let itself to create an independent state.

He added: Another point is that the US has had important strategic relations with Turkey in recent decades, and this has nothing to do with Turkey’s past coups. Evidence shows that any government in Turkey is so dependent on the United States that it cannot change anything. The Turkish government will only offer superficial slogans for domestic consumption, but it will not have the power to decide or stand up to the Americans, and Trump has given the green light to Turkey in the invasion of Syria, but Erdogan should be aware that this trap by the US is in the interests of the Zionist regime to undermine the Turkish economy, army and government.

Fazeli noted: Ultimately it is the Kurds who were once again left alone by the Americans and, in their own interpretation, once again were stabbed to the knees, indicating that the US is willing to sacrifice the interests of minorities to maintain their greater interests. Nowadays we hear words from Americans that it is very unfortunate that the Kurds left us alone in such an accident! These statements indicate that they are seeking greater and wider interests.

“Turkey is as important to the Russians as it is to the Americans but both countries have shown that they are treating Turkey cautiously and softly. Because both of them seek their interests in close ties with the Erdogan government and Turkey. If the United States is one of the largest arms suppliers to Turkey since decades, Moscow is trying to gain a new position by selling S-400 missiles to Ankara. It is true that Russia has good relations with Iran, Syria and Iraq in this new geopolitical game, but somehow Turkey has been left behind in the recent invasions. The irony is that at a meeting of the Kurdish delegates in Moscow, the Russians claimed that they would not leave the Kurds alone, but so far the Syrian people and Kurds have not seen anything except diplomatic compliments that are offered in nice words.”