The leader of the Islamic State blew himself up last month in an operation carried out by the rebel Free Syrian Army in Daraa province in southwest Syria. Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, who had led the Islamist ISIS since March, killed himself and his aides using a suicide belt after they were discovered in a secret hideout in a house in the town of Jasem.
A recent blast hit the center of Istanbul resulting in several casualties. The Turkish authorities were very quick to announce the identity of the suicide person: A Kurdish woman in close relation with the Kurdistan Workers Party. Nevertheless, this terror act in Istanbul, followed by a new Turkish military intervention (aggression) in North Syria, once again opened the “Kurdish Question” which is in direct connection with the question of Kurdistan’s independence and terrorism as the political instrument in the realization of the national projects and ultimate goals.
Damascus’ low-key reaction to Turkey’s recent strikes on Syrian Kurdish targets suggests it might acquiesce to Turkish military moves that would contribute to ending the US military presence in the north.
Ankara demands “concrete steps” from Sweden and Finland before giving the nod to NATO’s Nordic enlargement, including an “asset freeze,” a demand that hasn’t been expressed publicly before.
Turkey will wait for more concrete steps — including a freeze of “terror assets” in Sweden and Finland — before giving a nod to the Nordic enlargement of NATO, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Wednesday while speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Bucharest.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signaled his intent to soon launch the ground phase of Operation Claw-Sword, a military operation designed to clear areas along Turkey’s southern borders of fighters from affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, which the United States lists as a terrorist organization.
The Turkish ministry of defense claims to have killed 471 Kurdish militants in 271 separate attacks in Syria and Iraq since the start of the operation
The Turkish Minister of Defense, Hulusi Akar, visited the Turkish troops on the border with Iraq on 27 November to inspect the ongoing operations as part of the country’s military effort against Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on 26 November that large reinforcements of US military troops and equipment made their way into northern and eastern Syria, coming in from the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) through the illegal Al-Waleed border crossing.
Colonel Davoud Jafari, a senior official of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division, was assassinated in Syria on 22 November. The IRGC claimed that Israel was responsible for the attack.
On 24 November, the Iraqi government announced its decision to redeploy troops to the borders with Iran and Turkey, following recent attacks by Tehran and Ankara against Kurdish positions in the Iraqi Kurdistan semi-autonomous region, Al-Awsat news reported.
On 19 August, 2014, ISIS released a video of the beheading of American journalist James Foley who was kidnapped by the terrorist organization in 2012 while reporting on the conflict in Syria.
Foley’s shocking execution became one of the most widely followed news stories of the Syrian war. Foley’s killer, Mohammed Emwazi, popularly known as “Jihadi John” by the western media, was a Kuwaiti-born Brit from West London. In the Foley execution video, Emwazi’s unmistakable London accent can be heard.