When civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, one of the first things Bashar al-Assad’s regime did was to pull back troops from the country’s north-east so that they could defend the heartland against militias. This gave an opportunity to Syria’s Kurds, the country’s largest ethnic minority who make up some 10% of its population, to establish a de …
BEIRUT — The U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria said Tuesday that they will turn to the government in Damascus for support should Turkey go ahead with its threat to launch a new incursion into the war-torn country. Erdogan has repeatedly said over the past weeks that he’s planning a major military operation to create a 30-kilometer deep buffer …