ANKARA: Turkiye will not hesitate to carry out a new offensive in northern Syria if Kurdish-led groups — which Ankara accuses of linked to outlawed Kurdish militants — go ahead with plans to hold local elections in the region, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday.
A Kurdish-led autonomous administration that controls northern and eastern parts of Syria has announced plans to hold municipal elections on June 11. The vote to choose mayors will be held in the provinces of Hassakeh, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and eastern part of Aleppo province.
Turkiye, which has launched military operations in Syria in the past, considers the move as a step by Syrian Kurdish militia toward the creation of an independent Kurdish entity across its border. It has described the planned polls as a threat to the territorial integrity of both Syria and Türkiye.
“We are closely following the aggressive actions by the terrorist organization against the territorial integrity of our country and of Syria under the pretext of an election,” Erdogan said after observing military exercises in western Türkiye.
“Turkiye will never allow the separatist organization to establish (a terror state) just beyond its southern borders in the north of Syria and Iraq,” he said.
Türkiye considers the Kurdish militia group, known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, as a terrorist group linked to an outlawed Kurdish group that has led an insurgency against Türkiye since 1984. That conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has killed tens of thousands of people.
The YPG however, makes up the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF — a key US ally in the fight against the Daesh group. American support for the SDF has infuriated Ankara and remains a major source of contention in their relations.
Türkiye has carried a series of military operations in Syria to drive out Syrian Kurdish militia away from its border since 2016, and controls a swath of territory in the north. Turkish leaders frequently speak of plans to establish a 30-kilometer (19-mile) deep safe zone along its border in Syria and Iraq, where the PKK has a foothold, to protect its borders.
“We did what was needed in the past in the face of a fait accompli. We will not hesitate to act again if we encounter the same situation,” Erdogan said.
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Turkiye signals new military intervention in Syria if Kurdish groups hold municipal election
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Turkiye signals new military intervention in Syria if Kurdish groups hold municipal election
- A Kurdish-led autonomous administration that controls northern and eastern parts of Syria has announced plans to hold municipal elections on June 11
- The vote to choose mayors will be held in the provinces of Hassakeh, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and eastern part of Aleppo province
Libya’s Red Castle museum opens for first time since fall of Qaddafi
Libya’s national museum, formerly known as As-Saraya Al-Hamra or the Red Castle, has reopened in Tripoli, allowing the public access to some of the country’s finest historical treasures for the first time since the revolt that toppled Muammar Qaddafi.
The museum, Libya’s largest, was closed in 2011 during a NATO-backed uprising against longtime ruler Qaddafi, who appeared on the castle’s ramparts to deliver a fiery speech.
Renovations were started in March 2023 by the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU), which came to power in 2021 in a UN-backed political process.
“The reopening of the National Museum is not just a cultural moment but a live testimony that Libya is building its institutions,” GNU Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbiebah said at a reopening ceremony on Friday.
Built in the 1980s, the museum’s 10,000 square meters of gallery space features mosaics and murals, sculptures, coins, and artefacts dating back to prehistoric times and stretching through Libya’s Roman, Greek and Islamic periods.
The collection also includes millennia-old mummies from the ancient settlements of Uan Muhuggiag in Libya’s deep south, and Jaghbub near its eastern border with Egypt.
“The current program focuses on enabling schools to visit the museum during this period, until it is officially opened to the public at the beginning of the year,” museum director Fatima Abdullah Ahmed told Reuters.
Libya has since recovered 21 artefacts that were smuggled out of the country after Qaddafi’s fall, notably from France, Switzerland, and the United States, the chairman of the board of directors of the antiquities department Mohamed Farj Shakshoki told Reuters ahead of the opening.
Shakshoki said that talks are ongoing to recover more than two dozen artefacts from Spain and others from Austria.
In 2022, Libya received nine artefacts, including funerary stone heads, urns and pottery from the US
Libya houses five UNESCO World Heritage sites, which it said in 2016 were all endangered due to instability and conflict.
In July, Libya’s delegation to UNESCO said the ancient city of Ghadames, one of the sites, had been removed from the list as the security situation had improved.
The museum, Libya’s largest, was closed in 2011 during a NATO-backed uprising against longtime ruler Qaddafi, who appeared on the castle’s ramparts to deliver a fiery speech.
Renovations were started in March 2023 by the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU), which came to power in 2021 in a UN-backed political process.
“The reopening of the National Museum is not just a cultural moment but a live testimony that Libya is building its institutions,” GNU Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbiebah said at a reopening ceremony on Friday.
Built in the 1980s, the museum’s 10,000 square meters of gallery space features mosaics and murals, sculptures, coins, and artefacts dating back to prehistoric times and stretching through Libya’s Roman, Greek and Islamic periods.
The collection also includes millennia-old mummies from the ancient settlements of Uan Muhuggiag in Libya’s deep south, and Jaghbub near its eastern border with Egypt.
“The current program focuses on enabling schools to visit the museum during this period, until it is officially opened to the public at the beginning of the year,” museum director Fatima Abdullah Ahmed told Reuters.
Libya has since recovered 21 artefacts that were smuggled out of the country after Qaddafi’s fall, notably from France, Switzerland, and the United States, the chairman of the board of directors of the antiquities department Mohamed Farj Shakshoki told Reuters ahead of the opening.
Shakshoki said that talks are ongoing to recover more than two dozen artefacts from Spain and others from Austria.
In 2022, Libya received nine artefacts, including funerary stone heads, urns and pottery from the US
Libya houses five UNESCO World Heritage sites, which it said in 2016 were all endangered due to instability and conflict.
In July, Libya’s delegation to UNESCO said the ancient city of Ghadames, one of the sites, had been removed from the list as the security situation had improved.
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